Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, claims he had to look up the term when a row broke out last week. The Times has the story.
Britain’s top prosecutor has said that he “had no idea” what non-crime hate incidents were and “had to look them up” recently, as he cast doubt on their usefulness.
Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, was responding to concern over revelations that police regularly logged hate incidents against people in authority even though their actions did not amount to criminal offences.
The Times reported last week that doctors, vicars and social workers were among the professionals investigated by police over non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs).
It has subsequently emerged that one home counties police force recorded 1,500 hate incidents over the past two years.
On Tuesday Parkinson told The Times Crime and Justice Commission that when the furore around non-crime hate incidents broke out last week, “I had to look up what on earth the term meant — I was puzzled by it”.
Parkinson, who took over as the chief prosecutor in England and Wales a year ago, went on to tell the commission that “even within the police service there has been some surprise at the level of non-crime hate incidents that have been investigated”.
Despite his position, Parkinson said that he was not certain how investigations of NCHIs were started.
In September a report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found that confusion over the rules meant that officers were taking a risk-averse approach, summed up as “if in doubt, record a crime”.
Speaking at the annual conference of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, defended the principle of recording non-crime hate incidents. She said: “You have to really have a common sense and consistent approach. And one of the other things I think that the inspectorate report shows is around the importance, for example, of monitoring things like antisemitism, which has increased over the last 12 months, and that is immensely important.”
Parkinson, 67, told the commission that although he found the definition and recording of NCHIs to be confusing and potentially unnecessary, he was reluctant to be “overly critical of the police”.
He pointed out that many of the non-crime hate cases “could start as ordinary criminal investigations that are ultimately recorded in a different way”.
However, his concern over the wide recording of the incidents was shared by other senior figures in the justice system.
One senior retired judge who did not wish to be named told The Times that the process of determining an incident was confused, which in effect rendered the exercise pointless.
A leading criminal law KC who was highly familiar with the workings of the Crown Prosecution Service acknowledged that there was a place for “out of court disposals”, such as conditional cautions for actual criminal offences.
However, in relation to NCHIs, the lawyer said that there were “questions over whether the police should be doing this type of recording at all”.
Worth reading in full.
