Social media has changed the way we speak to one another, and not always for the better. A message that felt like harmless banter when you typed it at 11pm can read very differently on a police officer’s screen three weeks later. Add screenshots, group chats, quote tweets and pile ons, and it becomes easy to see how an ordinary person with no criminal history ends up under caution.
The scale of this is no longer hypothetical. A report published by civil liberties group Big Brother Watch in September 2026, based on Freedom of Information requests to police forces, found that at least 62,199 people were arrested for communications offences across the UK over a five-year period, with roughly 18,000 charged and 12,292 convicted.
Earlier analysis reported in The Times in April 2025 put the figure at over 12,000 arrests a year more than 30 a day under section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, an increase of almost 58% on 2019 levels.
The Malicious Communications Act 1988 (MCA) deals with the sending of offensive communications. It was drafted long before the internet reached ordinary households, yet it remains one of the most frequently used tools for prosecuting things said on social media, in emails, and in private messages.
This is where the law has changed significantly, and where a lot of online guidance is now out of date.
Section 1 of the MCA originally made it an offence to send a letter, electronic communication or article of any description conveying a message that was (i) indecent or grossly offensive, (ii) a threat, or (iii) information the sender knew or believed to be false.
Limbs (ii) and (iii) were repealed on 31 January 2024 by section 189 of the Online Safety Act 2023. What survives is the offence of sending a communication that is indecent or grossly offensive, or an article or electronic communication that is indecent or grossly offensive in whole or in part.
For the offence to be made out, the prosecution must still prove that your purpose, or one of your purposes, in sending it was to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient, or to another person you intended the contents to reach. Intent is the heart of the offence. The prosecution does not have to show that anyone was actually distressed.
Threats and deliberate falsehoods have not been decriminalised. They have simply moved:
| Conduct | Charge (from 31 Jan 2024) | Court | Maximum sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indecent or grossly offensive message sent to cause distress | s.1 Malicious Communications Act 1988 | Either way | 2 years (Crown Court) |
| Knowingly false message intended to cause non-trivial harm | s.179 Online Safety Act 2023 | Summary only | 51 weeks / fine |
| Message conveying a threat of death or serious harm | s.181 Online Safety Act 2023 | Either way | 5 years |
| Grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message via a public network | s.127 Communications Act 2003 | Summary only | 6 months |
The new offences are wider in scope than the MCA provisions they replaced. Section 182 defines “sending a message” to include publishing or transmitting electronically, and expressly states that it does not matter whether you created the content yourself forwarding or sharing someone else’s post can be enough.
The Online Safety Act offences also have extraterritorial reach. Sections 179 and 181 can be committed outside the UK by someone who habitually resides in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, and the courts here will have jurisdiction.
Conviction figures for the new offences remain low. Ministry of Justice data for January to December 2024 records 14 convictions for the false communications offence and 294 for threatening communications.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, a comment simply posted on a blog or website may not amount to “sending to another”. The court focuses on the intention of the sender rather than the impact on the recipient, and must understand why the particular language used would be offensive to the intended recipient.
The courts have to tread carefully here, because they are bound to uphold freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. When assessing whether a communication is indecent or grossly offensive, the court will:
This was reinforced in R v Casserly [2024] EWCA Crim 25, where the Court of Appeal quashed a conviction under section 1 of the MCA arising from an email a constituent sent to his town councillor. The Court held that whether a message is grossly offensive is an objective question of fact answered by reference to its content and context, not its actual effect; that the test is whether the message goes beyond the limits of what is tolerable in society; and that those holding public positions are expected to show a special degree of tolerance.
Political speech sits at the top of the hierarchy of protected expression, and where it is engaged the threshold for “grossly offensive” is set very high. The trial judge’s directions to the jury had fallen materially short of what Article 10 required.
Casserly matters in practice because it confirms that the MCA does not settle the proportionality question by itself. The court must carry out that balancing exercise in every case which gives a well prepared defence real ground to work with.
