Police 'need full access to sex offenders' PCs'

Published on Monday 26 March 2007 01:02

POLICE are calling for unfettered access to the computers of sex offenders amid growing concerns about the rise of child pornography on the internet.

The call is made in a new report in response to fears that convicted sex offenders are downloading an increasing number of child abuse images from the relative safety of their homes.

Senior police officers claim new powers to check up on convicted sex offenders in their homes do not go far enough, particularly in light of the sudden and disturbing growth of child pornography on the internet.

The number of websites containing indecent images of children has grown from 3,400 in 2004 to 6,000 last year.

In its first year of operations in 1996, the Internet Watch Foundation, a global online watchdog, received 615 reports of internet abuse compared to 27,750 reports last year, more than 300 of which were reported in the UK.

Last November, The Scotsman revealed that eight suspected paedophiles were being prosecuted for grooming children under new powers introduced to crack down on internet predators.

The offence of grooming children with the purpose of sexual activity, introduced amid concerns about youngsters being targeted over the internet, came into force in Scotland in 2005.

The new study by Dr Julia Davidson, from Westminster University, based partly on interviews with police and social workers responsible for monitoring convicted paedophiles and rapists, calls for the "regular monitoring of all registered sex offenders' home computers".

The report, for the Risk Management Authority (RMA), states: "Some police respondents expressed concern that offenders convicted for indecent image-related offences who may be assessed as 'low risk' may constitute a higher risk in terms of their propensity for contact abuse.

The point was made that not enough is known about the boundary between the use of indecent internet child images and the potential for contact abuse."

The Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act, which came into force last September, allows police to apply for a warrant to enter and search a sex offender's home for the purposes of risk assessment or to check information on the register.

Last month Cathy Jamieson, the justice minister, refused to follow a parliamentary committee's recommendation to give police powers to enter the home of a registered sex offender without a warrant when there are child safety concerns.

Detective Superintendent James Cameron, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland's management of offenders working group,

said: "It would be helpful if we had unlimited powers to examine the computers because there are obvious implications to sex offenders having access to computers in the house. At the moment, the law limits us in terms of what we can and cannot do."

A spokeswoman for the RMA added: "Checking PCs is a good idea but needs to be done under powers of existing legislation. If the police feel more is needed, we would be interested in their proposals to the Scottish Executive concerning management of risk."