Police ordered to stop recording hate incidents that are not crimes

[persistentwoman]

The Times reports that the Home Secretary has finally ordered the Police to stop recording alleged "hate incidents" that are not crimes. Sarah Phillimore & Harry Miller are both quoted in the article. It looks as if their courageous efforts to protect free speech are finally having an impact.

Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2bc5fb68-a5ea-11eb-9b76-9500a3917e5f?shareToken=b55fd41df5a89c6b1c49d49a7de03f9a

l'm pointing out that whatever PC Ghul was told and whatever he said he never in a million years checked anyone's thinking. He asked them what they thought and they chose whether to tell him and if they chose to tell him chose whether to tell him the truth or a lie.
How do you absolutely KNOW this, 'never in a million years'?!

People are generally encouraged not to lie to the police, plus the evidence was on Twitter.

Who on earth would have thought it would be the ruddy Tories, and PP in particular, who I'd be thanking for this?

Me. Sadly. I know I’ll have to vote Tory to protect the current direction of travel. Devastated.

*No-one has ever been punished for thinking something, they have only ever got punished for expressing that they think it.

IMHO we are free to think what we like. We should be free to say most things too, but some things we need to be careful not to say, or careful about how and where and to whom we say them to.*

If it’s not against the law, why?

Thought crime? Can you name a single person ever who has been convicted for their thoughts? I thought people were convicted for sharing their thoughts, not having them?

Hate is a thought, no? So what is hate crime, if not 'thought crime'?

l'm pointing out that whatever PC Ghul was told and whatever he said he never in a million years checked anyone's thinking. He asked them what they thought and they chose whether to tell him and if they chose to tell him chose whether to tell him the truth or a lie.

Rather tedious sophistry.

Maya Forstater's Appeal this week follows an ET judge's assertion that her beliefs in the immutability of sex were unworthy of respect in a democratic society. The requirement being that those who hold such beliefs/thoughts must suppress them at all times.

extract from skeleton appeal argument:

1. Yet the Tribunal held that, because of the risk of offending trans people, both the use of language to refer to biological sex, and the beliefs which that expresses, are unacceptable in a democratic society.
2. The label ‘Orwellian’ is sometimes applied too glibly, but here it is warranted. The Tribunal’s approach is reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth’s Newspeak: words themselves are to have their ‘undesirable meanings purged out of them’ along with the associated ideas, so that ‘a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable at least so far as thought is dependent upon words’

hiyamaya.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/forstater-eat-claimant-skeleton-argument-plus-low-res-pages-1-50.pdf

thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4228233-Maya-Forstaters-appeal-skeleton

Maya Forstater's Appeal this week follows an ET judge's assertion that her beliefs in the immutability of sex were unworthy of respect in a democratic society. The requirement being that those who hold such beliefs/thoughts must suppress them at all times.

Literally a legal obligation on a person to tell lies. It’s a disgrace.

Thought crime? Can you name a single person ever who has been convicted for their thoughts? I thought people were convicted for sharing their thoughts, not having them?

There are several types of crime where the criminal prosecution needs to prove 'mens rea' or 'guilty mind' - to establish for example that the person could or should have foreseen the outcome of their actions, as part of establishing their guilt. So it might actually be up to the jury to guess what the accused was thinking, and for that to form part of their verdict.

So you aren't always judged on your actions; your intentions can be very relevant.

This is great news, in that over sensitive randomers taking offence at something, can't get a non hate crime incident recorded but I've got to say, I still don't like the framing of this. 3 years ago saying TWANW would have been utterly unremarkable. Of course trans women aren't literally women! Of course females need to have a name and some protected spaces reserved for them, it's even enshrined in the law. But we have got to the point where the police, THE POLICE! think it is hateful.

Sometimes it just hits me all over again. Thought crimes my arse.

"Thought crime? Can you name a single person ever who has been convicted for their thoughts? I thought people were convicted for sharing their thoughts, not having them?"