To secure a conviction, the prosecution must satisfy the court beyond reasonable doubt that the communication was sent, that it met the statutory threshold, and that causing distress or anxiety was one of your purposes.
Racially aggravated malicious communications are those motivated by racial hatred, hostility or intolerance. Sections 66 and 67 of the Sentencing Act 2020 (which replaced and re enacted sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003) require the court to treat hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity as an aggravating factor, to increase the sentence accordingly, and to state in open court that it has done so.
Home Office figures for the year ending March 2025 recorded 137,550 hate crimes across England and Wales. On the comparable basis the Home Office uses for year on year analysis, which excludes Metropolitan Police data following a change to its recording system, the total was 115,990 a 2% rise. Race hate crime rose 6% and continues to account for around seven in ten of all recorded hate crime. Religious hate crime rose 3%, with a 19% increase in offences targeting Muslims, spiking around the Southport murders and the disorder that followed.
If your case has a racial or religious element, expect a materially higher sentence and far less scope for a non custodial disposal.
Doxing (sometimes spelled “doxxing”) is the publication of someone’s true identity or private details home address, workplace, phone number, family members usually on a public forum, enabling others to harass them.
Those doing it often believe they have a legitimate motive, such as exposing extremism. But misidentification is common, and the consequences for the wrong person thrust into the spotlight can be severe. There is no standalone doxing offence in England and Wales.
The CPS has confirmed that, where appropriate, doxing will be prosecuted under the MCA, and it is frequently charged alongside harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 or, where a threat is conveyed, section 181 of the Online Safety Act 2023. Data protection offences under the Data Protection Act 2018 may also arise where personal data has been obtained or disclosed unlawfully.
If the court finds the offence proved, you will receive a conviction. The sentence may be a fine, a community order, a prison sentence, or a combination. A restraining order is also common, and can last for years, restricting your contact with the complainant.
The sentence itself is often not the most damaging part. A conviction will appear on a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. A basic check will show it while it remains unspent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974; standard and enhanced checks can reveal it for considerably longer, subject to the filtering rules.
In regulated professions you would need to declare the conviction to your regulator the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Financial Conduct Authority, the General Medical Council, the Teaching Regulation Agency who would then consider whether you remain fit to practise. That process can end a career even where the court imposed only a fine.
There are also knock on consequences people rarely anticipate: visa refusals for the US, Canada and Australia, difficulties with professional indemnity insurance, and adverse inferences in family proceedings.
No. Malicious communications under section 1 of the MCA is an either way offence, meaning it can be heard in either the Magistrates’ Court or the Crown Court. (By contrast, section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023 are summary only and must be dealt with by magistrates.)
At present, a defendant charged with an either way offence has the right to elect Crown Court trial. There can be advantages to doing so a jury may be more receptive to an Article 10 argument than a bench of magistrates, particularly after Casserly but the potential custodial sentence is higher in the Crown Court, and the wait is far longer given the backlog.
Two changes you need to be aware of:
Which court to choose while the choice still exists is a decision to make with your criminal defence solicitor, not alone.
The MCA provides that the maximum sentence on conviction in the Crown Court is two years’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both. In the Magistrates’ Court the maximum is 12 months’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both, for offences where conviction falls on or after 18 November 2024. (For convictions between 30 March 2023 and 17 November 2024, the magistrates’ maximum was six months, so the date matters.)
There is still no offence specific definitive guideline from the Sentencing Council for malicious communications. Courts therefore apply the General guideline: overarching principles, assessing culpability and harm, and then adjusting for aggravating and mitigating factors.
Factors that typically increase seriousness:
Factors that typically reduce it:
Yes and the repeal of parts of the Act has changed this landscape too.
Important: the old statutory defence in section 1(2) of the MCA, which applied where a threat was used to reinforce a demand made on reasonable grounds, was repealed on 31 January 2024 along with the threat limb of the offence. If you are facing a threat allegation, it will now be charged under section 181 of the Online Safety Act 2023, which has its own “reasonable excuse” framework rather than the old MCA defence.
