Police STILL recording neighbour disputes and negative online reviews as hate crimes

Police STILL recording neighbour disputes and negative online reviews as hate crimes

WATCH NOW: Peter Bleksley says the police know nothing about burglaries

GB News
Holly Bishop

By Holly Bishop


Published: 02/04/2024

- 15:41

Updated: 02/04/2024

- 16:15

The Home Office told the force last year to stop recording incidents where there is no proof of deliberate prejudice

Neighbour rows, drunken rants and online spats are still being logged as hate incidents, despite ministers pleading with the police to focus on serious wrongdoing instead.

Last year, the Home Office told the police to stop recording instances without proof of intentional prejudice.


However, some cases, such as business owners being subject to negative reviews online, are continuing to be logged as hate incidents.

Meanwhile, the detection rate for traditional crimes has fallen drastically, with data from the Home Office showing the number of burglaries resulting in a charge dipping to 3.9 per cent in 2023.

People arguing over a laptop/police officers

Petty incidents are still being logged as hate crimes, despite ministers pleading with the police to overhaul the policy

Getty

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the Daily Mail: “The police seem to have plenty of time to record these often-trivial incidents and yet anti-social behaviour, drugs and shoplifting is going unresolved.

“As home secretary I changed the guidance to raise the bar for when data should be recorded. It seems the police are still intent on subverting these rules. They are letting the public down.

“The police need to do better.”

Non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) do not count as crimes but can show up on a job applicant's vetting checks.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

Suella Braverman

Suella Braverman has said that the police need to 'do better'

PA

In recent years, the College of Policing has been forced to review its guidance over non-crime hate incidents following a landmark ruling in December last year.

Former officer at Humberside Police Harry Miller won a Court of Appeal Challenge over guidance on "hate incidents" after claiming it unlawfully interferes with the right to freedom of expression.

Miller was confronted by colleagues over alleged transphobic tweets in January 2020. The force recorded the complaint as a non-crime hate incident.

The former officer challenged both Humberside Police's actions and the College of Policing's guidance at the High Court in 2020.

Last year, in a statutory code of practice published by the Home Office, police were instructed the following: "The perception of hostility or prejudice by a complainant or any other person alone is not enough, in and of itself, to warrant an NCHI record being made."

However, Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties group discovered that 32 out of 46 police forces recorded over 6,000 NCHIs between June and November 2023.

Man breaking into house

Nearly half of all burglaries remain unsolved in England and Wales

Getty

It comes after new figures released last month showed that nearly half of all burglaries across neighbourhoods in England and Wales remain unsolved.

Over the past three years, officers failed to solve burglaries in 48 per cent of neighbourhoods - areas consisting of 1,000 to 3,000 people.

Former victims’ commissioner Dame Vera Baird has suggested burgling somebody’s home is now like a "free hit".

Baird slammed the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s pledge to boost detection rates as "an empty gesture" in parts of Britain.

"What these figures show is that in half of the neighbourhoods, burgling somebody’s home is a free hit. The criminal can walk away with the proceeds and never look back," she told The Telegraph.

"Burglary can be very very upsetting and traumatising; it can make people afraid to go out in case it happens again and afraid to stay at home for the very same reason.

"Why are there no arrests, no prosecutions and no deterrence in almost half of all these cases?"

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