The horror of turning children into thoughtcriminals

I wasn’t surprised to read The Times’s story about schoolchildren being investigated for possible ‘hate crimes’. These included a nine-year-old who’d called a classmate a ‘retard’ and two girls at a secondary school who’d told another pupil she smelt ‘like fish’. The police, having decided that these episodes did not meet the threshold for criminal prosecution, dutifully recorded them as ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs).

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has had some success in getting NCHIs deleted from police databases, including four recorded against schoolchildren. Indeed, one of the most rewarding moments for me since setting up the FSU was receiving a letter from the mother of a 14-year-old schoolboy, explaining what a weight it was off his mind to have the NCHI removed from his record. I cannot tell you what he got into trouble for because I promised his mum I would never say anything publicly that would enable him to be identified, but it was no more serious than the incidents documented in The Times.

She explained that he hadn’t been able to sleep when the police notified the family of the NCHI, worrying about how it might affect his future. He was right to be concerned. Had he been convicted of a criminal offence, that would have been expunged from his record when he reached the age of 18, but no such sell-by date attaches itself to NCHIs recorded against children, which follow them into adulthood. Had this boy gone on to apply for a job that required him to do an enhanced criminal-record check, the NCHI could have shown up and he would have been forced to disclose it to his prospective employer. That is to say, he might have been prevented from getting a job as, say, a teacher or a police officer, because he’d committed a ‘non-crime’.

The FSU, along with its allies in the House of Lords, managed to get an amendment made to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act that enabled Suella Braverman, then home secretary, to lay a statutory instrument that made the recording and retention of NCHIs subject to a new code of practice. That code was a significant improvement on the Hate Crime Operational Guidance issued by the College of Policing in 2014, which instructed police to always record a reported ‘hate crime’ as an NCHI, however trivial the incident. That partly explains why police forces in England and Wales have recorded more than 250,000 NCHIs in the past 10 years, according to the FSU’s calculations, which is an average of more than 65 a day.

Among other things, the code of practice advised police not to record NCHIs against children. However, Yvette Cooper believes the police are being unnecessarily restricted by the new rules and should be recording more NCHIs, not less. My fear is she will now repeal the statutory instrument laid by her Tory predecessor. If she does that, we can expect more children to find themselves being investigated for playground spats and having NCHIs attached to their records.

If you believe an NCHI has been recorded against your child (the police don’t have to notify you or your child of this), contact the Free Speech Union. We can help you submit a subject-access request to find out what information the police are holding on your child and, with luck, get it removed. For more information, click here.

Toby Young is the general secretary of the Free Speech Union.