This is the most commonly run defence. The prosecution must prove that causing distress or anxiety was your purpose, or one of them. If your purpose was something else venting frustration, raising a genuine complaint, warning others, dark humour among friends who understood it as such the offence is not made out.
Your legal team will need to build the evidence for that: your own account, the full message thread rather than the screenshot the complainant chose, witness statements from people who knew your true intention, and the wider context of the relationship.
Following Casserly, an Article 10 argument is a genuine line of defence, not a technicality. Where the communication concerns a political, civic or public-interest matter, the threshold for “grossly offensive” is materially higher, and the court must assess the proportionality of convicting you.
Sections 179 and 181 require the prosecution to prove the absence of a reasonable excuse. Journalism, satire, academic commentary and genuine public-interest disclosure may all be relevant. Recognised news publishers are expressly excluded from the false communications offence.
General defences relate to the defendant rather than the crime, and include:
Duress — available if you were forced or pressurised by a person or by circumstances into sending the communication. The court will consider how serious you believed the consequences of refusing would be.
Insanity — this requires more than showing you were unwell at the time. You must show that, because of a disease of the mind, you did not know the nature and quality of your act, or did not know that it was wrong. It is rarely used and requires medical evidence.
Mistake — this may apply if you were mistaken about the facts and would not have acted as you did had you known the true position. A mistaken understanding of the law is not a defence.
Automatism — in rare cases, where you were genuinely not in conscious control of your actions. Voluntary intoxication through alcohol or illegal drugs will generally rule this out.
If you or someone close to you has been accused of a malicious communications offence, get the best possible legal advice as early as you can. These cases turn on intent, context and the full message history and they are frequently winnable when the evidence is tested properly and the Article 10 arguments are put with authority.
The friendly and highly experienced team at Stuart Miller Solicitors are here to help with robust advice and realistic guidance on your options, from the first police interview through to trial. Instructing the right criminal defence solicitors may just make all the difference.
Contact Stuart Miller Solicitors today for a free, no obligation consultation.
Yes. Section 1 remains in force for indecent or grossly offensive communications. The threat and false-information limbs were repealed on 31 January 2024 by the Online Safety Act 2023 and replaced by sections 181 and 179 of that Act. The MCA also continues to apply to conduct that took place before that date.
Yes. Big Brother Watch’s September 2026 report identified at least 62,199 arrests for communications offences across a five-year period. However, arrest is not conviction: of those arrests, roughly 18,000 led to charge and 12,292 to conviction. Many cases end with no further action, often because the evidential threshold is not met or the complainant does not support a prosecution.
No. Being rude, impolite or offensive is not in itself unlawful. The communication must be grossly offensive or indecent, judged objectively against what is tolerable in society, and it must have been sent with the purpose of causing distress or anxiety. Leicestershire Police, responding to the arrest data, made precisely this point: material may be unacceptable without being unlawful.
You can. The maximum is two years in the Crown Court and 12 months in the Magistrates’ Court. In practice, custody is usually reserved for sustained campaigns, threats, targeting of vulnerable victims, or cases with a racial or religious element. Fines, community orders and conditional discharges are far more common outcomes for one-off messages.
Yes. It will appear on a basic DBS check while unspent, and can appear on standard and enhanced checks for longer depending on the filtering rules. If you work in a regulated profession, you will normally have to notify your regulator.
Potentially, yes. Section 182 of the Online Safety Act 2023 makes clear that it does not matter whether you created the content — sending, transmitting, publishing or sharing can be enough for the sections 179 and 181 offences.
Because section 1 MCA is an either way offence, there is no six-month time limit. Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 179 of the Online Safety Act are summary offences with time limits, though section 179 allows proceedings within six months of the prosecutor obtaining sufficient evidence, subject to a three-year longstop.
Get legal advice before you attend, not after. A voluntary interview is still an interview under caution and what you say is evidence. You are entitled to free legal representation at the police station regardless of your means, and an early, properly prepared account is often what keeps a case from being charged at all.
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