31. Offences against public order (additional chapter)

The Public Order Act 1986 is the principal source of public order offences. These are riot, violent disorder and affray, along with inducing fear of violence and behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Some of the offences in the 1986 Act may be committed in private, but their public order foundations are paramount and these offences should not be treated as merely additional offences against the person. This chapter deals with offences against public order. It also considers harassment, alarm or distress, racially aggravated public order offences and acts intended or likely to incite racial or religious hatred and hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. The chapter concludes by looking at public nuisance and vicarious liability.

The Public Order Act 1986 is the principal source of public order offences. These are riot, violent disorder, and affray, along with inducing fear of violence and behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress. Some of the offences in the 1986 Act may be committed in private, but their public order foundations are paramount and these offences should not be treated as merely additional offences against the person. This chapter deals with offences against public order. It also considers harassment, alarm or distress, racially aggravated public order offences and acts intended or likely to incite racial or religious hatred, and hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. The chapter also examines offences under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (public nuisance) as well as those under the Public Order Act 2023.

Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provide an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter discusses the law on demonstrations and public order, and then the background to the main piece of legislation which now governs this area: the Public Order Act 1986. It considers statutory controls over public processions, public assemblies, public order offences, anti-social behaviour, and indictments to racial and religious hatred.

Making Sense of 'Riot': The Fragile Legitimacy of Police Powers and Public Order Offences in an Intervention

As an area of law in the UK, public order offences are almost entirely useless on social media. This set of offences (ss. 4, 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986) was aimed to address any behaviour or expressive activities, either oral or written, carried out in a context of physical proximity to the victim. In principle, the foundational base of public order offences runs the risk of becoming blurred if we extend their applicability to hateful messages online and, therefore, to any impersonal way of acting. Consequently, only 13% and 14% of the hate crimes committed online in 2016/17 and 2017/18 in England & Wales involved public order offences. Therefore, there is a certain resistance based on the adequacy of these offences to the online environment without requiring the message to be audible or visible to someone, as a matter of immediacy/proximity. We will explain how this glimmer of hope has lasted over time amid fierce opposition to broaden the scope of application of public order offences beyond traditional public forums, such as disturbances triggering in a city's main square.

The European Commission has initiated infringement proceedings against virtually half of the Member States, accusing many of, inter alia, failing to take the necessary measures to ensure that racist and xenophobic hate crimes are effectively criminalised. The article looks at the right of a Member State to limit prosecution for incitement of violence or hatred to acts that are carried out in a manner likely to disturb the public order. The authors argue that application of the ‘risk to public order’ criterion if interpreted appropriately, will in most cases reduce the threat of ‘taking it too far’. They argue also that there is a risk of confusion between ‘public order’ and ‘public nuisance’, due to the national criminal courts being more familiar with the latter. This could lead to unreasonably loose application of criminal punishments and pose a risk breaching the nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege certa principle. Perhaps because of having suffered censorship and absence of fundamental rights under the Soviet Union, Estonian society voices strong concerns about criminalisation of hate speech. In the authors’ view, these concerns may be reduced by narrow interpretation of the ‘risk to public order’ notion.

County sheriffs were surveyed to assess their beliefs regarding the impact overcrowding within the criminal justice system was having on the operations of their respective departments. Also tested was the premise that certain public order (or victimless) crimes were having a detrimental impact on the operations of their departments and the ability of the criminal justice system to sanction such offenses. Finally, sheriffs were quened as to their relative approval of decriminalization of each of these public order offenses. It was found that the strong majority of the sheriffs surveyed believed that attempts to police public order offenses were having a detrimental impact on their department and the criminal justice system. In spite of this, however, sheriffs were unwilling to decriminalize public order offenses, even those which are officially decriminalized in many jurisdictions, and unofficially ignored in many others.

Since 1. April 2024, a new legal basis for regulating hate crimes has come into effect in Scotland. The <Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021> contains a legal basis for expanding protective measures to respond to hate crimes across Scotland. It strengthens the criminal discipline system for hate crimes, while specifying the types of hate crimes and expanding the scope of objects that are protected against hate crimes. <Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021> in Scotland clarifies the scope of punishable hate crimes by categorizing them as ‘aggravation of offence by prejudice, offence of racially aggravated harassment, and offences of stirring up hatred’. It specifically lists the characteristics of victims or victimized groups who will be protected while guaranteeing the freedom of expression enjoyed by individuals. This article focuses on the types of hate crimes contained in the <Hate Crimes and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021> by listing broadly and specifically the characteristics of victims or victimized groups who will be protected. Accordingly, this article examines elements defining hate crimes and the range of punishment for each type of hate crimes specified in the <Hate Crimes and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021>, as well as the legal validity of the provisions set out in the Act to guarantee individual freedom of expression. Finally, this article reviews the effectiveness of the <Hate Crimes and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021>.

