Police forces have admitted they don’t know if non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) help tackle crime, The Telegraph can reveal.
Supporters of NCHIs have long claimed that the controversial powers are used by officers to spot emerging community tensions and contain them before they escalate into serious criminality.
Despite logging thousands of NCHIs every year, most forces have admitted they carry out no analysis of the data and so have little idea as to their effectiveness in detecting and preventing hate crime.
An NCHI is defined as an incident that falls short of being criminal, but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic.
They have increasingly been used to target lawful comments made on social media, fuelling criticism that they have a chilling effect on free speech and distract police officers who should be concentrating on serious crime.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “This data shows that NCHIs are being routinely abused by overzealous police forces that are wasting time on non-criminal matters. It also demonstrates why radical change is needed. The public expects the police to dedicate resources to catching real criminals not acting as thought police on social media.”
According to College of Policing guidance, NCHIs help forces build an intelligence picture of community tensions and understand where they need to allocate resources for prevention.
In a House of Lords debate on their use in November, Lord Hanson, the Home Office minister, told peers: “It is vital that the police monitor non-crime hate incidents when proportionate and necessary to do so to help prevent serious crimes.”
However, freedom of information (FoI) requests submitted to police across England and Wales by Harry Miller, the founder of campaign Group Fair Cop, revealed that many of the biggest forces, including the Met, Greater Manchester and West Midlands do not actually analyse the NCHI data they collect.
Forces were asked what analysis has been undertaken to measure the effectiveness of NCHIs in reducing and detecting hate crime. Of the 15 that responded, 14 replied “none” to both questions. Only West Yorkshire Police admitted to carrying out any sort of analysis, explaining that “trends were examined at a local level”.
NCHIs were introduced in 2014 following recommendations made in the Macpherson Report into the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence.
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