Police Scotland Logs Offensive Jokes as ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’: Report

29th June 1965: A poster with the famous words 'Big Brother is Watching You' from a BBC TV
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Victoria Friedman

Police Scotland has logged more than 3,300 “hate incidents” in the past five years which were “non-crimes” including telling jokes that some people may have found offensive.

That number, however, is eclipsed by the near 120,000 non-criminal hate incidents recorded by 34 police units across England and Wales over the same time frame (2014 to 2019).

Last year alone, 858 non-crime hate incidents were recorded on Police Scotland’s database, according to a Freedom of Information request by The Times. That is more than two incidents a day.

“An offensive joke may be reported by someone, but not amount to any criminality, so we would log this as a hate incident,” a Police Scotland spokesman told the newspaper.

These incidents were also logged regardless of “whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element”, according to Police Scotland guidelines. The force also told The Times that a person recorded as having committed a non-criminal hate incident would thereafter have their “repeated behaviour” monitored to “check if there is any criminality”.

A record of such a non-crime hate incident could be an impediment to someone obtaining a job if the role requires a police background check.

A statement from Police Scotland revealed a disturbing quality to Britain’s thought-policing, with suggestions that police may take “preventative” action to intervene in circumstances before an alleged crime can be committed.

Chief Inspector Coleen Wylie of Police Scotland explained: “Officers will consider the circumstances around all hate reports, and while not every report will amount to criminality, this enables officers to consider and take preventative [or] protective measures to address any emerging concerns.”

It appears to be what science fiction writer Philip K Dick had defined in his 1956 short-story “The Minority Report” as a “pre-crime”. In the story, the Precrime policing unit would arrest individuals who had not as yet committed a crime, but who were predicted to commit a crime in the future.

The report comes after former police officer Harry Miller won a High Court challenge against Humberside Police over freedom of speech. Police had called Mr Miller last year after he was accused of posting “transphobic” tweets which the police had admitted were not criminal in nature but were a ‘non-crime hate incident’. The investigating officer had told Mr Miller during the telephone conversation that police needed to “check your thinking”.

Mr Justice Knowles ruled on February 14th that the tweets were lawful, saying: “I find the combination of the police visiting the claimant’s place of work, and their subsequent statements in relation to the possibility of prosecution, were a disproportionate interference with the claimant’s right to freedom of expression because of their potentially chilling effect.”

He added: “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”

However, the ruling was also a partial victory, with the judge disagreeing with Mr Miller’s complaint against the College of Policing’s guidelines on ‘hate incidents’ which outlines that “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender”.

Mr Miller is to take his challenge against the College of Policing to the Supreme Court.

Watch Breitbart London’s James Delingpole’s interview with Harry Miller last year below:

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