It is not meant to be literal, it's a literary reference and a warning of what can happen as you move towards totalitarianinsm.

It is very difficult for a person with integrity to think one thing and behave in a way completely contrary to that without massive cognitive dissonance. Completely aside from the point that the "thoughts" or communications in question are not even slightly hateful.

Plus when it is based on hearsay, it is open to abuse. It doesn't even have to be true.

In the case of Harry Miller, it is true and it isn't hateful. One vocal, powerful part of society does not get to unilaterally decide that it is.

I welcome the news but that's an awful article, it uses the worst example, and ignores the hundreds of cases of women who have hate incidents recorded for saying sex is real and cannot be changed.

Some people think that talking about whether TWAW is a reasonable subject of conversation, others think it is indecent and grossly offensive to talk about the issues. Hence the problems!
@JediGnot perhaps we should take the law as our guide as to whether something falls within the bounds of decency. Therefore if something is not a crime, the police shouldn't be interested. This change is welcome in that respect.

I’ll have to vote Tory to protect the current direction of travel. Devastated.

I'm in the same predicament. I've never voted Tory in my life and never imagined any circumstances in which they would be the least-bad option. I still don't know if I will ever put a cross beside a Tory candidate's name, but it is now a real possibility. And I'm telling everyone who's interested why I am considering it.

I put a few relevant questions to my local Tory PCC candidate yesterday.

Waiting for a response with interest.

thinkingaboutLangCleg

It’s bad, isn’t it? But what else are women who want to talk about their biological reality without being sacked, recorded as bigots or harassed meant to do? Women have begged Starmer to stand up to his loons but he won’t.

It is not meant to be literal, it's a literary reference and a warning of what can happen as you move towards totalitarianinsm.

Exactly.

It's also a reference to the fact that if you don't have the words to describe something, it's quite difficult to think it coherently in the first place.

Of course no one knows what you're actually thinking, and of course, it's about expressing those thoughts. The distinction is between expressing thoughts, and it being viewed as hate.

@SmokedDuck

The idea that the police want to have some sense of escalating incidents in quite a few areas makes a certain kind of sense. The thinking is, well, what can we do to prevent these problems before they start, that's a pretty understandable goal in all kinds of work with antisocial behaviours. Or to want to be able to study what kinds of behaviours lead up to criminality in the first place.

But - in these thought crime incidents, the implications are really problematic. And I don't think you can separate the expression of wrong-think in these instances from actually having the thoughts. That's always ben the first step of regimes that want to control thought - control expression of thought and say it's ok to think what you want as long as it is done privately, of course that is free thought! This was exactly how the big communist states dealt with religion.

At the very least it may just be something that should not be tracked, even if it could be useful information in some circumstances - it comes too close to criminalising ideas.

But I am more and more coming to the conclusion that the creation of hate crime categories was the problem in the first place. They were criticised wherever they were made law at the time as fundamentally being a type of thought crime, which was ridiculed by many progressives, but the outcomes have been on the side of them being rather dangerous.

The only reason the police can give for justifying the recording of 'hate incidents' is that it allows them to monitor escalating criminality and divert resources to mitigate community tension.

But, as the College of Policing's barrister admitted to the Court of Appeal, the sheer volume of recorded incidents means they are not investigated or analysed. Fair Cop asked every force what statistical analysis they understood of the hate incident data - none undertook any analysis. No links to actual crime. No proof any crime had been prevented.

Further, recording me - twice now - as a potential risk to my community is beyond bizarre. I pose zero risk to my community because I want to talk about the dangers of medical intervention upon children, or the need for women to have single sex spaces.

the whole thing is absurd. Either the college of Policing do the right thing or they will face expensive and humiliating defeat in court. If Harry doesn't win on Article 10 then I expect to win on Article 8 and data protection grounds.

