The two-tier discrepancies are visible at every level of the legal system.

I n the United Kingdom, someone who uttered supposedly right-wing speech might spend more time in prison than a person convicted of horrific crimes, even if the government has acknowledged the evidence supporting their statements. But just how bad is the speech environment? The two-tier discrepancies are visible at every level of the legal system.

Legal punishment first requires that the authorities choose to arrest an individual, which they are all too happy to do. As reported by the Telegraph, U.K. police make over 12,000 arrests a year — more than 30 a day — under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003. What types of evil speech are prosecuted under these policies? Billy Thompson was arrested after a civilian officer, acting as an intelligence researcher, snapped a screenshot of his online post; he was sentenced to prison for twelve weeks under the Communications Act 2003. Thompson had left a comment online that said, “filthy ba*****s” with the emojis of an ethnic person and a gun, in which Judge John Temperley suspected “a racial element to the messaging and the posting of these emojis” that had to be “viewed in the context of the current civil unrest.” This was a reference to the nationwide riots that followed the tragic day when teenager Axel Rudakubana stabbed three young girls to death during a dance class.

By contrast, arrests for in-person (as opposed to online) expression often occur under “hate crime” and public (dis)order laws, which are disparately enforced with respect to perceived political leaning. Eleven police officers, evidently lacking anything better to do in London, arrested activist Montgomery Toms because he counter-protested an LGBTQ+ demonstration by wearing a large board that had on it the transgender-pride flag, the equal sign, and the words “mental illness.” A police officer was filmed telling Toms that the sign “is going to antagonize,” “is going to cause friction within this crowd,” and “is going to cause a problem.” (Toms spent about nine hours in jail, has been released on bail, and has not yet been charged, although videos from the arrest show an officer saying his sign is “likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress,” which is language taken from the Public Order Act 1986.) By contrast, the police in London made no arrests when LGBTQ+ activists released 6,000 crickets into the audience of a conference held by the gender-critical LGB Alliance. Instead, those six activists either fled or were “held by security for a period before being let go,” according to a statement by the group “Trans Kids Deserve Better” that accepted responsibility for — and even boasted about coordinating — the infestation.

Indeed, the litmus test for “disorder” is not disruption or violence, but rather whether you offend leftists — even by merely being visible. A Met Police officer told a man wearing a kippah that he looked “openly Jewish” and would be escorted away from a pro-Palestinian protest because there might be a “reaction,” and if the Jewish man chose to remain, he would be arrested because his “antagonizing” presence would constitute a “breach of peace.” After outrage, the Met Police assistant commissioner released an “apology” saying that the Jewish guy going near leftists was, you know, asking for it: “In recent weeks we’ve seen a new trend emerge, with those opposed to the main protests appearing along the route to express their views. The fact that those who do this often film themselves while doing so suggests they must know that their presence is provocative, that they’re inviting a response and that they’re increasing the likelihood of an altercation” (emphasis mine). The Met Police then apologized for the apology, saying, “Being Jewish is not a provocation. Jewish Londoners must be able to feel safe in this city.”

And thus arrests seem uniquely targeted toward expression — including just standing around — that can be dubiously construed as right-wing, inadequately left-leaning, or simply sufficiently upsetting to leftists. In the rare event that a progressive is arrested, the punishment is often significantly lighter. Judge Tan Ikram sent James Watts to prison for 20 weeks for sending memes mocking George Floyd to a group chat, but the same judge — who was caught liking a LinkedIn post that said “Free Palestine” — gave no punishment to three women who were found guilty of charges under the Terrorism Act because they wore jackets bearing Hamas-inspired images of paragliders to a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The disparate sentencing applied by individual judges is further evident when comparing rulings for supposedly harmful speech to gross sexual conduct that is sure to have a lasting psychological impact. Judge Rupert Lowe sentenced Ryan Ferguson to nine months in jail on a charge of racially aggravated abuse for shouting comments with the word “c**n” at a football player, yet gave no jail time to Nicholas Chapman, a doctor who repeatedly put his semen in coffee and gave it to a woman. Lowe told Ferguson, “You should be ashamed to represent a part of the ongoing problem of racism,” but told Chapman, “You are an intelligent professional of previous good character with good references.” (Chapman’s victim disagrees, since she stated, “I have to accept that the mental and emotional trauma I have suffered throughout this will always remain with me in some way.”)

Ridiculously, speech about horrific sexual conduct may face harsher consequences than actually facilitating sexual abuse. Abdul Rauf served only two and a half years of a six-year sentence for trafficking and conspiracy; the judge stated there were between ten and 20 occasions when Rauf drove a 15-year-old girl in his taxi to an apartment, where he and other men “had sex” with her. (Rauf was stripped of citizenship and ordered to return to Pakistan, but he stuck around, and he now works in the same city where he trafficked.) By contrast, Lee Crisp was sentenced to three years and four months for “high octane” shouting at police surrounding a hotel housing asylum seekers, including statements such as “Take your f***ing uniform off,” “Sex offending bastards, BBC bastards,” and “You’re protecting the bastards who are raping our kids.”

Not only was Crisp sentenced to more time behind bars than Rauf actually spent there, but his comments are now consistent with the government’s position. In June, the United Kingdom’s rapid audit (dubbed the “Casey Report”) on “group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse” concluded that the ethnicity is not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators in “grooming gangs” nationally, but found several local data sets showing significant overrepresentation of South Asian men. An investigation in Rotherham, for example, found that 62 percent of convicted perpetrators in the gangs had a Pakistani background, despite making up only about 4 percent of the town’s population. Moreover, the Casey Report refutes a 2020 paper by the Home Office that claimed white men are a majority of the offenders, writing, “This audit found it hard to understand how the Home Office paper reached that conclusion, which does not seem to be evidenced in research or data.” The data on victims are similarly sparse. The report stated that the ethnicity for a majority of victims is “unknown,” but a majority of the victims for whom race is known are white. Importantly, the Casey Report acknowledged that the police — along with other authorities and organizations — failed to deliver justice, in part because they feared trends in the perpetrator demographics would prompt accusations of racism.

Crisp isn’t the only person doing time for pointing out that the police have protected South Asian men who horrifically exploited young girls — even though the government has acknowledged the data substantiate such claims. Derek Heggie was sentenced to just under a year behind bars for “grossly offensive” comments he made on YouTube, such as stating that “young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs that worship the Prophet Muhammad.” Michael Whitehead was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison because he was “shouting racist abuse” at an anti-immigration riot outside of a hotel housing asylum-seekers, yelling things like “paedophiles” and furthering shouting “you’re not fit to wear the badge” at a police officer. Peter Lynch was sentenced to two years and eight months in 2024 because he “waved conspiracy theory placards” and “screamed abuse at police” outside of a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham. Lynch shouted, “You are protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them” at officers.

Comments about the child-rape gangs should be protected speech — even if they were or are factually incorrect. Now that the government has published a national audit that recognizes the overrepresentation of South Asian men in grooming gangs as well as repeated failures by the authorities because appropriate action might have generated accusations of “racism,” there are people in prison for expression that is consistent with what the government itself published. Unfortunately, urging the United Kingdom to release them is perhaps a futile effort. Lynch — married for 36 years, father to four, and grandfather to three — was found hanging dead in prison.