Britain arrests >1000 per month for social media posts

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Subject line relays an absolutely bananas situation I read about in The Economist.

That's some police state shit, I can't believe it's tolerated. How will folks who support this today feel when it's PM Farage's government making more than ten thousand arrests per year for speech violations?

[Jamiet99uk]

But Mr. Farage is in favour of free speech. He often says so. Don't you believe him?

Facetious remark aside, I don't think there is a story here. A statistic taken out of context. As I understand it the majority of the arrests fall into two categories:

1. Arrests made as part of harassment cases, where social media posts are part of a wider pattern of unlawful behaviour. Here is an example:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65576859

In this case a campaign of harassment against two victims included posts being made on social media, falsely accusing one of them of being a paedophile, and inciting a violent mob to turn up outside their house.

Is that legitimate free speech, or were those social media posts sufficiently problematic that action should be taken? I would argue the latter.

2. Racism or homophobia or other hate speech of an extreme nature, often including specific incitement to violence against specific people or groups of people.

There is a sliding scale here I suppose.

"I'm worried about the number of Arab men arriving in small boats"
- Free speech or hate crime? Clearly free speech that will not lead to arrest.

"We should round up the gays and the Jews and execute the lot of them by firing squad!"
- Free speech or hate crime? Pretty nasty but what do you think?

"I've had enough of these fucking blacks and pakis coming over here! They're a threat to our women and children! The council is housing asylum seekers at the Regal Hotel on Brown Street. We need a squad of strong white men to go down there and set the whole place on fire. Burn them out!"
- Free speech or hate crime containing a specific incitement to violence? For me very clearly the latter.

It is my understanding that at least a proportion of the arrests mentioned in the Economist fall into the third category. Those arrests would seem to be legitimate in my view.

[Octavious]

Media coverage of foreign issues is often poor these days. In the UK, for instance, you could be forgiven for believing that Canada is slaughtering thousands of the elderly and disabled on the back of poorly formulated right to die legislation. The truth is often quite different.

I tend to think Jamie is correct in that most of these cases, if you look at the details, you wouldn't actually disagree with. Whether that's true of all of them I doubt, but there's nothing unusual about that. But what is true is that there's a growing perception that there are increasing restrictions on freedom of speech, which is a genuine problem that must be addressed

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Is The Economist foreign reporting in the UK? This is an easily Google-able fact. I'm personally doubtful I'd think all or even most 1,000 per month are outrageously bad just given the magnitude of arrests. Perhaps the article I read cherry picked only the least and most harmful as examples, but it seems like a large and growing amount of very tame "offensive" speech is getting criminalized, largely at police discretion.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I suspect I could call 101 on Jamie for all manner of things he's said on the forum, which certainly rose above the level of vile and offense of at least some of the sample cases described by The Economist.

There is a big gap between arrests and convictions in these cases, which to me is more a sign for concern than relief. The police are obviously much more interested in prosecuting this than the courts and have functionally been given a ton of shallow pretext for arrests. It is a very big deal to be arrested.

If the claim is that these are mostly/largely actually real life stalking and harrassment cases, why has the arrest rate gone up 50%+ in just a couple years? Were such crimes just not taken seriously before?

[Octavious]

That would depend on whether or not it's the Canadian Economist (if such a thing exists). The Spectator, for example, has an American version as well as a British version... possibly an Australian version as well. There are a great many Times newspapers with often little or nothing to connect them.

But focusing on main point, why would you expect that they should be outrageously bad? There is a world of difference between an arrest and a conviction. A fair few of those cases will have been investigated and the suspect released without charge because they turned out to be not that bad

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The Economist is somewhat unique in this regard. The online content is global, and the print version is only slightly tailed by market (for ads). Their UK section is the same in my copy as it would be if you picked one up.

If you are going to arrest someone for something it should be quite bad, no? While there is a world of difference between arrest and conviction, there's also an awfully large gap between being arrested and not being arrested. The gap between arrests and convictions isn't an excuse to say these arrests aren't bad—rather, it's evidence that the police are way out on a limb and taking an overbroad view of speech-related justice that is not based in democratically-decided laws and which is not shared by the courts.

