UK Scraps Non-Crime Hate Incident Laws Nationwide
December 27th, 2025Via: ZeroHedge:
The Telegraph reports that police leaders have decided that NCHIs are no longer “fit for purpose” after warnings that recording them undermines freedom of speech and diverts officers away from fighting crime.
Under the plans, NCHIs will be replaced with a new “common sense” system, where only a fraction of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour.
An NCHI falls short of being criminal but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic.
They stay on police records indefinitely and can come up in background checks.
The move to scrap them follows high-profile cases such as that of Graham Linehan, the Father Ted co-creator, whose arrest for a series of posts on X was criticized by the Trump administration as a “departure from democracy”.
The plans will be published next month by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and are expected to be backed by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.
