Police chiefs are being urged to recognise public harassment of women as a gender hate crime across the UK, as research finds overwhelming public support for the policy after a two-year pilot scheme in Nottingham.

Campaigners believe the National Police Chiefs’ Council should be more open to the strategy as part of the shift in approach kick-started by the #MeToo movement. The NPCC will discuss the case for adopting the policy across England, Wales and Northern Ireland on Wednesday.

Despite being initially trivialised in the media as “arrests for wolf-whistling”, the first comprehensive analysis of the Nottinghamshire police pilot scheme finds that the vast majority of local people interviewed want the policy to continue.

Using focus groups and surveys with nearly 700 residents, researchers from Nottingham and Nottingham Trent universities found harassment of women and girls in public spaces remains endemic. Nine out of 10 (93.7%) of respondents had either experienced or witnessed street harassment, with women from black and minority ethic groups feeling doubly vulnerable to attack on the basis of gender and race.

In May 2016, Nottinghamshire police, in partnership with Nottingham Women’s Centre, became the first force in the UK to record public harassment of women – such as groping, using explicit language, or taking unwanted photographs – as well as more serious offences such as assault as a misogyny hate crime.

The basic hate crime definition is not provided by statute, and police forces are encouraged to include types of hate crime identified as a priority in their areas. The Nottingham classification means people can report incidents that may not typically be considered a crime, allowing the police to investigate and offer the victim support. It would require legislative change for the misogyny marker to have any impact on sentencing, as racial aggravation does.

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From the beginning of the pilot scheme until the start of June 2018, Nottinghamshire police received 181 reports of misogyny hate crimes, including verbal abuse, threats of violence, assault and unwanted physical contact. Seventy-four of these were recorded as crimes and dealt with accordingly, leading to four arrests and one charge, while the remaining 107 were recorded as hate incidents.

Helen Voce, the chief executive of Nottingham Women’s Centre, said: “There’s a lot of focus on the number of prosecutions but that was not what this was about. The primary objective of the policy change was not to see hundreds of prosecutions, it was to let people know that this behaviour isn’t acceptable and will not be tolerated in Nottinghamshire.”

According to the campaigner Martha Jephcott, who has been leading training sessions for Nottinghamshire police on misogynistic harassment since 2016, the biggest impact has been on individual women’s confidence as they move around the city. “They know that they don’t have to risk their own safety to challenge behaviour any more. Women don’t want to come down hard on these men, but want to flag it so other women don’t have to experience it. It’s an amazing feeling of sisterhood, especially when repeat perpetrators are picked up,” she said.

Jephcott also accepted there was some way to go in terms of public education: Monday’s report found that the majority of those surveyed were not yet aware of the policy, and there was significant under-reporting of unacceptable behaviour they encountered on the street, in nightclubs or on public transport. Only 6.6% of victims surveyed reported incidents of misogyny hate crime to the police, although, of those who did report, 75% said they had a positive experience.

It would be “incredible” if the policy was adopted nationally, said Jephcott. “It’s the thin end of the wedge but over the last two years there has been a culture shift away from playing down women’s experiences. It is totally the time for women to feel safe on the street.”

Since the Nottinghamshire pilot scheme began, support for the policy has grown across the country. Other police forces have introduced similar schemes: North Yorkshire police likewise record misogynist incidents, while Avon and Somerset and Northamptonshire police now record gender hate crime. The civil society alliance Citizens UK, along with the Fawcett Society and senior Jewish and Muslim faith leaders, have co-signed a letter urging the NPCC to act on a national rollout. In Scotland, the Holyrood government is considering proposals to include gender, as well as age, as a hate crime in law.

Officers working in the pilot areas say that, crucially, the policy has enabled them to chart the scale of the problem for the first time. For those who would argue that pursuing these crimes distracts from more serious offences, they emphasise the operational importance of information gathering, especially where offending escalates.

Supt Mark Khan, the lead on hate crime for North Yorkshire police, said: “It’s about catching behaviour at an early stage. Today’s flasher is tomorrow’s rapist.”

While support at national level would be welcome, for Khan a change in law was also needed, like that under consideration in Scotland. “It would be significant if big forces like the Met and Police Scotland step forward. For a small force where resources are strapped a change in legislation does concentrate the mind. We need more awareness-raising and training for police as well as public. Hate crime across the service is under-reported.”

Khan acknowledged that the change would be controversial, saying: “It will cause a lot of questions, mainly from a hardcore of men who feel its not fair. But the current momentum around offences against women and the way they are treated needs to be reflected in the way we approach hate crime.”