Scottish hate incidents and the postponed Hate Crime Bill

[ArabellaScott]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a737ef70-8ba5-11ed-b06e-ab31665740df?shareToken=a40585d6956c326cc0fd11d03439fa3e

'Freedom of expression is under threat in Scotland with police recording a growing number of “hate incidents” where no crime has been committed, a censorship watchdog has warned.

Index on Censorship said “robust debate” was being stifled by Police Scotland’s increasing focus on “non-crime hate incidents”. ...
Police Scotland logged 928 incidents of “malice and ill will” with no criminal offence in 2021 — twice the number of incidents recorded in 2017.

There was no marked increase in hate crimes over that period. This indicates a growing trend for officers to record “non-crimes” when there has been no rise in actual hate crimes.'

This is before the new 'Hate Crime and public order bill' comes into force - reported in Scotsman today that Scottish police have said it will be 2024 before it is put into action due to the need for training and updating computer systems.

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/hate-crime-bill-enforcement-in-scotland-delayed-until-at-least-2024-as-police-concerns-scupper-enforcement-3977709

'Gary Ritchie, Police Scotland assistant chief constable, said: “A hate incident is any incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated, wholly or in part, by malice, ill will and prejudice, towards a person or group but which does not constitute a criminal offence.

“We are aware that hate-related incidents are one of the most under-reported forms of crime in the country and in recent years we have actively encouraged the reporting of hate crimes and hate incidents so it is not unexpected that there has been a rise in reports.”'

Police Scotland are actively encouraging the reporting of non-crime.

Any incident perceived by any one to be motivated by 'ill will'.

Astonishing.

They seem to be merging incidents and crimes in those quotes. The "perceived by" aspect is ripe for abuse. If two people have an argument or disagreement, but Person A calls the police first, Person B is in trouble. Person B might simply have shrugged it off.

Total waste of time and resources

I've said it before and will say it again: these statistics of non crime reports should contain information of how many people made those complaints. Because my nasty, suspicious ladybrain would wonder how many were made by the same people reporting repeatedly. And how many could be matched to tweets encouraging others to make reports of a certain incident.

If they did that you would probably see less names than you have fingers to count them on. (On one hand)

Wasn't it the Scottish Trans Alliance who openly encouraged people to get the numbers up by reporting everything that could possibly be counted?

It's an encouragement come from several sources.

Information on how such reports have been weaponised to directly harass and punish women for saying unwanted things like truth and reality would also be interesting and important for public awareness.

This bill has been a most useful weapon to bullies and religious zealots. In fact the bills to do with this political lobby are just full of unintended and really awful consequences.

This is from a SW email - what they are planning for 2023 - "Encourage LGBTQ+ people and our allies to report hate crimes through our new app, launched with Galop, so authorities can take action"

I don't think the app actually does anything, it just provides meaningless, easily gamed figures for policy makers.

Yes. Becky Kaufmann of Scottish Trans advised the attendees of one of the workshops to do report all incidences of 'stickering' as non hate crimes, to get the numbers up.

Also advised on how they had a close relationship with the Scottish Prison Service. Kauffman, is a TW who is an an ex prison officer (in US male prisons) and father of 7.

The audience was mainly civil servants for local and Scottish government and trade union delegates.

Ok I could just about get some blokes going through a miserable marriage and a couple of kids before being true to himself and declaring that he is a woman.

But 7 kids...that is not a man who ever thought they were trapped in the wrong body. It appears he's had no issues with dealing with a body that wasn't his.

Oh, is it easy to use? As a nonbinary person I have a LOT of non crimes to report. Literally thousands.

Do you need a hand I've got time on my hands now I'm relieved of map duty? I'm sure with a few of us we could get them done in double quick time,🙃