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Kids Will be Kids…Or Not: Investigations into Non-Crime Hate Incidents within Children


Being told you stink at any age is not a nice thing to hear. At nine-years old, the insult may cause a variety of emotional responses: sadness, embarrassment, anger, or panic. Yet, does the offense scoffed by two other children on the playground constitute being investigated by the police? The government of the United Kingdom believes it is. They call it a Non-Crime Hate Incident (or NCHI).


According to David Spencer, Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime & Justice and a former

Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, NCHIs stem from the 1999 inquiry into the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence. The inquiry concluded that the “incident” was “racist in nature” which led to the police implementing a reporting system for both crimes and non-crimes as defined by the Parliament. In 2006, High Court judge and later Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Adrian Fulford, wrote a review on NCHIs that was adopted into the criminal justice system. It went beyond racist incidents to include religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity. By 2014, the College of Policing’s ‘Hate Crime Operational Guidance’ had pushed the UK’s police forces to start investigating reported “hate incidents”, stating that the “hate incident…must be recorded regardless whether or not they [the complainant] are the victim.” Since then, England and Wales have reported more than 133,000 NCHI, an average of 13,000 a year. 


Even with such a high number of reports, Britons are much more concerned about the policing of other affairs. In the Policy Exchange’s Portrait of Modern Britain Project of 2024, the public thought “the police’s top priorities should be murder and violent crime (65%), rape and sexual assault (56%), burglary and robbery (27%) and terrorism (26%).” NCHIs were very low on the public’s list of law enforcement priorities, with only a subsection of the policy, “online hate crimes”, ranking at 7%. Furthermore, Britons express an aversion to the investigation of NCHIs because of a perceived threat to the freedom of expression. On 20 December 2021, the Court of Appeal ruled “that the College of Policing’s 2014 operational guidance on NCHIs interfered with an individual’s right to freedom of expression in a ‘real and significant’ manner.” However, the British government cites Article 10 of the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, where it states that the occasional restriction of freedom of expression is “necessary in a democratic society.” Therefore, the police have the legal discretion of investigating NCHIs. 


Within the 2024 NCHI reports, two secondary schoolgirls were accused of telling a peer that they smell like “fish”. Separately, a nine-year old was investigated by police for calling a classmate a “retard”. While these episodes undoubtedly caused a sensitive reaction from the victim, and the faculty at the schools should have had disciplinary reactions, was the involvement of the police really necessary? 


Nearly everyone has had something ‘mean’ said to them at some point in their life. In fact, psychologists find that name-calling is a part of natural development in a toddler. Marie Wallace, a licensed clinical social worker, argues that language can give children power. Often, toddlers do not even understand what they are repeating, they just enjoy the excitement and shock of saying “charged” words over and over again. Wallace maintains that an acknowledgment of the child’s feelings and set boundaries can help them understand the plausible negative impact of the words they are using. Importantly, she says to “avoid shaming” them for their choice of words. 


Dr. Jamie Ostrov, a psychologist specialising in child development from the University of Buffalo, comments that conflict between children, classmates, and friends can be a normal aspect of growth and maturing. However, persistent name-calling leads to bullying, verbal, or emotional abuse, especially if an authoritative figure, such as a parent or caregiver, engages in the behavior. Ostrov advances this theory by underlining that for a behavior to be regarded as bullying, despite the ages of the assailant and target, it “must feature two things”: a power imbalance between the two actors and repetition of the injury. Bullying can cause major repercussions not just for the children harmed by mental or physical offences, but also for the social environment. Coined by Ostrov as a “Cycle of Hurt”, the bullied can become bullies themselves. 


In 2023, two-thirds of Britons said that they have been the victims of bullying at some point in their life. Three-quarters of people bullied as adults and one-in-five people bullied as children said it had a “great deal of impact” on their life. In a study conducted by the Department of Education, 40% of adolescents were bullied in the last year, while the most common form of bullying at 26% was name-calling in person and via online. As per the Child Crime Prevention and Safety Center, “children who suffer emotional abuse and neglect can sometimes have more severe mental health issues than children who suffer physical or sexual abuse.” Victims of bullying are at higher risk specifically for depression and anxiety. Approximately 80,000 young people suffer from depression in the UK. 


The National Bullying Helpline in the UK blames Ofsted, the Schools Minister, and Education Department for the increase in bullying, mental health issues, and other negative effects on students. “Allowing a Head of School to unilaterally manage the process [of bullying] is a recipe for disaster,” the organisation states, condemning UK schools for being more concerned about their reputation than the children in their care. The Helpline monitored a steady increase in children committing suicide in England and Wales. Drugs and alcohol were found to be abused at higher levels in “more deprived areas.” The self-harm rate in adolescents from January to March 2024 had risen 119% from the previous year. 


Undeniably, the effects of bullying in school have been devastating. It is possible that in some cases of NCHI, the presence of police officers may freeze a pending bullying disaster in an early stage. However, it remains uncertain whether any of the NCHI investigations into children have stopped a bully, or even worse, if they have somehow emboldened them by anger or recognition. Time can only tell of what the outcomes of these reports will be. For now, kids will be kids, until Britain’s law enforcement steps in and says otherwise. 


Image: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels

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