It isn't the police's job to stop people being offended

[refusetobeasheep]

Article in the Times today, we need more saying this loud and clearly

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3e6cfb28-3a81-11ec-9bef-aa3112940013?shareToken=72ae1131089923914acaa130b0cfb60b

Is this a non-crime hate incident:

Sussex Police apology over hate crime letter www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-36737692

Or this:

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/teen-prosecuted-after-asking-whether-17651755

Because if they're not, they should be. We shouldn't be prosecuting people for basically hurting someone's feelings.

You can't separate them though. NCHI are recorded because they are sen as precursors to hate crime. And it is the hate crime legislation that sets up specific groups as 'special' and worthy of protection from thought's.

I would like to see the whole concept of hate crimes scrapped, not just “thought crimes”.
Punching someone because he is an African and you are a racist, causes the same injury as punching a white man because you are drunk and looking for a fight

Hard disagree. People who target black people (or women, or trans people, or Muslims for eg) as targets of violence are doing it because they hate those groups. That is not the same as punching someone because they are winding you up in a bar. Violence should be punished, for sure, but targeted violence on grounds of race? more punishment is a good thing - pour encourager les autres (or disencouraging them)

@Babdoc

I would like to see the whole concept of hate crimes scrapped, not just “thought crimes”. Punching someone because he is an African and you are a racist, causes the same injury as punching a white man because you are drunk and looking for a fight. Both should be prosecuted as common assault - your motive is irrelevant, and it is ridiculous to waste police and court time trying to prove that you were thinking “hateful thoughts” at the time.

Hard disagree, also.

There are very specific historical and social imperatives for the passing of Acts creating racially and religiously aggravated offences.The historical and violent nature of racially and religiously motivated offences were far in excess of any other form of discrimination, often driven by organised political groups advocating and organising criminal acts towards racial and religious groups (think Stephen Lawrence, BNP, etc, Sectarian/religious crimes between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland).This is of a very different order to the nature of individualised case specific criminal acts underpinned by a prejudice towards other groups, such as the disabled, elderly, gender non-conforming and homosexual.

The question here is whether the criminal law should be used in such a way as to elevate individualised crimes underpinned by hostility to the same level as a systematic, organised and endemic culture such as racism/ sectarianism.

With the changing of attitudes, the liberalising of civil codes such as the EA 2010, the equal marriage act, it is not necessary to use the criminal law in this way for characteristics such as gender reassignment, especially as the evidence doesn't justify the use of criminal law as a very blunt tool for achieving social change.We already have the social change in terms of acceptance of transgender identities, and the latest CPS report notes that the number of police receipts for transphobic hate crimes dropped to eight this quarter.

There are real concerns that the EXTENSION of aggravated offences to include a more diverse group could be manipulated by the less than well intentioned cough men threatened by ribbons, for example.

I havent given much time to this ponder but perhaps terrorism laws could bevmore suitable than hate crimes if your act of violence is specially motivated against someone because they have a proteced characteristics

HatefulHaberdashery, I remain firmly against prosecuting anybody for their presumed thoughts, however gross, violent or “hateful”. Everybody should be entitled to think whatever the hell they like, inside the privacy of their own head.
If those hateful thoughts progress to criminal acts- harassment, physical assault, whatever- then it is the acts that merit prosecution, with the same penalty as non hate crime equivalents. GBH is GBH, whatever the motivation.
As the inimitable Gene Hunt said in Life on Mars: “Hate crimes?! Hate crimes? What - as opposed to all those ‘Love you to bits’ crimes?!”
Nobody punches someone because they love them, ffs.

@Babdoc Fair enough - you are entitled to your thoughts.

Do note though that current criminal law still requires there to be a base offence, and before an aggravating factor based on proven hostility to a person on the basis of a characteristic can be applied.

Police are very keen to record NCHI because it ticks boxes, especially Stonewall boxes.

Police get brownie points for "tackling hate" and Stonewall gets evidence of increasing hate crime against transpeople to use in their propaganda campaigns.

Do note though that current criminal law still requires there to be a base offence, and before an aggravating factor based on proven hostility to a person on the basis of a characteristic can be applied.

No law has to be broken for non-crime hate incidents, which is what this thread was originally about.

From the link in the OP:
Today, the House of Lords debates regulations to control the creation of police records on people who have committed no crimes. In the frame are “non-crime hate incidents” (NCHIs), exchanges reported to the police that the so-called victims perceive to have been motivated by hate, but where no laws have been broken.

Hitting someone because they are black or gay is massively different from hitting someone in a pub because you can stay out of the pub/not engage when violent men approach you etc but you can't not be [insert protected characteristic].

So it's like any completely random unprovoked attack in that there is nothing the victim can do to avoid it/descalate it?

That second link in Clymene's post has lots of links to 'similar stories' There's about ten horribly violent rapes on there including an attack on a woman and her daughter on a canal path. If we were looking for which protected characteristic is most vulnerable to targeted hate crimes we could see it easily there.

