The dedicated unit will go live in November as Humza Yousaf’s hated hate crime laws – which could see people criminalised for what they think or what they say in their own homes – will finally come into effect in 2024
By Mary WRIGHT
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Police Scotland is setting up a dedicated hate crime unit ahead of Humza Yousaf‘s hugely controversial new laws coming into force early next year, it can be revealed.
The unit is expected to go live in November and training of the force’s 16,400 officers gets underway in December in preparation for the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act being implemented in early 2024. The legislation consolidates existing law and extends protection for vulnerable groups with a new offence of “stirring up hatred”.
They claim the new laws will also have a “chilling effect” on free speech and warn that campaigners supporting women’s rights may find themselves facing accusations of transphobia. Helen Joyce, director of advocacy with human rights group Sex Matters, said: “The establishment of a new, dedicated hate crime unit at Police Scotland sends a sinister message to those who advocate for women’s and children’s rights.
“People need to be able to speak the truth about sex to stand up for their own rights and to carry out safeguarding. Women can’t explain why so-called ‘trans women’ shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports without saying that, as a matter of material reality, ‘trans women’ are men.
And a spokeswoman for the campaign group Women Won’t Wheesht said: “Last month, we noted the absurd situation of a man being charged for shouting an insult at a politician, whilst a different man received no charges for a violent assault on a woman at one of our events.
The Act became law in April 2021 and, despite the legislation receiving Royal Assent, it has not come into force as Police Scotland had said it would require time for “training, guidance and communications planning”. As that exercise nears completion, police chiefs are refusing to confirm how many officers will be attached to the new hate crime unit, or how much has been spent in preparation for the new laws to come into effect.
They say their new Core Operational Solutions (COS) – a suite of new national systems which have been rolled out to replace 44 legacy systems and processes with five national applications – is also going to be deployed to “bring to justice those perpetrators of hate against protected people and groups”.
Hate crime champions and advisors are also being appointed. The establishment of the dedicated hate crime unit is confirmed in a report by Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie to the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) Policing Performance Committee, which states that a revised target date of November has been set.
ACC Ritchie said: “A multi-staged delivery plan encompassing online training, digital face-to-face training for supervisors, crime registrars and others, and face-to-face frontline engagement has been submitted for consideration of the force executive.”
‘Dangerous hate crime law erodes free speech’
The massive mobilisation of resources comes as hate crime reports in Scotland are falling and as police say resources are so stretched that they won’t be able to investigate some crimes such as housebreakings. The latest Police Scotland data show that hate crimes have fallen by 10 per cent in the year to date 2023/24, with the total number of hate crimes at 1653 – a 10.4 per cent reduction compared to 1845 in the previous year.
They are outstripped by other crime data which show that non-sexual crimes of violence increased from 61,913 to 69,286 between 2020-21 and 2021-22 and sexual crimes increased by 15 per cent from 13,131 to 15, 049. Police Scotland recorded 64,807 incidents of domestic abuse in 2021-22 but women were excluded by the Scottish Government from the new hate crime laws.
Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary, Russell Findlay MSP, said: “Scotland’s under pressure police officers lack basic kit due to SNP budget cuts, so demanding that they now enforce this flawed SNP legislation is a mistake. Humza Yousaf’s dangerous hate crime law erodes free speech and has already been delayed due to difficulties facing the police. The Scottish Conservatives would ditch it altogether, instead freeing up officers to keep our communities safe.”
Former Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill said: “Police Scotland are in danger of taking their eye off the ball. All new legislation requires training for officers. But the establishment of a unit when it should be part of the day job gets things out of kilter. The main hate crime has always been and remains misogyny and domestic violence. Sectarianism and racism also remain scars on our society.
“The danger here is that the focus moves onto those who have been most vocal demanding action even when statistics and all the evidence show it to be very small indeed. Nobody denies that hate offences against transgender should be prosecuted but there’s a clear danger that a unit such as this reacts to those siren voices seeking to find it under every stone or seeing it in every social media post.”
The East Lothian MP added: “Maybe resources should continue to address domestic violence and the other curses that blight our land, not seek new vogues for a demanding few.”
duction of our Core Operational Solutions (COS) will help us achieve that.
“Our training package has been developed in close consultation with diversity staff associations to ensure all protected characteristics under the new Act are clearly represented and articulated, and that officers are best prepared when they respond to hate crimes and incidents. We want everyone targeted by hate crime… to have confidence to come forward, assured they will be treated with respect and dignity, and the circumstances they report will be fully investigated.”
