The Defence Brief

Notts police encourage women to report non-crimes for investigation You may recall that a couple of months ago the new Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police announced that she would be encouragingwomen to report acts of misogyny to the police for investigation , regardless of whether the actions being reported were actual crimes or not. The force, which is dealing with a £54M budget cut, has axed its city division and is expected to cut 400 police officers from its ranks over the next three-years, has trained some police officers to deal with investigations into allegations of misogyny. I’m not a detective but I’m unclear exactly how you investigate a misogynistic assault differently from a regular assault – maybe you can enlighten me on the differences in evidence likely to be found in the two situations? This successful policy has seen twenty investigations launched, which resulted in two arrests – both for offences that would have been investigated (or should ...

Nottinghamshire Police will record and investigate misogyny as a hate crime Nottinghamshire Police have decided to classify any behaviour perceived to be misogynistic as hate crimes. This includes such things as wolf-whistles, unwanted texts, taking an unwanted photograph and sexual harassment. A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire Police said that categorising misogynistic behaviour as a hate crime and highlighting the issue would lead to increased reports and therefore a higher number of charges. This is interesting since the police also admit that they will be applying the label “hate crime” and investigating allegations that “do not reach the charging threshold” – or to put it another way, things that are not crimes and thus cannot result in a higher number of charges. Wolf-whistles and the taking of unwanted photographs are not currently criminal offences unless they go beyond a one-off incident and become harassment. So far as I am aware, there are no plans t...