That second link in Clymene's post has lots of links to 'similar stories' There's about ten horribly violent rapes on there including an attack on a woman and her daughter on a canal path. If we were looking for which protected characteristic is most vulnerable to targeted hate crimes we could see it easily there.

Easily? Which protected characteristic did you have in mind for those rapes as a hate crime? Religion? Race? It isn't sex because hate crimes do not have sex as a protected characteristic.

Hitting someone because they are black or gay is apparently worse than hitting someone because they are a woman. Or because they are short. Or because they are ginger or come from Birmingham. Why is that?

You're preaching to the choir here ricepudding

@Lovelyricepudding

The transwoman who was stabbed recently having opened the door to a man who'd booked her for sex was stabbed specifically because she was trans. That particular man would not have done that particular crime to a woman, or to a man in a pub. I hope it is recognised as a transphobic hate crime as well as a stabbing.

In this hypothetical example was the transwoman stabbed because they were trans or because they had been deceitful and the man thought he had been cheated? Obviously the stabbing is totally unjustified but the motivation would not then be transphobia.

Or would the man have stabbed any type of prostitute who turned up on his door?

Men killing/attacking prostutiates, especially the female ones, is very common.

@Campervan69

What do we think about this story?

www.blackenterprise.com/virginia-tech-football-player-charged-with-second-degree-murder-for-killing-trans-woman-he-claims-catfished-him-on-tinder/

This person pretended to be a woman to the killer. Is it a transphobic hate crime or is it someone tricked into a sexual act by deception?

So sexual assault by deception.

@Elephantsparade

I havent given much time to this ponder but perhaps terrorism laws could bevmore suitable than hate crimes if your act of violence is specially motivated against someone because they have a proteced characteristics

I was wondering this too.

I’m not 100% either way on the hate crimes part.

If people are at a kkk meeting then on the way home beat a group of black youths then that’s easy to be sure is motivated by hate.

If a white man blows up at a black man at a bar because he spilt a drink on him seems much less likely to be. But actually he could be just as much a racist as the first group. Maybe he was really cunning about it and quietly sat in the corner and sipped his pint day in day out and bided his time until the best opportunity presented itself.

It’s hard to always establish how much hate is there in plenty cases. And I know the impact on the community is what matters, but I still just think it feels very muddy somehow.

Would one gay man saying you fing f slur at the same time the other screams some other homophobic slur at the first while in a domestic brawl in public count?

But intending to create terror in a community seems much clearer. (To me, as a self id non solicitor of course)

Men commit violence against women and girls not just for the gratification it gives them at the time, but to keep us in our place, to keep their power over us, as a class.

That seems like the most obviously clear cut example of terrorism I can imagine.

Yet us women just don’t count when it comes to being ‘hated’.

I’d wonder if we looked at other examples of hate crimes and evaluated them to see which were intended to inspire terror and which weren’t as clear if it would show up any clearer than the confusion over hate crimes that there often seems to be in these discussions.

I’m not sure it necessarily would either but it makes more sense to me when I’m not clear on where I stand re hate crimes and it’s rare I don’t know for certain how I feel about an issue.

I vaguely remember some debate about NCHIs, whether they should be recorded. It was decided it was worth recording them because they thought NCHIs would of course escalate into actual hate crimes. Can't remember whether it was thought this was an invariable consequence.

@PieMistee

#babdoc I completely disagree. Crimes that involve targeting of vulnerable groups add a layer of pain and fear that comes from being picked on for a particular trait. This is why misogyny should be added. If you are randomly targeted for a crime it is horrible but if it is because you are black or gay it ties into all the other times you have been picked on for that reason. Never has my blood run more cold than when my friends and I where running away from some football hooligans and we heard one shout "get the nigger". We tried to protect my black friend but there was nothing we could do. It also is so important to record hate crime as it can show changes in societal behaviour and gives an understanding of why a particular crime is rising or not and how to tackle.it..

And if people keep beating you up because you are poor, or socially awkward, or skinny, or have the wrong opinions on things?

A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender

So it’s not a hate crime if it’s prejudice toward someone because of their sex then

Because men never show prejudice toward women, or be violent specifically toward women because they’re misogynist twats…

Ok then. You can only commit a hate crime toward a woman if they’re a transgender woman.

@Jux

I vaguely remember some debate about NCHIs, whether they should be recorded. It was decided it was worth recording them because they thought NCHIs would of course escalate into actual hate crimes. Can't remember whether it was thought this was an invariable consequence.

This is the thinking around a lot of recording of incidents of various kinds. The idea being if you have these indicators of problems at a low level, you can track them and maybe nip things in the bud before they get serious.

I would feel happier about it if they weren't attached to individuals, though even with that I still think that there would be some really poor quality data being recorded.