@BessieWallisWarfield

Thought crime? Can you name a single person ever who has been convicted for their thoughts? I thought people were convicted for sharing their thoughts, not having them?

There are several types of crime where the criminal prosecution needs to prove 'mens rea' or 'guilty mind' - to establish for example that the person could or should have foreseen the outcome of their actions, as part of establishing their guilt. So it might actually be up to the jury to guess what the accused was thinking, and for that to form part of their verdict.

So you aren't always judged on your actions; your intentions can be very relevant.

It's worth pointing out that my second Subject Access Request to Wiltshire revealed that I was originally recorded for committing a CRIME for re-tweeting an article from the Illinois Family Institute. Thankfully another police officer reviewed the recording and down graded it to an 'incident'. Otherwise what would have happened to me? Arrest? Charge?

what else was being criminalised there but my thoughts? the article was an entirely inoffensive critique of some research into the long term efficacy of puberty blockers to improve children's dysphoria.

but someone was allowed to argue that they THOUGHT my THOUGHTS must be evil and transphobic and homophobic otherwise why else would I retweet Satan's work?

And the police recorded this as a CRIME. As a public order offence.

If you are not afraid and angry about this, you are not paying attention.

"Some people think that talking about whether TWAW is a reasonable subject of conversation, others think it is indecent and grossly offensive to talk about the issues. Hence the problems!"

There is no 'problem'. People who find other's speech offence need to grow up. They have no right to escape offence. Speech must be protected unless it is an incitement to violence, harassment of an individual or defamation.

If you find other people's views offensive, boo hoo. It should give you precisely zero right to compel others to be silent or to seek their criminalisation. And if you don't understand the importance of this, then you are a massive part of the problem.

IMHO we are free to think what we like. We should be free to say most things too, but some things we need to be careful not to say, or careful about how and where and to whom we say them to.

I would agree with that in certain more extreme scenarios. E.g. you probably shouldn't be yelling at someone in the street, "you aren't a real woman", because regardless of whether it's correct, it's just nasty behaviour.

However on social media say, it should be fine to express the opinion that trans-women aren't really women. You shouldn't be getting a police record for that.

Of course there are much worse things you could be saying. (Without implying that the above example is actually "bad" at all.)

Should you be able to share anti-semitic conspiracy theories at work? (During breaks say.)

Or should you be able to share completely accurate criticisms of the Islamic religion at work? (Which may be ultra offensive to some of the other employees who may hear the conversation.)

Here is something to try...

Someone reports you for a "hate incident".... how often do you know who did it?

Because if you know who did it, then just report their act to report you as itself being a hate incident. They're a bigot motivated by hate to report you; so you can report them for their hatred.

Maybe even report police officers that helped to file complaints or whatever. I don't think they were just doing their job; oh no, I think they were motivated by hate. So we need to record a hate incident against their name. The police don't cooperate? Again, that's another "hate incident" I think...

Gosh, how did I miss this?! Will be following this - have never understood how something that could be totally subjective and unverified could be recorded for any useful purpose.

@Spero

"Some people think that talking about whether TWAW is a reasonable subject of conversation, others think it is indecent and grossly offensive to talk about the issues. Hence the problems!"

There is no 'problem'. People who find other's speech offence need to grow up. They have no right to escape offence. Speech must be protected unless it is an incitement to violence, harassment of an individual or defamation.

If you find other people's views offensive, boo hoo. It should give you precisely zero right to compel others to be silent or to seek their criminalisation. And if you don't understand the importance of this, then you are a massive part of the problem.

The "problem" is that TWAW and GC are arguing and we do not move forward with a sensible agreement on how to deal with the issues!

On the one hand I agree that lot's of people who find other's speech offensive need to grow up... on the other racists and liars and bigots massively offend me and I think anyone not offended by such people are idiots whose stupidity offends me!

But yes, generally free speech needs to be protected ESPECIALLY in academia.

Things are starting to shift.