Police forces should stop declaring certain thoughts are crimes, the UK’s police watchdog has warned, stressing that “thought crimes” do not exist in the country’s legal system. Sir Tom Winsor, the outgoing chief inspector of constabulary, said that chief constables cannot “declare something that is not a crime to be a crime” in their force area, as “it is not illegal to think anything.” “There is no such thing as a thought crime,” he wrote in his final annual assessment of the state of policing in England and Wales (pdf), which was published on March 10. He said it is “not appropriate” for senior police officers to “assert a right of the police to declare anything criminal, least of all what people may think.” “They have no legal power to create criminal offences in their police areas or anywhere else. It is important that no-one is misled: the police enforce …