Policing Public Order Without the Criminal Law

This chapter examines faith hate offences in London, UK. It is based on Metropolitan Police Service records of 4723 Islamophobic and 3967 anti-Semitic assaults and criminal damage and public order offences that occurred between January 2000 and April 2017. Only 22% of Islamophobic and 15% of anti-Semitic offences were detected, with more assaults than public order offences, and more public order offences than criminal damage offences, being detected. Jewish victims experienced more criminal damage offences and fewer assaults and public order offences than Muslim victims, and this helps explain why fewer anti-Semitic offences were solved. Significant solvability factors included police witnessing offences, offences involving police officers, drivers or security workers, incidents with more eyewitnesses, fewer reporting delays and residential venues. Other factors concern the ways in which offences were policed, with local borough investigating officers and investigations by police constables rather than more senior officers boosting detections. Solvability factors and detections differed for both faith-type and offence-type subgroups. There was a higher level of statistical explanation of detection outcomes for anti-Semitic than Islamophobic assaults and criminal damage, though the explanation of public order offences was lower for Jewish than Muslim victims. By comparing the significant solvability factors using binary logistic regression analyses, it is possible to identify and predict those incidents that are more solvable, and which may therefore be solved more cost-effectively, and the least solvable incidents—which commonly constitute up to half of all incidents—with poorer detection odds, which may only be solved with considerably more resources per case. This provides a basis for decisions about prioritisation and the improved targeting of resources. Whereas Islamophobic crimes were distributed widely across the 32 London boroughs, anti-Semitic offences were concentrated in nine boroughs with 44% occurring in the two boroughs of Hackney and Barnet, where there are large orthodox Jewish communities. Offence solvability varies spatially, and this helps explain geographical variations in detection rates, which varied more for Jewish than Muslim victims. There was no significant relationship between borough detection rates for Islamophobic and anti-Semitic crimes.

The Health Care for Reentry Veterans (HCRV) program provides Veterans Health Administration outreach services to veterans incarcerated in state and federal prisons. This study used HCRV data to compare risk of incarceration of veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF), Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and New Dawn (OND) and other veterans and to identify sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of incarcerated veterans of OEF/OIF/OND. Administrative national data were analyzed for 30,968 incarcerated veterans, including 1,201 OEF/OIF/OND veterans, contacted from October 2007 to April 2011. Odds ratios were calculated comparing the risk of incarceration among OEF/OIF/OND and other veterans in the HCRV sample and in a weighted sample of nonincarcerated veterans from the 2010 National Survey of Veterans. Stepwise logistic regressions of HCRV data examined characteristics of incarcerated veterans independently associated with OEF/OIF/OND service. Regardless of ethnicity or age, OEF/OIF/OND veterans were less than half as likely as other veterans to be incarcerated and constituted only 3.9% of the incarcerated veterans. Compared with other incarcerated veterans, OEF/OIF/OND veterans were younger, were more likely to be married, were more likely to report combat exposure, expected a shorter incarceration, were 26% less likely to have a diagnosis of drug abuse or dependence, and were three times more likely to have combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). OEF/OIF/OND veterans appeared to be at lower risk of incarceration than veterans of other service eras, but those who were incarcerated had higher rates of PTSD. Efforts to link these veterans to mental health services upon their release are warranted.

A second measure, designed to effect structural changes (‘reforms’ was the word preferred by ministers) in police and Magistrates’ courts services, was published on the same day as the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, 17 December 1993. For presentational purposes its unveiling was linked to the more politically attractive proposals to strengthen the penal powers of the courts. Yet the ‘crack-down on crime’ theme was applied to both measures, with Michael Howard claiming that the legislation on the police was intended to help build the close partnership between police and public necessary to fight crime effectively.1 The police would be given clear published objectives, protecting the public and preventing and detecting crime being the top priority. As their full titles implied, both Bills were composite. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill dealt mainly with the prosecution and trial process, sentencing, and the prisons, but also created new public order offences. The Police and Magistrates’ Courts Bill had even less integrity in its subject matter, combining in a single statute proposals for the reform of two distinct institutions which public policy had hitherto striven to keep apart: the police service and the Magistrates’ courts.

Drinking, Fast and Slow: Ten Years of the Licensing Act

Journal Article REGULATING STREET PROSTITUTION AND KERB-CRAWLING: A Reply to John Lowman Get access ROGER MATTHEWS ROGER MATTHEWS *Centre for Criminology, Middlesex Polytechnic Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 32, Issue 1, Winter 1992, Pages 18–22, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a048177 Published: 01 January 1992

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 finally received Royal Assent on 16 February 2006, although it did not come into force until 1 October 2007. This was the third attempt by the Labour government to introduce such legislation following the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill 2001–2, and the Serious Organized Crime and Police Bill 2004–5.1 On each previous occasion, parliamentary opposition in both the lower and upper houses led to the removal of the clauses relating to incitement of religious hatred. The Bill that passed in 2006, which amended the Public Order Act 1986, was significantly altered by four amendments to the Government’s proposals: first, the provisions relating to incitement of religious hatred were to be separated from the existing provisions for the incitement of racial hatred; second, unlike the racial hatred provisions, the new offence would be confined to the use of ‘threatening’ words or behaviour, and not extend to words that were ‘abusive and insulting’; third, the prosecution would need to prove the intent to stir up religious hatred rather than — as is the case with racial hatred — demonstrate that it was ‘likely’ to do so; fourth, a new clause was introduced explicitly protecting freedom of speech — ‘Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents’.2