Home Secretary: ‘Offending someone is not a criminal offence’
from The Christian Institute:
The police will no longer interfere with a person’s freedom of expression “simply because someone is offended”, the Home Secretary has said.
Speaking as a new Code of Practice and authorised professional practice on non-crime hate incidents (NCHI) came into force, The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP said “officers must always have freedom of expression at the forefront of their minds”.
The new code emphasises that the police can only include someone’s personal details in an NCHI if the event presents “a real risk” of either “significant harm” or a “future criminal offence”.
‘Utterly corrosive’
The Home Secretary tweeted: “Offending someone is not a criminal offence. Our new code of practice on non-crime hate incidents comes into force today. Now the police will only record them when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate and not because someone is offended”.
She told the Daily Express: “The recording of so-called ‘non-crime hate incidents’ has understandably struck lots of people as Orwellian and wrong”.
She highlighted that the view “some police are more interested in virtue signalling than they are in protecting the rights of the law-abiding majority is utterly corrosive to public confidence in policing”.
College of Policing’s CEO Andy Marsh added: “These incidents should not be recorded where they are trivial, irrational, or if there is no basis to conclude that an incident was motivated by hostility.”
Read also: The letters of the law: When did we delude ourselves that offence should be a crime? by Harry Miller, Artillery Row
Watch: The Decline of Policing in Britain – Melanie Phillips and John Anderson
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