The hate-crime obsession has broken British policing
Imagine being asked to make an assessment of policing in this country. Where would you even start? How could you end? That question was not theoretical for Sir Tom Winsor, the outgoing chief inspector of constabulary. And thank goodness for what he said as he went out of the door. Foremost among Sir Tom’s complaints was his frustration with the way in which the police have in recent years taken it upon themselves to come up with crimes rather than policing crimes. The job of the police, says Sir Tom, is to “enforce the law, they do not make it”.
He was right to pick up on this. Our bobbies have made boobies of themselves, and far worse, in recent years. In few ways has this been so obvious as in their decision to police wrong-think. Think of cases like that of Harry Miller, who had police turn up on his doorstep asking to check his thinking after he tweeted something which police said could be interpreted as “transphobic”. There is “no such thing as a thought crime” says Sir Tom in his report. Nor can police chiefs simply “declare something that is not a crime to be a crime… It is not illegal to think anything.”
Perhaps he also has in mind stunts like that in Merseyside last year when the police stood menacingly (all masked, naturally) beside a travelling billboard declaring that “Being offensive is an offence”.
What Sir Tom does not say, but perhaps your columnist may, is that there is a clear reason – indeed incentive – that the police have jumped into the whole hate-crime business. Real crime is messy to police. Tackling knife crime in London, for instance, is painful, laborious, politically tricky and physically arduous work. Tackling “hate crime” by contrast is a relatively restful affair.
You may, for instance, sit at a computer and search through your “replies” on Twitter. You may occasionally turn up at the home of an entirely blameless individual and interrogate them over what they might have been thinking when they made a particular joke. In other words the hatecrime industry is good for business while being light on footwork. Perhaps Cressida Dick’s successor at the Met Police, among others, will reflect on this. And on police forces’ priorities more generally.