So the Home Secretary John Reid has caved in to tabloid newspaper pressure and is sending his junior Minister Gerry Sutcliffe on a taxpayer funded summer holiday "fact finding mission" to the United States to examine child molester "naming and shaming" laws (the term "paedophile" meaning "child lover" is a cruel euphemism akin to Orwellian newspeak)
Exactly how much will this trip cost us, when, according to the BBC
New offenders law 'not necessary'An expert in rehabilitating sex offenders says a government fact-finding trip to the US is a waste of money.
Ray Wyre was speaking about minister Gerry Sutcliffe's examination of a sex offender system in the US called Megan's Law.
The trip was not needed, he said, because the law has already been investigated by officials.
Eighty per cent of sexual abuse is on children in families, he said.
"They're not going notify the community about those men because they're not allowed to identify who the children are.
"And it just worries me that a new home secretary comes and doesn't appear to know what his department, his government has been doing for years and years, and why they came up with sex offender register, multi-agency public protection panels."
[...]
We have extreme doubts about the failed US approach, especially with public web access to such data. We wrote this back on 1st March this year -
Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill 2006 - when did you stop beating your child ? (N.B. this Bill gets its 2nd Reading in the Commons on Monday 19th June):
We would like to see, those people who are contemplating setting up this "instant online barring list check" in the UK, put in prison, if they ignore the lessons of the near disasters encountered by about a dozen different States in the USA , chronicled by MSNBC journalist Bob Sullivan in January 2001.Many US states set up online Web based access to their Sex Offender Registers, in the wake of "Megan's Law", precisely for job employment vetting due diligence and also to allow the public to see if a registered sex offender was living near to them or to a local school etc., something which has been resisted on the grounds that it would, given the tabloid hysteria prevalent in the UK, be likely to lead to vigilante attacks. Like most Government departments, once the initial media panic was over, they neglected to upgrade their computer systems and keep them up to date with the latest security patches, and no fewer than 11 States had remotely exploitable (Microsoft UNICODE vulnerability) front end web servers, accepting queries from the public, and displaying the results from the allegedly secure back end database systems (some of which were also remotely exploitable via the internet as well).
The potential risk was that real sex offenders could have had any "hits" filtered out and not displayed to the public, or for the devastating libel and possible lynch mob consequences of an innocent person being falsely labelled as a sex offender, a tactic which had actually been discussed in various "anti-western / anti-USA" online discussion forums.
There have even been cases, since then, when these systems were allegedly tightened up, where the online Sex Offender Register was data mined as a source of "Identity Theft" details for financial frauds.
We have every reason to believe that any similar system in the UK would also suffer from exactly the same sort of problems.
Gerry Sutcliffe himself was wittering on about introducing extra laws to prevent any such data being used by local vigilante groups.
Why is Yet Another Law need on top of the vast array of existing anti-social behaviour and anti-demonstration and protest, and anti-harassment legislation already in force, as well as the full panoply of laws against violence of any kind ?
In what way are the existing laws insufficient to deal with vigilantes who either attack or harass convicted child molestors or, just as likely, mis-identified innocent people ?
The recent case which sparked off this media frenzy , that of
Craig Sweeney shows that the most dangerous child molestors who kidnap victims do not do so on their own doorsteps, but are perfectly able to use cars or vans to hunt their victims, well away from wherever they are living.
The question of how best to determine if a man like Sweeney is ever safe to release into the community, is what Home Secretary John Reid should be concentrating on and not on more impossible to enforce legislation.
John Reid's announcement about bail hostels near schools smells of "Must be Seen to Be Doing Something" gesture politics.
He did not offer to relocate the 11 bail hostel premises away from schools, so who exactly, will the sex offenders who are to be moved, be replaced by ?
Would you prefer convicted knife wielding mobile phone muggers or drug dealers, to be housed near to your child's school ?
Bear in mind, too, that any boy who has intercourse with a girl aged under 13 is automatically placed on the SOR (even if he is also under 13), as is a teacher who has a relationship with a 6th-former. Whatever one's views about such situations, they are completely different from one where an adult deliberately seeks out children for sexual purposes. Giving the public access to the SOR won't actually tell them who is or isn't a threat to children.
As you say, child abduction and/or abuse by a stranger is extremely rare. If people are really interested in children's safety, it's a shame that they don't focus with the same intensity on, say, the fact that 3000 child pedestrians and cyclists are killed or seriously injured every year. Is there really a fate worse than death?
I would like to see offences categorised ... And there to be a set length between offences that people remain on the register... Having a register that lasts forever isn't the way our legal system works, people SHOULD have an opportunity to redeem themselves.
I would do the categorisation and length like this:
A - 40 years
B - 30 years
C - 20 years
D - 10 years
So if for example an 18 year old slept with a 15 year old, they might get a 'D' rating and be placed on the SOR for 10 years (consensual sex). However, if a paedophile "did things" to a 5 year old, then they might get an A or B rating.
The rating would also stack up... So if that 18 year old slept with a 15 year old, and then a year later did it again (at 19) then they might get bumped up from a D to a B.
This would all be on top of their conviction of course...
@ Manip - offences are categorised already, sort of.
However, who knows exactly how long the data retention period will be for the various new Centralised Banning databases which the Safeguarding Vulnerable groups Bill is set too introduce ?
The current policy is for such data to remain on the entries on the Police National Computer
(which will mutate into the Police National Database when the IMPACT scheme eventually gets delivered), to remain on the system until the criminal's 100th birthday, irrespective of the age at which any offences were committed.
See:
ACPO "Retention Guidelines for Nominal Records on the Police National Computer, incorporating the Step Down Model" - no data deletion until you are 100 years old ! About 6000 different criminal offences.
Effectively, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 is being increasingly circumvented, without actually having been repealed.
The BBC have done an interview with with the child protection spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers which supports our view that the Home Secretary (and his predecessors) have been unduly influenced by the tabloid press, specifically the News of the World:
@wtwu
My post was specifically in relation to how long names and locations should be kept on the sex offenders register, not in relation to how long the police maintain a record of the conviction.
I was recommending that "seriousness" markers be clearly listed on the public register.
The police should maintain *private* records in perpetuity for the public good.
@ Manip - isn't the length of time that someone is put on the Register a function of the severity of the sentence imposed by a Judge and whether they are adult offenders or not ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4618172.stm
@wtwu - Actually, the BEEB site is wrong in a couple of details.
A communtity punishment (such as a CRO) requires a 5 year requirement to notify, and a caution requires 2 years.
@wtwu - I can only tell you for certain about U-18s on the SOR.
Normally an U-18 will only go on the register if they receive a sentence of 12+ months. This was a compromise amendment in view of the fact we couldn't get an amendment giving U-18s a defence of consent where there is parity of age. (Bear in mind that any sexual activity between teenagers, including kissing, is now unlawful under the 2003 Act, and that criminal liability is from the age of 10)
The 12+ months registration goes some way towards ensuring that only the most serious young offenders are registered.
There are, however, 3 exceptions. Registration for U-18s is automatic for (a) intercourse with U-13 (b)causing or inciting sexual activity with an U-13
(c)any offence against a person with a mental disorder
Putting a 15-year-old "Romeo and Jullette" couple on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years. You guys are out of your cotton-picking minds. British 15-year-old-girls are sexually active jailbait. Enforce this regulation and half the 13-20-year-old population will be on the SOR, and the other half will be looking over their shoulder. You daren't even ask a kid for directions in the UK; not that they know anything. Pedophile crazy UK: Another good reason to emigrate.