The "Hate Crime" Problem: When Nobody Can Define What They're Protecting.
Ask ten people what "hate crime" means and you'll get ten different answers. And now they're proposing judges read your mind instead of juries!
Look, I’m not a legal expert. Never claimed to be. But I am neurodivergent, and that means I tend to notice when things don’t make logical sense—when definitions shift, when rules apply inconsistently, when language gets stretched to cover things it was never meant to. And “hate crime”? It’s a logical mess. Here’s why.
THE QUESTION
Quick test: Define “hate crime” without using the words “offensive,” “feelings,” or “protected.”
Go on, I’ll wait.
Struggling? You’re not alone. Britain has created a legal category that produces wildly inconsistent explanations. Not because it’s complex—murder’s complex, we manage that one—but because it’s vague enough to mean whatever institutions want it to mean on any given Tuesday.
Vague laws don’t protect vulnerable people. They protect institutions’ power to decide who gets prosecuted for what.
WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.
Officially, a hate crime occurs when someone commits a criminal offence motivated by hostility based on certain protected characteristics.
Stop there. See the problem?
“Motivated by hostility” requires proving what someone was thinking. Not what they did—what they felt whilst doing it. You’re asking courts to read minds and determine internal emotional states that cannot be objectively proven.
But it gets better. Try defining those “protected characteristics”:
What’s “race” as a legal category? Biological? Ethnic? National? Cultural? Polish, Irish, and Gypsy Travellers all count—all white Europeans. So “race” apparently means “whatever we decide it means today.”
What makes something a “religious” hate crime versus legitimate criticism of ideology? Good luck drawing that line without getting accused of the very hate you’re trying to define.
Here’s the thing: If you cannot define the categories you’re protecting with any precision, you cannot consistently determine when someone’s been targeted because of them. So decisions get made based on who’s offended and which groups are fashionable to protect this month.
THE EXPANSION PROBLEM.
Watch what “hate crime” now covers:
Original concept: Random violence targeting people purely for group membership—actual terrorism of communities
Current application:
That same violence (fair enough)
Violence during disputes where parties happen to be different races (prove the motivation—go on)
Verbal insults mentioning characteristics (words are violence now, apparently)
Political criticism of immigration (wrongthink detected)
Statistical statements about demographics (facts are violence too)
Jokes someone didn’t like (comedy is dead, long live comedy)
Disagreeing with certain ideologies (you thought police yourself, we’ll handle the rest)
These are not remotely the same thing. But lumping them together serves a purpose: “Hate crime up 40%!” sounds terrifying until you realise we’ve reclassified mean tweets as terrorism.
When one term covers firebombing mosques and posting crime statistics, it’s not protecting anyone—it’s just giving institutions a scary label to slap on whatever they fancy prosecuting.
THE MIND-READING PROBLEM.
Even restricting this to actual violence—which we bloody well should—there’s a fundamental issue: you cannot prove the hate bit.
Clear case: Someone attacks random mosque worshippers whilst shouting slurs, and has extremist literature at home. That’s targeting based on religion. Prosecute away.
Unclear case: Parking dispute between people of different backgrounds escalates to violence. No racial language. One party has social media posts critical of immigration.
Question: Hate crime?
Prosecution must prove the attacker selected this specific victim because of their background rather than because of the parking bollocks. Must prove internal motivation. Must demonstrate causation. Must read minds.
Juries are being asked to determine what someone was thinking, distinguish political opinion from personal hatred, and prove thoughts that cannot be objectively demonstrated.
That’s not law. That’s divination.
WHY VAGUE SERVES POWER
1. Everything sounds equally serious. Can’t tell if society’s more dangerous or just more offended. Perfect for budget requests.
2. Selective enforcement becomes possible Vague definitions = institutional discretion = some groups criticised freely, others not
3. Expansion gets justified. Determining “hate” requires surveillance, investigation, resources, and power
4. Debate gets chilled. Can’t discuss topics, cite statistics, or question claims without risking the label
Vague laws are control tools wearing protection costumes.
THE CONSISTENCY FAILURE.
If this genuinely protected all groups equally, the application would be consistent.
It’s not.
Some criticism flows freely. Other identical criticism risks prosecution. When the same words about different groups receive different treatment, you’re not seeing protection—you’re seeing political hierarchy.
And before you ask: no, we’re not providing specific examples of which groups because that would risk demonstrating the very inconsistency we’re describing. Which rather proves the point.
THE AGENCY PROBLEM.
Buried underneath: the assumption that taking offence is automatic.
Someone says something about your group. You can:
Disagree and move on
Rebut it
Ignore it
Tell them to fuck off
Report as a hate crime and demand prosecution
The system treats that last option as obvious and necessary.
But people respond completely differently to identical words. Which proves offence is chosen, not inflicted.
We used to understand this. “Sticks and stones” wasn’t just a rhyme—it was recognising that words require you to choose your response. Adults handled insults without requiring state intervention.
Now? Offensive speech about protected groups equals violence requiring legal consequences. We’ve infantilised everyone whilst giving institutions permission to police speech.
THE POWER GRAB (Or: It Gets Worse)
Need indication this serves institutional power rather than communities?
Justice Secretary David Lammy has publicly proposed removing jury trials for certain criminal cases—ostensibly to speed up the justice system and reduce court backlogs.
Now consider what that would mean for hate crime cases.
We’ve created crimes requiring proof of unprovable thoughts. The proposal would remove juries—the one safeguard against institutional overreach in determining those thoughts.
Instead of twelve ordinary people unanimously agreeing that someone harboured hatred, you’d have one state-appointed judge deciding whether your thoughts about protected groups made your crime worse.
