New approach needed to deal with sex offenders

Published on Friday 18 April 2008 21:20

A SERIES of recent incidents of convicted sex offenders repeating their crimes indicates that the present system of supervising and monitoring such individuals has broken down.

In 2006, there was the case of Colin Ross, who was convicted of a brutal attack on a female tourist with an iron bar, despite being placed under the new Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) after his first offence. Now we have the appalling example of Sean McKay, who held a girl at knifepoint and repeatedly raped her, while police besieged his flat for 13 hours.

It emerged at McKay's trial yesterday that he is a registered sex offender who has already served several prison sentences for indecent assault, abduction and sodomy. As a result, McKay was considered to be at "high risk of re-offending". At the time of this latest crime, he was actually under the supervision of Lothian and Borders Police, though no SOPO had been issued.

In a democratic society, it is not possible to keep convicted sex offenders permanently locked up after they have served their sentence. However, compulsive sexual deviance is rarely curable, even if offenders do not repeat their crimes. For this reason, the worst cases need to be supervised permanently. It is the effectiveness of this supervision that seems to be lacking.

Some will argue that the various forms of registering and supervising convicted sex offenders are little more than a cosmetic device designed to lull the public into feeling safer than they really are. The cases of Ross and McKay tend to support this view. But even if we take such measures at face value, politicians must stop giving the impression that the sex offenders' register or SOPOs are in themselves any material protection from repeat attacks.

The issue here is one of public trust. Few want to see the introduction of a "Megan's Law" in the UK, whereby local communities have a right to be informed that convicted sex offenders are living in their midst. That would only drive offenders underground and make the job of the police more difficult. However, the public will only accept knowledge of the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders being restricted to the authorities provided police and social workers monitor dangerous individuals.

It is obvious in the two cases cited above that only continuous supervision by police or psychiatric staff would have been effective, and that has huge resource implications. Yet there are ways of coping. For instance, instituting regular, random police visits to offenders (as is the case in the United States) is one way of stretching limited police resources. The Scottish Government should also consider promoting voluntary commitment for therapy by sex offenders, which is widely practised in America. This is expensive in cash terms, but cheap if it stops more women being raped.

It is also important to learn the lessons of each failure to supervise a sex offender. There must be an inquiry into the McKay case. That is the least we owe his victim.