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Fact check: UK Police make 30 Arrests a day for "offensive messages"
1. Summary of the results
The claim about 30 arrests per day for "offensive messages" in the UK is accurate and can be verified through multiple sources. Specifically, in 2023, UK police made 12,183 arrests across 37 police forces, which averages to approximately 33 arrests per day [1] [2]. These arrests were made under two specific pieces of legislation: the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988 [1].
2. Missing context/alternative viewpoints
Several important contextual elements are missing from the original statement:
- There has been a significant increase in these types of arrests - 58% more compared to 2019, when there were 7,734 arrests [2]
- The arrests specifically target messages that cause "annoyance", "inconvenience", or "anxiety" via internet, telephone, or mail [3]
- These numbers come from 37 police forces, not all UK police forces [1]
- While these arrests are tracked separately, they fall within the broader category of hate crimes, of which there were 140,561 recorded in the year ending March 2024, with 51% being public order offences [4]
3. Potential misinformation/bias in the original statement
The original statement, while numerically accurate, potentially misleads by omission in several ways:
- It doesn't specify that these are legally sanctioned arrests under specific UK laws [3]
- The term "offensive messages" is oversimplified - the legal definition includes messages that are "grossly offensive" or threatening [3]
- The statement doesn't provide the temporal context (that this represents 2023 data) or the trend showing increasing numbers [2]
- It doesn't mention that these arrests are part of a broader approach to handling hate crimes and public order offences [4]
This kind of data can be used by various groups to support different narratives: civil liberties groups might cite it as evidence of overreach, while law enforcement might present it as effective policing of online spaces. The significant increase since 2019 suggests this is becoming a higher priority for UK law enforcement.