No community standard. No collective judgment. Just one official reading your mind based on your social media history, political views, and whether they reckon you were thinking bad thoughts whilst committing an offence.
If this were genuinely about protecting communities from violence, the proposal wouldn’t matter—violence is violence, provable by evidence.
But when the crime includes unprovable thoughts, removing juries would remove the last check on state prosecution of wrongthink.
They’ve created legal categories requiring mind-reading, applied them inconsistently, expanded them to cover opinions, and now proposals would remove community oversight of the mind-reading.
Whether this actually happens or not, the fact that it’s even being proposed as a possibility tells you something about where this could be heading.
You cannot make this stuff up. Orwell would sue for plagiarism.
THE REAL-WORLD CONSEQUENCES.
Think this is all theoretical?
Royal Marine veteran Jamie Michael, a grassroots football coach in Wales, was charged with a speech offence in 2024 after posting a Facebook video about illegal immigration in the aftermath of the Southport murders. He urged people to respond “the right way”—by engaging with councillors and police, not turning to violence.
He went to trial in February 2025. With support from the Free Speech Union, a jury heard the evidence and took just 17 minutes to unanimously acquit him. Not guilty. Case closed.
Except it wasn’t.
Despite the acquittal, a safeguarding board subsequently determined he posed a risk to children and banned him from coaching—including his own daughter’s football team. According to publicly available information about the ongoing judicial review, the board reportedly gave “heavy weight to the fact he’d been charged” whilst giving “no weight to the fact he’d been found not guilty.”
The board allegedly didn’t even watch the Facebook video, misdescribed aspects of the criminal case, and treated the jury’s verdict as irrelevant.
Read that again: Charged = evidence of guilt. Acquitted by jury in 17 minutes = irrelevant.
Jamie is now bringing a judicial review with Free Speech Union support, arguing the board overstepped its role, relied on factual errors, and treated a jury acquittal as mere inconvenience. The case argues that safeguarding powers are being used as a back-door way of punishing lawful political speech.
Whether you agree with his original Facebook post or not—and reasonable people can disagree about immigration—the principle should concern everyone:
A court says not guilty. An administrative body says guilty anyway. Career destroyed. Access to coaching his own daughter’s team was removed. Based on a charge that a jury rejected in 17 minutes.
That’s not a bug in the system. That’s the system working exactly as designed—with vague laws allowing parallel justice where acquittals mean nothing if the right people decide you’re guilty anyway.
And this is what happens when we create legal frameworks requiring proof of unprovable thoughts, apply them inconsistently, and allow administrative bodies to override court verdicts.
THE TELL.
If “hate crime” genuinely protected vulnerable communities consistently:
Clear boundaries between violence and speech
Objective definitions everyone could apply consistently
Same rules regardless of which groups are involved
Focus on provable harm
Court verdicts would mean something
Strong protection against state overreach
Instead, we observe:
Vague definitions covering terrorism to tweets
Characteristics nobody can define consistently
What appears to be selective enforcement
Offence treated as equivalent to violence
Jury acquittals treated as irrelevant by parallel systems
Proposals to remove juries entirely from some cases
From a logical perspective, that’s not a protection framework. That’s a system designed for maximum institutional discretion.
THE SOLUTION.
Stop the expansion: Violence is violence. Terrorism is terrorism. Threats are threats. We have laws for these. Adding unprovable “hate” elements doesn’t make victims safer—just makes more speech prosecutable.
Stop infantilising adults: People can handle criticism without state protection. Weaponising hurt feelings serves institutions, not communities.
Question selective enforcement: If identical speech receives different treatment based on which groups are involved, you’re not preventing hate—you’re enforcing political hierarchy.
Respect court verdicts: When juries acquit, that should mean something. Parallel administrative systems shouldn’t get to say “guilty anyway” based on lower standards and vaguer definitions.
For the love of liberty, keep juries: If we’re going to prosecute thoughts—and we shouldn’t—at least require twelve citizens to unanimously agree on someone’s internal state. Proposals to remove that protection should concern anyone who values checks on state power.
We’ve read that book. Didn’t care for the ending.
THE LOOP
So, can you define “hate crime”? Can you explain which characteristics are protected and why? Can you distinguish violence from offence, targeting from coincidence, hate from criticism?
If you can’t—and most people can’t—then from a logical standpoint, it’s not a coherent legal principle.
It’s a vague label institutions can apply to whatever they want to investigate, justified by claiming to prevent unprovable emotions, applied inconsistently, and defended by accusing questioners of the very hatred they claim to oppose.
And now we see the real consequences: Proposals to remove juries. Acquittals treated as irrelevant. Parallel administrative systems override court verdicts. People are banned from coaching their own children’s football teams despite being found not guilty in 17 minutes.
When laws are vague, and checks are proposed for removal, nobody’s protected. Institutions just get more power to decide guilt based on interpretation rather than objective evidence.
That’s not justice. That’s authority without accountability wearing protection’s costume.
So ask yourself: Can you define it? Should jury verdicts mean something? And if someone’s found not guilty in 17 minutes, should they lose their livelihood anyway?
Because once you accept that the state can prosecute you for thinking the wrong things, that administrative bodies can override court acquittals, and that proposals suggest removing juries from the process—
Well, you’ve rather given away the game, haven’t you?
“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.”
– Carl Jung
The Almighty Gob
If you believe court verdicts should mean something and that safeguarding shouldn’t be weaponised against lawful speech, consider supporting Jamie Michael’s judicial review through the Free Speech Union.
Synchronicity. I am currently working on an article analysing the "Non Crime Hate Incident" data for Avon & Somerset Police. Should be published later this week.