To be clear I'm not particularly fussed that the UK has a lower threshold for incitement (though I'm not sure it's advisable), nor that it takes harassment seriously. What is troubling about all this is that:

- arrests seem high and have grown quickly,
- we know of at least some cases where the source of an arrest is a neighbour snitching on a neighbour for rather petty and unthreatening speech,
- the police receive many more complaints than they can adjudicate and are given a huge amount of discretion in who they ultimately decide to arrest

This just seems like a recipe for disaster. A future legislature could add just a couple words to the existing laws (e.g., don't denigrate "UK values" or undermine "UK foreign policy interests") and the existing infrastructure of 12,000+ arrests per year gets re-directed from pitiable dumdums who say hateful things about migrants (who I'd argue by and large should be free to express their own stupidity) to migrant advocates, LGBT activists, etc.

Worse still, the huge amount of discretion in the current system means that enforcement could change wildly even without a change in legislation. If a police department suspects its funding requests might be viewed more favorably by the Home Secretary if it targets speech X rather than speech Y, the actual incidence of arrests can shift dramatically—all without any democratic oversight.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

If someone is motivated to think most of these arrests are in fact justified, how could they explain the low conviction rate or the 50% increase in these arrests since 2017?

The anecdotes of serious offenses contrast with the anecdotes of non-serious offenses (paraphrased from the article in question):
A man dressed as the Islamist who carried out a terrorist attack in Manchester in 2017 for a Halloween party, and he faced up to two years in prison before his case was overturned. Another man criticized pro-Palestine protesters online, saying they were “one step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals”; police raided his home and searched his bookshelves on suspicion of antisemitism (bizarrely) before eventually releasing him. Six retired police officers were prosecuted for sending racist messages in a *private* WhatsApp group, receiving suspended sentences and mandatory community service.

[Octavious]

I suspect I could call 101 on Jamie for all manner of things he's said on the forum, which certainly rose above the level of vile and offense of at least some of the sample cases described by The Economist.

The anecdotes of serious offenses contrast with the anecdotes of non-serious offenses (paraphrased from the article in question):
A man dressed as the Islamist who carried out a terrorist attack in Manchester in 2017 for a Halloween party, and he faced up to two years in prison before his case was overturned. Another man criticized pro-Palestine protesters online, saying they were “one step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals”; police raided his home and searched his bookshelves on suspicion of antisemitism (bizarrely) before eventually releasing him. Six retired police officers were prosecuted for sending racist messages in a *private* WhatsApp group, receiving suspended sentences and mandatory community service.

You see, the problem with pretty much all articles on criminal matters is that it is impossible for them to go into anything like the detail required by the courts. They are forced to limit themselves to a very brief summary, and that summary typically lends support to whatever point the article is trying to make.

If you were privy to the full details of the cases involved I suspect that your conclusions over whether the arrests were justified would be quite different. I am also completely confident that nothing Jamie has said on this website,even in his darker periods, would warrant a police arrest.

[CaptainFritz28]

There is a sliding scale here I suppose.

"I'm worried about the number of Arab men arriving in small boats"
- Free speech or hate crime? Clearly free speech that will not lead to arrest.

"We should round up the gays and the Jews and execute the lot of them by firing squad!"
- Free speech or hate crime? Pretty nasty but what do you think?

"I've had enough of these fucking blacks and pakis coming over here! They're a threat to our women and children! The council is housing asylum seekers at the Regal Hotel on Brown Street. We need a squad of strong white men to go down there and set the whole place on fire. Burn them out!"
- Free speech or hate crime containing a specific incitement to violence? For me very clearly the latter.

It is my understanding that at least a proportion of the arrests mentioned in the Economist fall into the third category. Those arrests would seem to be legitimate in my view.

Perhaps I'm a bit liberal in my views on what should be free speech, but I think that "hate crime" as it is often used as a term, is an excuse to say, "this person offended me and I want to get back at them." Sometimes the offense is real and was intentional, but if we don't allow that, eventually horizons are broadened to what a hate speech crime is to whatever is against the current regime.

So I'd say the first two should be allowed. The second should be loudly drowned out in dissent, but still allowed. That last one I don't think should even be classified as a hate speech crime. That seems like it ought to fall under the definition of criminal conspiracy, but I'm not a legal expert so I have to default that question to those who are more educated on the subject.

