The Hate Crime Act: an “especially bad law”
A week after the new Hate Crime Act passed into law, it is already clear that it is “a disaster for Scotland”, said Brian Monteith in The Scotsman. As widely predicted, it has proved an “especially bad law”. Intended to reduce hate, by extending the existing law against stirring up racial hatred to other protected characteristics (such as age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity), it has instead deepened division, by incentivising “belligerent activists to lodge formal complaints to police”. About 8,000 reports were made in the first week alone. Many of them targeted J.K. Rowling, who had tested the law by describing ten well-known trans women as men, and challenging the police to arrest her. Ironically, even more complaints were made against the architect of the bill, First Minister Humza Yousaf, over a 2020 speech that he had made about racial hatred and the dominance of “white people” in Scottish life.
Rowling made her point, said Janice Turner in The Times. Police Scotland confirmed that her comments would not be treated as potentially criminal, and nor would they be logged using the Orwellian category of “non-crime hate incidents” (NCHIs) – which can be added to a police record without the subject knowing about it. “Rowling’s power move neutralised the law’s use against gender-critical beliefs. But it also smashed a taboo: now ordinary Scots know they can call trans women blokes.” This may be good for legal clarity, but it’s less good “for trans people quietly trying to live their lives”. Besides, there shouldn’t really have been any doubt on this point, said James Cook on BBC News. The law set a high threshold for criminality, stressing the right to free speech, and to express ideas that “offend, shock or disturb”.
But that’s precisely the point, said Joan Smith on UnHerd. “In normal circumstances, people tend to know whether or not they’ve committed a crime.” As far as the Hate Crime Act goes, they don’t. Even Siobhian Brown, the SNP minister sent out to defend the law, seemed unclear about whether “misgendering” does count as a crime, first saying it doesn’t, and then that it was “up to Police Scotland”. There’s also the issue of NCHIs. Neither Rowling nor Yousaf have had any recorded against them, but the Tory MSP Murdo Fraser, who had made a joke about identifying “as a cat”, has had an NCHI logged against him. The police have to deal with these pointless complexities, when they could be solving actual crimes, such as rape and burglary. “The only answer is to repeal.”