A British journalist revealed last month that police visited her at her home in Essex because of a post she wrote regarding former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Channel X a year ago.

On 12 November, Alison Pearson, a columnist for the right-wing Daily Telegraph, claimed she was being investigated for a “non-crime hate incident” (NCHI). The police later disputed this, saying that she was being investigated for the possible criminal offense of inciting racial hatred, not NCHI, but in any case, the investigation was dropped after a few days.

Whether police were investigating Pearson for a non-criminal hate incident or, in fact, for a criminal offense, is disputed over her experience It brought discussions about the controversial practice of registering NCHIs to the forefront.

This week, Nick Herbert, head of the College of Policing, said the government should consider scrapping NCHIs altogether, and claimed that registering NCHIs had become a “disability to policing”.

While some want to abolish this practice, others stress that registering NHCs is important.

But what is a “non-criminal” hate incident and what do people in the UK think about police investigating them?

What are non-criminal hate incidents?

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which applies to England and Wales, describes NCHI as a measure that is “clearly motivated by deliberate hostility or bias towards people who have a particular characteristic”.

These characteristics can be race, religion, sexuality, disability, or transgender identity.

The West Yorkshire Police website lists examples of NCHIs that include verbal or online harassment, bullying at school or workplace, offensive leaflets or posters, and littering outside homes or through letterboxes.

Police in England and Wales have been required by law to record NHS reports since June 2023.

Scotland implemented its own hate crime law – the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act – in April 2024. The NCHIs also state this: “It is an operational matter for Police Scotland to determine how reports of hate crimes or hate incidents are investigated and recorded and are not in any way related to Forms of hate crimes law.

Why do people say that police registration of NHCs is a problem?

Some argue that NCHIs limit freedom of expression, waste police time, and target people who should not be on police radar.

Last month, The Times revealed its own investigation, which found that a nine-year-old who described a classmate as a “retard” and two secondary school pupils who said another pupil “smelled like fish” had been recorded by police as having committed Crimes. National health insurance institutions.

Other children were also reported – and their actions recorded by police – the Times investigation found. The Times said it revealed “widespread confusion” among police about what types of incidents should be recorded.

Complaints about NCHIs have increased recently. Based on data from 45 out of 48 police forces in the UK, 13,200 complaints were recorded over the past year. Based on this number of complaints, the UK think tank Policy Exchange predicted in a report published on November 25 that more than 60,000 police hours a year would be spent on NHIs.

Nick Herbert, head of the College of Policing, told the media this week: “I think it has become an obstacle to the police doing what we want the police to do, which is making sure they prevent harm, and identifying where it is.” “The risk of harm, and ensuring that it can be prevented…the category itself has become controversial and distracting.”

Why do some say it is necessary?

Some argue that monitoring of NCHIs is necessary because they can be an indicator of hateful behavior that may escalate into criminal behavior.

Danny Stone, chief executive of the UK-based Antisemitism Policy Fund, wrote for the news blog Conservative Home that “victim-led hate reports have had significant and important positive impacts on police and communities, in diagnosing harm, extremism and failure.” Community integration or cohesion efforts.”

Stone also cited a case in 2007 when a woman in Leicestershire killed herself and her severely disabled daughter after a decade of torment at the hands of local youths. It emerged that the woman, Fiona Pilkington, had contacted police 33 times about misconduct. Despite eight visits by the police to the family, no action was taken.

Who is investigated for non-criminal hate incidents?

In 2019, former policeman Harry Miller was investigated by Humberside Police for “transphobic comments” on his X account. He wrote 31 posts between November 2018 and January 2019 expressing what were later described as “gender critical views”, which the law has protected since the 2021 Forstater ruling as qualifying as “philosophical beliefs” for the purposes of the Equality Act.

“Transgender women are women,” he wrote in one post. Does anyone know where this new biological classification was first proposed and adopted? Another post said: “I was assigned a mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t misidentify me.”

Miller sued police over the investigation, claiming his right to free speech could be denied. The court sided with Miller, saying that his views fell within the scope of freedom of expression protections.

The judge ruled that there was no evidence that Miller’s posts were “designed to cause deep offense” and that his posts “were not directed at the transgender community” and, instead, were directed at his X followers.

On November 10 this year, Daily Telegraph journalist Alison Pearson, 64, claimed in her newspaper column that police had “attended” at her Essex home and informed her she had been charged by NCHI over a post she had made on X a year earlier. before. She claimed they said they were not allowed to tell her about X’s specific post, or who he complained about.

Pearson denied that she posted “hateful” content.

The Guardian reported that Pearson X’s post was a photo of two people of color holding a flag Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)Party of imprisoned former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Pearson commented on the photo, saying: “Look at the number of people smiling with the haters of Jews.” Perhaps he misunderstood the PTI flag and the Hamas flag. She later deleted the post.

Essex Police, who later told The Guardian that Pearson was in fact under investigation for the possible criminal offense of inciting racial hatred rather than NCHI and released body camera footage from police officers to prove this, dropped the investigation altogether on 21 November.

In the wake of the Alison Pearson incident, news presenter and right-wing activist Darren Grimes claimed to have been investigated for NCHI in 2020.

Like Allison, I have a “non-criminal” hate incident registered against my name. They were supposed to stop scoring such Orwellian marks against anyone. I certainly cannot understand how an investigation into such a malicious charge can be viewed as urgent. Britain is not a free country. https://t.co/dRjRxF1Pi9

– Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes_) November 13, 2024

Who else is campaigning against NCHIs?

Some conservatives, as well as free speech advocates, are campaigning against registering NCHIs, including the British non-partisan organisation, the Free Expression Union.

The Federation for Freedom of Expression said in a statement that the monitoring of the National Centers for Health Insurance is “a modern and frightening restriction of our freedom of expression.”

Policy Exchange published a report on November 25, written by the head of crime and justice, David Spencer. Spencer, a former chief inspector of the Metropolitan Police, wrote that NCHS surveillance is “a frightening distraction from the public’s priorities regarding policing”.

Spencer added that recording NCHIs is a distraction for police.

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Suella Braverman The Conservative Party also criticized the NCHIs. In 2023, when the Conservative Party was still in power, Braverman published new guidance stating that incidents should be considered unlawful incidents unless they were “clearly motivated by intentional hostility”.

Last month, The Telegraph reported that Labor Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was considering reversing the change to enable monitoring of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia that could escalate into violence.