[Jamiet99uk]

Is The Economist foreign reporting in the UK? This is an easily Google-able fact. I'm personally doubtful I'd think all or even most 1,000 per month are outrageously bad just given the magnitude of arrests. Perhaps the article I read cherry picked only the least and most harmful as examples, but it seems like a large and growing amount of very tame "offensive" speech is getting criminalized, largely at police discretion.

The Economist is behind a paywall and I'm not going to pay just to read this article.

[Jamiet99uk]

That last one I don't think should even be classified as a hate speech crime. That seems like it ought to fall under the definition of criminal conspiracy, but I'm not a legal expert so I have to default that question to those who are more educated on the subject.

Whether the third example is a hate crime or a "criminal conspiracy", you agree it may be grounds for police intervention?

That's the main point really.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I suspect I could call 101 on Jamie for all manner of things he's said on the forum, which certainly rose above the level of vile and offense of at least some of the sample cases described by The Economist.

The anecdotes of serious offenses contrast with the anecdotes of non-serious offenses (paraphrased from the article in question):
A man dressed as the Islamist who carried out a terrorist attack in Manchester in 2017 for a Halloween party, and he faced up to two years in prison before his case was overturned. Another man criticized pro-Palestine protesters online, saying they were “one step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals”; police raided his home and searched his bookshelves on suspicion of antisemitism (bizarrely) before eventually releasing him. Six retired police officers were prosecuted for sending racist messages in a *private* WhatsApp group, receiving suspended sentences and mandatory community service.

You see, the problem with pretty much all articles on criminal matters is that it is impossible for them to go into anything like the detail required by the courts. They are forced to limit themselves to a very brief summary, and that summary typically lends support to whatever point the article is trying to make.

If you were privy to the full details of the cases involved I suspect that your conclusions over whether the arrests were justified would be quite different. I am also completely confident that nothing Jamie has said on this website,even in his darker periods, would warrant a police arrest.

How am I supposed to think about the, admittedly anecdotal, cases where trivial speech infractions did indeed lead to an arrest? If an insensitive halloween costume or the use of slurs in a private chat result not only in an arrest but also a trial then Jamie's occasional lapse into advocating the genocide of Israelis isn't obviously safe.

Is your contention that in fact there has been a 50% increase in legitimate cases where arrests were warranted since 2017? If so that's a position you hold but the courts evidently don't given the continued low conviction rates.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Is The Economist foreign reporting in the UK? This is an easily Google-able fact. I'm personally doubtful I'd think all or even most 1,000 per month are outrageously bad just given the magnitude of arrests. Perhaps the article I read cherry picked only the least and most harmful as examples, but it seems like a large and growing amount of very tame "offensive" speech is getting criminalized, largely at police discretion.

The Economist is behind a paywall and I'm not going to pay just to read this article.

I could post the full article but that's probably not good for the forum.

Just about anytime you want to get around a paywall you just can put the link into archive.is

This is also a widely reported story.

[Jamiet99uk]

The second should be loudly drowned out in dissent, but still allowed.

What if I go up to a group of schoolchildren, let's say aged 9 or 10 years old, and I loudly say "gay men are fucking abominations and should have their dicks cut off with a rusty knife and force fed to them in front of their families, and if any of your mummies or daddies are fucking queers I hope they die!"

If a police officer is nearby and sees and hears me saying this, should they threaten to arrest me if I don't shut up? Or, should they just say "now now, children, this guy is entitled to say these things, but you shouldn't listen" ?

I assume you'd advocate for the latter, because, you know, free speech?

[Jamiet99uk]

Is The Economist foreign reporting in the UK? This is an easily Google-able fact. I'm personally doubtful I'd think all or even most 1,000 per month are outrageously bad just given the magnitude of arrests. Perhaps the article I read cherry picked only the least and most harmful as examples, but it seems like a large and growing amount of very tame "offensive" speech is getting criminalized, largely at police discretion.

The Economist is behind a paywall and I'm not going to pay just to read this article.

I could post the full article but that's probably not good for the forum.

