Given the sensitivity of the issue, the high level of public interest, and the clear danger of legitimate public protests descending into mob rule, it is entirely right that the police should be given new guidance on releasing details of the ethnicity and nationality of a suspect in some, limited circumstances.
The new interim guidance, issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, is, if anything, somewhat overdue – because it has been distressingly clear that surmise, conjecture, speculation, misinformation, propaganda, “asking questions”, and downright lies about serious crimes, can be weaponised by malign agents. Conspiracy theories have generated enormous public concern, and then disorder.
Some calm analysis is required. Crime is crime, and criminals are criminals, and crime cannot be racialised. The release of information concerning a suspect’s nationality, race, or immigration status (as has been suggested but, for the moment, resisted) cannot be used as an excuse for a riot. An offence is not more serious because it has been committed by, say, an asylum seeker, and an individual is not in some sense more guilty because of the colour of their skin.
Except in cases involving a racial motive or incitement to hatred, such considerations ought to be irrelevant. Generally, they will continue to be. That has to be the default position.
However, if a senior police team judges that the safety of the public is best served by the release of certain defaults, then a degree of discretion is justified. “Guidance” is just that – a set of guidelines, not hard rules.
The violent summer riots of 2024 were serious enough, but they could have been much worse had the truth about the Southport murders not emerged when it did, and had the untrue rumours about the suspect being a Muslim asylum-seeker who had come straight off a small boat not been dispelled – not that it should have made a difference in terms of criminal justice.
As in all operational matters, the police should have an appropriate degree of discretion in the particular circumstances of any given situation they face, and equally, they should be free of political interference – and the demands of certain populist politicians and “activists” to use heinous crimes and the suffering of victims for their own cynical purposes.
These particular public figures don’t care, in any case, whether people they don’t like receive a fair trial, and are cheerfully contemptuous of the rule of law, particularly the provisions of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. But no democratic society should concede the universal principle of the right to a fair trial, uncontaminated by widespread misreporting of circumstances and motives such that a jury cannot do its job.
The Home Office has not written these new guidelines – which is as it should be – but it has welcomed the interim proposals. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is complementing the move by asking the Law Commission to clarify how increased transparency and limited discretion for the police to release certain details could affect a free and fair trial. At the same time, the police have to be able to justify and defend their own actions in a world in which corrosive and baseless allegations of “two-tier” policing, and “cover-ups”, are thrown around with such recklessness on social media and, sadly, by the so-called mainstream media as well.
Like the guidance on what the police can reveal about suspects, the law on contempt of court also needs to be revisited. Since the relevant legislation was put on the statute book, the world has changed beyond recognition. Then, it was a matter of ensuring that a relatively small number of domestic press outlets and broadcasters behaved responsibly. For many years, because journalists are not on the whole bent on causing injustice and triggering retrials, the arrangements worked well.
Times change. The last year or so, in particular, has proved how social media operates in an entirely different way. It is practically lawless. A very old adage springs to mind when one considers the speed of modern dissemination – a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. This is an environment in which none of the tech giants take full responsibility for what appears on their platforms, or for the very real harm it can inflict. Vile racial slurs about non-existent crimes or suspects can originate far from the UK, and be amplified by bots and augmented by AI.
There is a balance to be struck, essentially, between transparency and justice. That balance requires constant monitoring and periodic adjustment as technology moves forward and public expectations evolve. There will never be complete consensus, or success, often because the radical populists, both online and off, have a vested interest in fostering – indeed, creating – such unpleasant myths and conspiracies.
But there is a sense here of a government and a police service being alert to the urgency of the challenge. In an often bleak social-media landscape, that is encouraging.
