Britain arrests >1000 per month for social media posts

[CaptainFritz28]

If it was a "police state", wouldn't nearly all of these people be going to jail irrespective of their actual guilt?

In an authoritarian regime you don't normally see large numbers of people, being allegedly oppressed by the state, being found innocent and going free.

Police states don't happen overnight. Just because something isn't the full embodiment of authoritarianism doesn't mean it isn't a step towards it. The reason we make such a big deal about things like this is because if you allow small steps in that direction, you will soon be seeing larger and larger steps there. I'm sure you would agree with the argument that Trump's presidency is taking large steps towards authoritarianism. Yet you'd probably also say that Trump isn't really doing much of anything different than what he's always done, just to a greater degree.

[Octavious]

Seriously, are you doing this on purpose? We'll talk about charges and cautions in 2015 and compare them to convictions in 2023? Is it not possible to just compare like with like for once? Are we going to compare them to the numbers interviewed under caution in 2011 next, or number of crimes reported in 2024?

Do you propose a better system for comparison, or would you like to look at a different time period?

What's probably happened is that some pro-active social justice warrior group has decided to motivate its members into reporting everything they find to the police, and the poor sods in the police have a duty to investigate. This inevitably leads to far more cases at the less serious end of the spectrum, which brings about a lower conviction rate. It'd be like a local neighborhood watch group turning militant and sending out patrols armed with cameras who report every single traffic violation.

Alright, at least we've got a theory postulated.
1) What basis is there for this?
2) What does it matter if it is true?

If the answer to no. 1 is that there isn't anything except your own intuition... then I think it can pretty well be discarded as pure speculation. If you're correct, there will be some evidence of it, at least on social media (and it likely would've been reported on by at least local papers).

But then we get to no. 2, where I claim that whoever it is that's causing the increase in arrests is irrelevant. The system may be being abused, whether by activists, individuals, local or federal police, or anyone else, but who it is that's abusing it doesn't matter. The problem is that it is open to that abuse and therefore it needs to be looked at more to sort out what is causing the discrepancy between arrests and convictions, and how that discrepancy can be mitigated.

The better system is blatantly obvious, surely? A graph of arrests over the past decade overlaid with a graph of convictions for the same period. This isn't asking a lot, and you'd expect a publication like the Economist to be able to put it together easily. We have the freedom of information act in the UK. You can literally just ask.

As for question 1, I vaguely remember stories from a few years ago about various organisations (usually left wing activists) telling their members to do exactly that. If you Google things like "people urged to report online hate crime" you will find scores of organisations from local councils and police forces and charities doing exactly that, and providing links to where it can be reported online at the click of the button. You can also find plenty of news articles from a few years back saying how such crime is under reported and urging people to report more. It appears that this urging combined with efforts to make the process easier has been successful.

There was also and update on how to treat online hate crimes issued by the College of Policing in 2020. Not a huge amount had changed in the guidance, but crucially it says

"A central (NPCC and Home Office) internet hate crime team (IHCT) has been established to provide a national response to generic online hate crime.

This team manages True Vision(opens an external website in the same tab) and can be contacted through the website(opens an external website in the same tab). The team will assess reports made through the True Vision website"

So we have an increase in reporting combined with easier reporting and a dedicated national police team specifically created to investigate these reports. I think that the reason behind the increase in arrests is no longer a mystery.

As for point 2, this matters because it explains everything we have observed without the need for any conspiracy theories about the erosion of free speech. You will have far more borderline cases that are worthy of investigation that ultimately won't lead to prosecution. As time passes you'd expect the police to develop a better feel for what is and what isn't worth pursuing and adapt their way of working accordingly, but this seems to be more an issue of efficiency and resource management than a slide towards authoritarianism

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

As for point 2, this matters because it explains everything we have observed without the need for any conspiracy theories about the erosion of free speech. You will have far more borderline cases that are worthy of investigation that ultimately won't lead to prosecution. As time passes you'd expect the police to develop a better feel for what is and what isn't worth pursuing and adapt their way of working accordingly, but this seems to be more an issue of efficiency and resource management than a slide towards authoritarianism

Arrest will continue (and increase) until the police come to understand the law? That would be pilloried as an outrageous solution in Canada.

