I don't really get why this is surprising or actually particularly worrying.
30 arrests a day for something in a population of seventy million people, a large proportion of whom are online in some way, is not that much.
And it's not 30 arrests per day for saying things the government don't like or that are politically incorrect, is it? It's mostly for things that rise to the level of threats or harassment or cause alarm.
On the one hand it's a new conduit for threatening conduct, and on the other hand, it's probably replacing some.
I'd note something that comes up when this number is mentioned often enlightens the context: that people often use this figure to say "that's more than in Iran or Russia", as if the number itself is actually meaningful. Nobody's going to arrest you in Russia for abusing transgender people; nobody's going to arrest you in Iran for encouraging the punishment of promiscuity or gay people. In either case they might turn a blind eye if you threaten the lives of those people. But the things they would arrest you for — criticising the government or the war — you know not to even say out loud when not among friends. Because the punishment is not the mild inconvenience you would get in the UK.
There are bigger problems in the UK with misunderstanding policing of speech in the real, physical world: the Palestine Action stuff is being much more obviously mishandled. I think it's much more important to focus on getting the government to handle that more logically and sanely.
>And it's not 30 arrests per day for saying things the government don't like or that are politically incorrect, is it?
We don't know, as offence type isn't provided by police services.
The key takeaway is that arrests have risen since 2020 while convictions have not. Given the sole evidence needed for a conviction is also needed for an arrest, you'd think convictions would rise at almost the same level. But it looks like people are being arrested and later released for perfectly legal speech. That would arguably be seen by many as an impairment of freedom of expression.
> The key takeaway is that arrests have risen since 2020 while convictions have not.
Yes, but this also coincides with the pandemic which put more people online and created a lot of anger and harassment of nurses, doctors, government officials, and it also coincides with growing activism in the trans debate space, which has undoubtedly led to more actual harassment.
> But it looks like people are being arrested and later released for perfectly legal speech.
But you just said we don't know, because offence type is not provided?
If there has been a rise in the amount of harassment due to the pandemic, then why have actual convictions dropped compared to before the pandemic. I refer to the graph of convictions per year in the HoL report linked above.
>But you just said we don't know, because offence type is not provided?
If someone is arrested but not convicted, we must presume innocence. "Legal speech" isn't a type of offence.
