NCJ Number
204800
Date Published
2003
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This chapter discusses the consequences of legislative change and media pressures to the police service as one of the responsible authorities for the management of sex offenders.
Abstract
The Sex Offenders Act has permitted the police service to enforce a requirement for sex offenders to register with the police, provide photographs and fingerprints, state a home address, and inform the police of any absence of more than 7 days. In isolation the legislation appears effective but it is less effective than it could be. The measure struggles to gain public support in the face of an unsupportive media. The speed with which some offenders have sought to use the Human Rights Act to avoid monitoring brings into question the issue of whether or not the police should have powers to enter their premises and to ensure that they respond both to questions and to monitoring. There are 42 local sex offender registers across England and Wales. Multi-Agency Public Protection Panels (MAPPP's) are responsible for assessing the relative risks posed by people on the sex offender register and the violent offenders known to them. The challenges facing the police service are government and political activity and reaction to pressures; the media; the offenders; and public perception of the offenders and their place in society. There is a need for a single nationwide sex offender database, easily accessible by the police and probation services and, in time, by other organizations. The project, ViSOR (the Violent and Sex Offenders Register) should be complete for the police service by December 2003. The Internet and the access it provides present further problems for the police. Communicating with the public in the heat of the outing of an offender remains the most immediate and difficult challenge.