Prosecutions for posts on social media which could cause racial hatred have increased in the past 10 years, prompting calls for a review of the law.
Ministry of Justice figures show just one person was convicted of causing racial hatred in 2015, compared with 44 in 2024.
Racial hatred is a crime under the Public Order Act and prosecutions must be signed off by Lord Hermer, the Attorney General.
**ARE YOU READING THIS ON OUR APP? DOWNLOAD NOW FOR THE BEST GB NEWS EXPERIENCE**
Lord Hermer's consent was issued as a safeguard to prevent the criminal justice system from clamping down on free speech.
Campaigners and politicians have suggested that the increase in prosecutions shows that the law is being used too commonly and enforced too strictly.
The news follows Lucy Connolly's release from prison on Thursday, having been sentenced to 31 months for a racist tweet posted on social media following the Southport stabbings.
Following her release, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said: "Protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety. If the law does this, then the law itself is broken - and it's time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act."
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Lucy Connolly was finally released from prison on Thursday | XOver the past decade, 141 people have been convicted of publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred contrary to Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986.
Almost a third of those convictions came in 2024 following the disorder that was seen across the UK after the Southport killings.
From 2015 to 2019, 48 people were charged with the offence, in contrast to 93 from 2020 to 2024.
Some 86 of these convictions have come in the past three years.
The offence does not purely relate to posts on social media, with other individuals being prosecuted for publishing leaflets and videos.
However, the majority of charges in the past few years are understood to relate to social media posts.
Mrs Connolly was sentenced to 31 months behind bars when she called for mass deportation and to "set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care".
She deleted the post three and a half hours later, after it was viewed over 310,000 times.
Earlier this year, it was reported the police were making more than 30 arrests day over offensive posts on social media
| GETTYLord Young, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said the rapidly growing number of prosecutions showed the threshold for bringing such cases to court had to be higher.
He said: "The test for incitement should be the same as it is in the United States, namely, were the words in question intended to incite violence and were they likely to incite violence, with both limbs needing to be satisfied to secure a conviction.
"In my view, neither limb was satisfied in Lucy Connolly's case, so she would not have been prosecuted if we applied this test.
"Lucy was convicted for intending to stir up racial hatred, with the prosecution not needing to show that her tweet was likely to do so. Sentencing someone to more than two-and-a-half years in jail for a malign intention is manifestly unjust."