Just about anytime you want to get around a paywall you just can put the link into archive.is

This is also a widely reported story.

I'm not disputing the existence of the story.

Has the Economist carried out a detailed statistical analysis of the 1,000 cases cited? Can you provide a quantitative summary?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The Economist is behind a paywall and I'm not going to pay just to read this article.

I could post the full article but that's probably not good for the forum.

Just about anytime you want to get around a paywall you just can put the link into archive.is

This is also a widely reported story.

I'm not disputing the existence of the story.

Has the Economist carried out a detailed statistical analysis of the 1,000 cases cited? Can you provide a quantitative summary?

No one has, nor likely can, produce such an analysis. All we're likely to get is (i) anecdotes of cases most people will agree require police intervention, (ii) anecdotes of cases only majorly censorious people would agree require an arrest, and (iii) evidence that such arrests are high and growing.

Even without such details it seems pretty clear to me the existing laws were not made with the internet era in mind. The fact that they have been applied to trivial cases and *private* conversations should give everyone cause for pause.

If maintaining these laws is important, there are practical changes that could limit their misuse by police and improve public trust in such prohibitions. The easiest fix would be for the police to seek a warrant for arrest before making speech-related arrests (except in cases of imminent danger), such that a court will at least apply some minimum standard that the arrest is in fact in line with the democratically-decided law (something that is evidently not the case today given very low conviction rates).

[CaptainFritz28]

That last one I don't think should even be classified as a hate speech crime. That seems like it ought to fall under the definition of criminal conspiracy, but I'm not a legal expert so I have to default that question to those who are more educated on the subject.

Whether the third example is a hate crime or a "criminal conspiracy", you agree it may be grounds for police intervention?

That's the main point really.

It may be. Depends on the circumstance and specifics, but it is at least grounds for the police to, say, in the specific case mentioned, go to the Regal Hotel on Brown street and set up a watch.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The second should be loudly drowned out in dissent, but still allowed.

What if I go up to a group of schoolchildren, let's say aged 9 or 10 years old, and I loudly say "gay men are fucking abominations and should have their dicks cut off with a rusty knife and force fed to them in front of their families, and if any of your mummies or daddies are fucking queers I hope they die!"

If a police officer is nearby and sees and hears me saying this, should they threaten to arrest me if I don't shut up? Or, should they just say "now now, children, this guy is entitled to say these things, but you shouldn't listen" ?

I assume you'd advocate for the latter, because, you know, free speech?

Might be worth noting that this case would lead to an arrest in Canada, but our system does not also feature 30+ arrests per day for online speech, instances of folks being arrested for private online conversations, etc. There is a middle ground here that need not boil down to choosing between the current UK or US approaches.

[CaptainFritz28]

The second should be loudly drowned out in dissent, but still allowed.

What if I go up to a group of schoolchildren, let's say aged 9 or 10 years old, and I loudly say "gay men are fucking abominations and should have their dicks cut off with a rusty knife and force fed to them in front of their families, and if any of your mummies or daddies are fucking queers I hope they die!"

If a police officer is nearby and sees and hears me saying this, should they threaten to arrest me if I don't shut up? Or, should they just say "now now, children, this guy is entitled to say these things, but you shouldn't listen" ?

I assume you'd advocate for the latter, because, you know, free speech?

Tell me, when you were in primary school, if a man came up to you and said this, would that really make you want to follow his every command or would it make you view him as a raving lunatic and become skeptical of his cause?

I was no genius at 9 years old, but it definitely would not have been the former for me.

If I was the policeman, I'd inform the fellow that if he continues in that manner he may be arrested for harassment, because that's what he's doing. Doesn't have so much to do with his speech as with his action. I'd probably also ask him a few questions about himself, but if there were no grounds for arrest then so be it.

The thing is that when someone is willing to put their words into action (in this case, the action of harassing random schoolchildren on the street), then that action is what is problematic. Online, people say a lot of things, but it is very easy to say something and quite another thing to act on that. Should you, as the government, be more wary of someone who posts obviously hateful things on the internet? Yes. But until they put that into action, they should be able to say what they wish. That action may be conspiring to attack a group of people or harassing children on the street, but until their philosophy is shown by action to be evil, it should be up for discussion.