Fewer than 4 per cent of reports made under Scotland’s new hate crime law were deemed crimes by police, figures show (FT, Sky News, Telegraph).
In the first official statistics published since the law came into force, Police Scotland said that it had received 7,152 online hate reports between April 1 and April 7.
However, it said that during the period, just 240 actual hate crimes, around 3.5 per cent of the reports made, had been recorded. A further 30 were recorded as “non-crime hate incidents”, or NCHIs.
That latter figure is particularly interesting from a free speech perspective, given that Police Scotland’s national guidance on the recording and retention of NCHIs says officers must record all reports of hate crimes as NCHIs, with no exceptions.
That’s because, for Police Scotland, the defining factor when it comes to a NCHI is only ever the complainant’s perception of what happened, even when there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the claim that the accused was motivated by hostility towards one or more protected characteristic.
Earlier this month, for instance, Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser was forced to write to Scotland’s top police officer to demand “urgent clarity” after the force recorded a social media post he had written criticising the SNP-led government’s Non-Binary Equality Action Plan as a NCHI.
A few days later, a trans activist reported his post to Police Scotland claiming that it constituted hatred against non-binary or transgender persons. The Area Control Room and officer who followed up on the matter determined that, although no crime had been committed and the police would conduct no further investigation, the perception of the complainant meant that his post would be recorded as a NCHI, and a reference number was provided to the complainant.
It follows, therefore, that if Police Scotland have received over 7,152 hate crime reports since the new Hate Crime Act was activated on April 1st, but only recorded 30 of them as NCHIs, then they have abandoned their publicly available guidance.
So what is Police Scotland’s new policy when it comes to the recording of NCHIs? Are they planning to tell us at some point? And how did they arrive at this new policy?
We suspect Police Scotland have suddenly decided to bring their NCHI guidance into line with the statutory code of conduct about the recording and retention of NCHIs that applies in England and Wales, which thanks to a succession of legal and legislative victories by Harry Miller and the FSU, means they’re only recorded in exceptional circumstances.
Why? Because Murdo Fraser, with the help of the Free Speech Union, threatened to take them to court if they didn’t.
Humza Yousaf certainly appeared to suggest that the guidance was in the process of being revised when he said last week that Police Scotland are now “looking at the changes that were made in England and Wales recently [regarding the recording and retention of NCHIs] and reviewing their own procedures in that respect”.
But if so, it would be nice of them to tell us so we can stand down our lawyers.
A public body cannot just do these things on the quiet to avoid the embarrassment of admitting they got it wrong.