The broken approach to policing online speech is but one issue. The UK still arrests tens of thousands per year for cannabis possession. It is possibly the most heavily aurveilled democracy on earth—without the data and privacy protections found on the continent.

I guess UK folks are allowed to think this is all fine. To a Canadian this stuff seems wrongheaded. We seem to get by fine without this stuff. Of course, we have our own issues (the last government wanted to restrict online speech, we almost certainly over-police Indigenous communities, etc.)

[Octavious]

10s of thousands? The number arrests for all drug offenses is only around the 70,000 mark. The number of people in prison for cannabis related matters is less than a thousand, and I doubt any of those are in because of their personal supply. No one smoking cannabis is doing so in fear of the police

[CaptainFritz28]

I don't know how accurate this is, but it tells a different story...
You wanted a graph with year by year data, so here y'are:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/283103/drugs-in-england-and-wales/

That gives that in the 2022/23 year-long span of recording, there were over 140,000 seizures of cannabis, with a total of about 179,000 drug related offences.

That seems rather high, and I don't know the source, but that was my 2 minute internet search result.

Edit: A bit more research and a briefing which appears to have been published in the house of commons library which corroborates that:
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9039/CBP-9039.pdf

[Octavious]

Ugh...

[Octavious]

Like I have said, it's import to compare apples with apples. There are around 70,000 arrests for all drug offenses. Yes, there are more seizures and offenses, but that is because a hell of a lot of them don't involve an arrest. The officer confiscates the drug, tells them they've been naughty and mustn't do it again, and that's it. No arrest. No criminal record. We are talking neighbours playing music too loud levels of seriousness here. It is very small beer.

[CaptainFritz28]

Thank you for that information, I wasn't aware that those were separate things.
I'll refine my search.

[CaptainFritz28]

This source claims that overall, only 27% of those caught are charged:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/cannabis-arrests-charges-fall-police-giving-up-drug-policy-uk-a7206036.html

But that still leaves the number at somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 a year in recent years, so I'm confused, because that's well within the realm of tens of thousands.
Notably, that article was written in 2016, so it's very possible that the numbers have totally changed since then and you're completely right. But in that case I can't find your sources online.
I couldn't find more than this source talking about actual arrests, other than one saying that they are down by 46% since 2010 (which linked to this one), but that doesn't contradict this.

I don't mean to he a contrarian, Oct, and I don't have any particular care about the issue, since I don't live in the UK and if I did I wouldn't be using cannabis. I'm just curious where you're getting your data from and why the data that one finds after a quick Google search seems so different.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The precise numbers up to 2023 are available here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-10-21/10037/

[Octavious]

There you go, Fritz

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9039/CBP-9039.pdf

Drug crime stats for England and Wales from the House of Commons Library. Published at the end of 2021

[CaptainFritz28]

The precise numbers up to 2023 are available here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-10-21/10037/

This appears to be the number of people actually incarcerated - which was no more than 448 at the highest in 2011.

That may be somewhat useful information, but is not the number of arrests, which was what the whole debate on "tens of thousands" was about.

[CaptainFritz28]

There you go, Fritz

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9039/CBP-9039.pdf

Drug crime stats for England and Wales from the House of Commons Library. Published at the end of 2021

I referenced this source earlier... it states 69,000 arrests for drug crimes in general in 2020/21, in line with what you said earlier. When I referenced it I was looking at total drug offences, but I did look at arrests then, and have subsequently done so again. It doesn't break down what the arrests were for. The vast majority of drug crimes reported by police appear to be cannabis related, but that doesn't imply that the majority of arrests were also cannabis related. It simply doesn't state.

[Octavious]

Cannabis is low level stuff. A quick Google search on the people in prison in the UK for Cannabis related offences will show you that. Less than a thousand, and pretty much all of those will be dealers and traffickers, or people who did something stupid (eg crash a car) whilst smoking cannabis. If the police spot you smoking cannabis you are not going to prison. You're probably not going to be arrested. And at the end of the day an arrest is just a process that allows the police to action additional powers. It doesn't really mean anything to the person being arrested other than that it's likely that the current inconvenience will last a little longer.