Non-crime hate incidents are out of control

It’s police overreach season again on free speech and non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. On Remembrance Day morning, we had Essex police’s surreal doorstepping of journalist Allison Pearson, demanding an interview about a long-forgotten Tweet by her they refused to identify. Pearson has said the police told her it was a NCHI, though the force says it regards the issue as a criminal matter concerning material ‘likely or intended to cause racial hatred’ under the Public Order Act 1986.

Regardless of the specific form of overreach, now a FOI request from the Times has unearthed episodes where police recorded NCHIs against a nine-year-old schoolchild who called someone a ‘retard’ and against two secondary school girls who accused another pupil of smelling ‘like fish’.

Neither should have happened. Last year the previous government promulgated a code of practice that forbids recording an NCHI against someone’s name, unless there is a real risk of significant harm or future crime and evidence of intentional hostility towards people with a given characteristic.