Police leaders are set to recommend scrapping non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) in a review to be published next month.
College of Policing chair Lord Herbert told the BBC a “sensible” new approach, focused only on the most serious incidents, would “re-balance the system” for the social media age.
NCHIs are alleged acts motivated by hostility or prejudice towards people with certain characteristics, such as race or gender, but which do not meet the bar for a criminal offence.
Current Home Office guidance says they are recorded to collect data on “hate incidents that could escalate into more serious harm”, but critics say they divert police resources and restrict freedom of speech.
Though they are not crimes, NCHIs stay on police records and can come up in background checks.
Police guidance on the recording of NCHIs was first published in 2005, following recommendations by an inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence – the London teenager who was stabbed to death in a racist attack in 1993.
But Lord Herbert said “an explosion of social media” in the years since they were introduced has meant police had been drawn into monitoring “mere disputes” online.
Officers do not want to be “policing tweets”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He added that recent headlines about NCHIs were “awkward and very damaging” for the police.
“It was quite clear that the whole regime needed looking at, that there was a perception that the police were being drawn into matters that they shouldn’t have been,” he added.
The home secretary will have the final decision on whether to adopt the recommendations outlined by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council in their review next month.
The Home Office told the BBC “a consistent, common-sense approach” that protected the “fundamental right to free speech” was needed, but added it would not pre-empt the findings of the review.
The vice-chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Rachel Swann, said: “It is not for policing to referee online debates on cultural issues. Protecting free speech and ensuring officers focus on real-world threat and risk is an important part of our considerations.
“But equally important is ensuring policing can continue to keep our communities safe, such as by spotting risks to vulnerable people, monitoring community tensions or identifying potential precursors to violence and other criminal behaviour.”
She added it will be for ministers to decide on future policy.
Details of the new proposals were first reported by the Telegraph. Lord Herbert told the newspaper that “only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded”.
Last year, the paper reported that 43 police forces in England and Wales had recorded more than 133,000 NCHIs since 2014.
In October, the Metropolitan Police said it would no longer investigate NCHIs to allow officers to “focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations”.
It came after the policing watchdog said forces should stop recording them.
In April, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for NCHIs to be scrapped in most cases, arguing they “wasted police time chasing ideology and grievance instead of justice”.
