Non-Crime Hate Incidents to be Scrapped Nationwide
Non-crime hate incidents are to be scrapped nationwide under plans that police chiefs will present to the Home Secretary next month. The Telegraph has more.
Police leaders have decided that NCHIs are no longer “fit for purpose” after warnings that recording them undermines freedom of speech and diverts officers away from fighting crime.
Under the plans, NCHIs will be replaced with a new “common sense” system, where only a fraction of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour.
An NCHI falls short of being criminal but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic. They stay on police records indefinitely and can come up in background checks.
The move to scrap them follows high-profile cases such as that of Graham Linehan, the Father Ted co-creator, whose arrest for a series of posts on X was criticised by Donald Trump’s administration as a “departure from democracy”.
The plans will be published next month by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and are expected to be backed by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.
Lord Herbert, the Chairman of the College of Policing, told the Telegraph: “NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system.
“There will be no recording of anything like it on crime databases. Instead, only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded. It’s a sea change.”
Their exclusion from crime databases means any incidents will no longer have to be declared as part of checks in job applications.
Lord Herbert, a former Conservative policing minister, said controversial arrests or investigations such as those of Mr Linehan and Allison Pearson, a Telegraph columnist, would not occur under the new system.
Mr Linehan was arrested at Heathrow airport by five officers on suspicion of inciting violence with posts on X.
Pearson was questioned by police on her doorstep on Remembrance Sunday for allegedly inciting racial hatred in a tweet. Both cases were subsequently dropped, with no further action taken.
Lord Herbert said changes were necessary because the system, which dates back to 1999, was no longer “fit for purpose” because of the growth in social media and the advent of smartphones.
NCHIs were introduced following the Macpherson Inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder in order to monitor hate and hostility in communities.
“It’s drawn police into an area that I don’t believe they wanted to be in,” he said. “Police have been caricatured that they wanted to be involved in this, but I haven’t met a copper who does.”
Under the plans, police forces will be instructed not to log “hate” incidents on crime databases and instead treat them only as “intelligence” reports.
Worth reading in full.
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I’ll believe it when I see it.
Ah, the College of Policing. Its name sounds so academic doesn’t it. In truth it is a Home Offioce owned company limited by guarantee. Its board and purposes ensure it promotes policies for policing just ahead of current and developing political ideas with no input from the public. It is clearly much more influential than Police and Crime Commissioners or the Home Office Select Committee. It is likely mote effective at moving the policies of police forces than the Home Secretary. When established by Theresa May she said “Its role is very straightforward: it is to provide professional standards for policing and to help police officers and staff meet those standards throughout their careers. It is to seek out best practice, as supported by firmly-established evidence, and to encourage officers to adopt it. And it is to ensure that officers and staff understand and comply with the highest ethical standards.” That seems to have evolved into a decision making role. Accounts and annual report to 31 March 2024 were not published until 2 July 2025. It is 176 pages long. The report by the Comptroller and Auditor General was heavily qualified because accounting records were deficient. The Registrar of Companies had published a… Read more »
‘Common sense’ and Plod in co-proximity. That’s not something you see every day.
“NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system”
Oh, so they will rename it and hope everyone forgets about it?
That’s what I thought too. I am sceptical.
No word of repealing the various bits of legislation that they are using to trap people for these ‘non-crimes’. Makes a nice headline though.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022
Good point. They can just make it up as they go along.
Non-Crime Hate Incidents to be replace by Hate Non Incidents Crimes.
“Instead, only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded”.
If no law has been broken, then no crime has been committed so, therefore, no recording is necessary.
However, if it is deemed serious anti-social behaviour, then charge them.
If it happens, then I have no doubt that the Daily Sceptic – and all of us who support it – will have played a role in abolishing this woke marxo-fascist piece of legislation.
Let us keep going. The amount of freedom they can ever take away from us is the amount we are prepared to give up.
A few courageous people made them back down on mandatory vaccinations. A few courageous people told us the truth about the Muslim rape gangs. Don’t have any illusions about the governing elite: they want to enslave us.
I’m confused. I thought the police were enforcing a law when they were using NCHI’s? Were these not in law?
if they weren’t a law how come they made them up and arrested people based on them. If they were/are a law, how do the police have the right to choose which laws they uphold. Could someone clarify?
Thanks
If you look for my post further down (or up depending on which order you are using) there is a link to what looks like enabling legislation but it says the Secretary of State is able to issue a Code of Practice- not that the Police can make one up.
Aha. So the country is basically run by the police and the police can do and undo the rules as they see fit. Basically telling the Home Secretary how things are going to be.
Forgive me if I’m not exactly jumping up and down with joy, but it seems we live in a police state. And today, the police have decided that they don’t want to be bothered any longer with people’s social media posts. At least for now.
That’s nice.
This is fantastic news… except for the fact that it all has to be “approved” by the Pakistani Muslim woman Mahmood (a variation of “Mohammed”), former left-wing political activist MP who actually lay down inside a Sainsbury’s in a 2014 anti-Israel protest, fond of wearing Muslim hijabs, denouncing “racist white men”, and bizarrely placed in charge of Britain’s Home Office. What could go wrong? Labour’s new Justice Secretary was accused of encouraging ‘mob rule’ at pro-BDS protest – The Jewish Chronicle – The Jewish Chronicle “Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood was accused of encouraging “mob rule” when she forced a supermarket to close in 2014 after a protest over the claim it was “stocking goods from illegal settlements”.” “The branch of Sainsbury’s in Birmingham was forced to close for several hours, the MP claimed, before she took to YouTube to call for a boycott of Israeli goods.” “She told a rally the week after the Sainsbury’s protest: “I was with 200 activists outside Sainsbury’s in the centre of Birmingham.” “We lay down in the street and we laid down inside Sainsbury’s to say we object to them stocking goods from illegal settlements – and that they must stop. We managed to close… Read more »
They should never have existed in the first place.
The police will, going forward, apply common sense; in other words nothing changes.