CPS has published new guidance this week setting out the range of offences for which social media users could face prosecution. This has been informed by public consultation and will be used determine whether criminal charges should be pursued.
Examples of potentially criminal behaviour include:
– encouraging others to participate in online harassment campaigns, known as ‘virtual mobbing’;
– making available personal information, for example a home address or bank details, a practice known as ‘doxxing’;
– creating a derogatory hashtag to encourage harassment of victims;
– ‘baiting’- the practice of humiliating a person online by labelling them as sexually promiscuous or posting ‘photoshopped’ images of people on social media platforms.
This week also sees the launch of CPS Public Policy Statements on Hate Crime which will now be put to a public consultation. These will focus on crimes against disabled people, racial and religious and homophobic and transphobic hate crime.
The consultation runs until 9 January 2017.
Norfolk & Suffolk Criminal Justice Board 