Nottinghamshire police “Misogyny Law” Response

Notice: This article was archived and has only gone through basic grammar correction.

This is a post I forgot to make for a few months but here was the response I got from Nottinghamshire police when I asked about the “Misogyny Laws” in place and what is noticed in the response is the lack of any citation or and kind of real data at all (Comes of as more of feelings based idea rather than a statistical one and is suggesting people use the abusable report-it website ):

In response to your email of 13th July 2016 please find below our reply.

Misogynistic hate crime can cause significant distress to women, who have been known to face threats and in some cases sexual or physical abuse for turning down propositions. We have heard first-hand accounts from women who have been through this, who were left frightened and intimidated, but felt there was nothing they could do about it. We want to encourage women to feel that they can report incidents where they have been made to feel intimidated, or frightened by this unacceptable unwanted behaviour. We do not think it is acceptable for men to grope women in nightclubs, or for men to shout sexually explicit comments about what they want to do to a woman.

This new category of hate crime does not change the law and so any incident which is reported will either be investigated as a criminal offence, e.g. sexual assault, physical assault, or as a hate incident, e.g. unwanted comments. The importance of this new category is that it allows us to give victims the same level of support as any other victim of a hate crime – we can carry out risk assessments and put measures in place to help victims feel safe. We can also pursue options such as restorative justice and civil remedies.

In some cases, involving the police can reinforce the seriousness of the behaviour to the perpetrator. We want to give women the confidence to report misogynistic hate crime, educate everyone about the impact that this sort of behaviour can have on people’s quality of life, show that this should not be tolerated and make Nottinghamshire a safer place.

A hate crime is any crime or incident which the victim perceives to be motivated by prejudice – however, as with any crime or incident which is reported to us, we will respond in a proportionate manner. I note you have asked a specific question around photography – we are by no means stopping people from taking photographs in their day to day life. We aim to give women the confidence to report any unwanted or intrusive photography which may be degrading or humiliating for the woman.

Our research and conversations with various groups has shown that misogynistic comments and actions are something which women are subjected to on a daily basis, from sexual comments to unwanted physical contact.

Whilst we do recognise that men can also be subjected to this type of behaviour, we do not feel that this happens in the same volumes. Alongside the existing hate crime categories, we do have a category for people who have experienced an incident motivated by a prejudice which is not already covered. We would encourage any men who have been subjected to misandry to report this to us, either by calling 101 or visiting [www.report-it.org.uk][1].

On behalf of Chief Officer Team

Link to email sent to them

Published: 12th September 2016