Public order offences: how feasible is their applicability to online hate?

Iñigo Gordon Benito

doi:10.35295/osls.iisl.1905

Authors

Iñigo Gordon Benito UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Public Authorities, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1000-960X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.1905

Keywords:

Public order, hate crimes, hate speech, public disturbances, cyberspace, Orden público, delitos de odio, discurso de odio, disturbios, ciberespacio

Abstract

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.

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Author Biography

Iñigo Gordon Benito, UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Public Authorities, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

Iñigo GORDON BENITO is a Lecturer in Criminal law and a member of the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Public Authorities of the University of the Basque Country (http://katedraddhh.eus/en/equipo/equipo.php). His research activity is focused on hate crimes, hate speech and online identity theft. In November 2021, he defended his doctoral thesis entitled «Hate crimes and cyberhate in the Spanish Criminal Code. Special attention devoted to the generic aggravating circumstance of Article 22.4 and the aggravated subtype of Article 510.3». He is currently part of the Hate Crime Research Group working team, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, which runs from 1 September 2021 to 1 September 2025 (Title of the Project: Hate crimes in Spain: pending challenges; Reference: I+D+I PID2020-115320GB-100). In 2018 he carried out a research stay at Oxford Brookes University (UK). In April 2021, he carried out a new research stay at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Germany). He is a hired postdoctoral researcher as of 26 June 2022. He has been certified as an Assistant Lecturer/Professor in May 2023. In June 2023, he published his book “Hate crimes and cyberhate. A review of the possibilities of criminal filtering of speech through Articles 22.4 and 510 of the Spanish Criminal Code” with the publishing house Tirant lo Blanch.

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