The UK government will back legislation to criminalise street harassment and make it punishable by up to 2 years in prison.
Street harassment, which includes behaviours like catcalling, following someone, or causing intentional distress to a person in public, is set to become a crime under plans supported by the government’s home secretary.
In the UK, sexual harassment is illegal, but the government wants to create the new street harassment offence to deter perpetrators and encourage more people to report it.
“Every woman should feel safe to walk our streets without fear of harassment or violence,” UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said.
“That’s why I’m supporting a new bill to introduce a specific offence on public sexual harassment. It’ll mean the criminals who commit these acts face the consequences they deserve.”
The bill would criminalise behaviours such as deliberately walking closely behind someone, making aggressive comments or gestures, obstructing someone’s path, and driving a vehicle slowly near someone.
A survey commissioned by the BBC suggested two-thirds of women in the UK did not feel safe walking alone at night.
The street harassment bill was introduced by Conservative MP Greg Clark. The Bill is designed to make a provision “about causing intentional harassment, alarm or distress to a person in public where the behaviour is done because of that person’s sex; and for connected purposes”.
“Why should a woman feel less confident when walking on our streets than a man?” Clark said when the bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons. “The streets are theirs equally, but that is not how it’s experienced.”
The street harassment bill comes in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder in 2021, when she was abducted and killed by a police officer while walking home in London. Her brutal murder sparked widespread protests and raised community concern about gendered violence in the UK.
There has also been a push in the UK to make misogyny a hate crime, but the government did not support a bill put forward on the issue last year.