British police are arresting citizens at a rate of at least 30 a day, reports suggest—for alleged offences committed on social media and other online platforms. Custody data obtained by The Times was summarised by the Free Speech Union as follows:
Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day. This marks an almost 58 per cent rise in arrests since before the pandemic. In 2019, forces logged 7,734 detentions.
Recent examples include two Hertfordshire parents visited by police after criticising their daughter’s education in a school WhatsApp group. Public support is also growing for Lucy Connolly, who is serving a 31-month sentence after posting on X in anger after the Southport murders.
According to Jake Hurfurt of the Big Brother Watch campaign:
Police look to be wasting countless hours on arresting people for posting things online that, while offensive, are not illegal. Heavy-handed use of vague communications offences is a threat to everyone’s freedom to express themselves online.
In related news, “Britain’s courts are being used as a political weapon to bludgeon heretics,” not least through the courts’ pursuit of suspected violators of COVID lockdown rules from 2020-21.
