Recording of ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’ (NCHIs) by the police should be abolished, says a think-tank. If the Government chooses to retain the NCHI regime, they should issue an updated Code of Practice which leads to a substantial reduction in the number of NCHIs record โ increasing โfreedom of expressionโ protections and reducing the distraction of police officers from their core mission of fighting crime, says David Spencer, in a report for the Policy Exchange think-tank.
Among his other recommendations, he calls for police forces to be required to publish their policies and procedures about the recording of NCHIs โ including making clear on their websites the difference between hate crimes and NCHIs. The report points to the College of Policingโs 2014 โHate Crime Operational Guidanceโ and a Code of Practice for the recording of NCHIs in June 2023. Protections which Parliament and the Conservative Government attempted to introduce through this Code of Practice have been largely ineffective, according to the report. It complains that police ‘continue to be highly opaque in their approach to NCHIs’.
Spencer writes: “The distraction of police officers from other, more important activities is of grave concern to great swathes of the public โ particularly given NCHIs do not involve allegations of criminality. In many cases Police and Crime Commissioners have been insufficiently robust in ensuring that forces have been focused on the fight against crime.”
Police chiefs and Ministers regularly rebuff accusations of โtwo-tierโ or โdifferentialโ policing, Spencer notes. “And yet their failure to recognise that levels of inconsistency โ both between forces levels of NCHI recording and when compared to other incidents, such as the failure to act when individuals chanted for โjihadโ at a political rally on the streets of London โ fuel these accusations. When combined with the levels of police secrecy about NCHIs, it is a toxic mix.”
He calls for an overhaul of NCHIs in a world ‘of potentially limitless demand and highly constrained resource’. You can download ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents: A chilling distraction from the public’s priorities on policing’ at the Policy Exchange website.
In September David Spencer, a former police detective chief inspector, was among authors of another report for the think-tank, ‘Might is Right?’, on the ‘Right to Protest’ in a ‘new era of disruption and confrontation’.
