Police demand powers against sex offenders

POLICE DEMAND POWERS AGAINST SEX OFFENDERS
By Michael Howie

Scotsman, UK: 31 August 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1867492005

Key points
* Police demand new powers to monitor sex offenders and enter their
homes
* First Minister promises legal changes following Rory Blackhall
murder
* Up to ten times more sex offenders live in Scotland than are
registered

Key quote
"At the moment all a registered sex offender has to do is tell us
where they live and inform us if they plan to travel abroad. There
needs to be more requirement on sex offenders to co-operate with our
efforts to manage them in the community and more effectively assess
the risk of them reoffending" - Bob Ovens, deputy chief constable of
Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary

Story in full
SCOTLAND'S most senior police officers are calling for extensive new
powers to deal with sex offenders including the right to force entry
to their homes and the ability to veto their movements.

They also revealed that the true number of sex offenders living in
Scottish communities could be as high as 30,000 - more than ten times
the number on the official sex offenders' register.

The vast majority of these are effectively invisible to police and
social workers, being free to move at will without supervision or
surveillance.

The Scotsman can reveal that police have told Professor George Irving,
who has just completed a major review of the sex offenders'
registration scheme for the Executive, that new laws are needed to
protect the public from paedophiles, rapists and other sex attackers.

Yesterday Jack McConnell, the First Minister, promised changes to the
way the legal system deals with sex offenders after the murder of Rory
Blackhall. His pledge came after it emerged Simon Harris, 37, was
awaiting trial on sex abuse charges when he killed the 11-year-old
Livingston boy.

Rory's death is the latest in a string of cases which have piled
enormous pressure on the police and other criminal justice bodies to
improve the handling of sex offenders in the community.

The murder of schoolboy Mark Cummings by Stuart Leggate in June 2004
prompted the Executive to commission Prof Irving's review.

Leggate lived in the same Glasgow towerblock as eight-year-old Mark,
despite having previous convictions for sexually assaulting children
and being on the sex offenders' register, when he strangled him.

Other cases which exposed serious deficiencies in the way sex
offenders are monitored include Colyn Evans, who murdered Karen Dewar,
a Fife teenager, and James Campbell, who tried to rape a two-year-old
girl two months after being released from detention.

Bob Ovens, deputy chief constable of Dumfries and Galloway
Constabulary and a spokesman on sex offenders for the Association of
Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), told The Scotsman: "At the
moment all a registered sex offender has to do is tell us where they
live and inform us if they plan to travel abroad.

"There needs to be more requirement on sex offenders to co-operate
with our efforts to manage them in the community and more effectively
assess the risk of them reoffending.

"Currently, we do that without any compulsion on an offender to
co-operate. We can go to their door and knock and ask to speak to
them, but they are not compelled to answer the door and speak to us.
We told George Irving that we believe there's a need to redress that.

"There needs to be consideration given as to whether police should
have new powers to enter registered sex offenders' homes when we
believe they are there, but are refusing to engage with us and are
hampering our ability to carry out a risk assessment.

"We wouldn't want to force our way into someone's home if they had
just popped out. We would have to show we have been there on a number
of occasions and that the person was inside and actively avoiding us.

"Under those circumstances, we would be able to force entry and engage
with an individual. If they failed to do so they would be committing
an offence."

He said police would only seek to force their way into an offender's
house to monitor the person and assess the risk of them reoffending.

He added: "We have also raised with Professor Irving our concerns
about employment and accommodation in relation to sex offenders. We
need to consider whether police should have the right to prevent an
offender from moving to a new location or a new job.

"At the moment, we can seek an order from the courts to restrict where
they can live, but such a move is rare. I think the police have wanted
to be absolutely sure a sheriff will grant an order before making the
application. Rather than having to go to court, we think we should be
given the ability to control that and manage that ourselves.

"People will say that allowing the courts to make the decision tests
the system but, on the other hand, I'm left asking whether we are
properly protecting society in the way people expect."

Nearly 2,900 names are currently on the sex offenders' register, but
Mr Ovens revealed the true number of people that police have records
on in relation to sex offences could be as high as 30,000.

A recent Fife Council report into the handling of Evans revealed that
police have files on 2,500 people found or suspected to have carried
out one or more sexual offences - but that only 224 are on the sex
offenders' register. Some of these will not have been registered
because their offences were committed before the Sex Offenders Act,
which set up the list, came into force in 1997.

Mr Ovens said: "It is reasonable to expect that the number police have
information on or concerns about could be ten times the number on the
register. That's going from the man who steals a pair of women's pants
from the washing line to the most dangerous attacker.

"Clearly we have to focus on trying to make assessments of those who
appear the most dangerous, but to do that we have to take in a very
broad brush."

Alan Baird, convener of the Association of Directors of Social Work's
criminal justice standing committee, said:

"Unregistered offenders are the hidden part of the population. We are
trying to put in place risk assessment and management of these
offenders, but the difficulty is we don't have enough resources to do
this as effectively as everybody would like because of the sheer
volume of people."

A Scottish Executive spokesman said: "We have received Professor
Irving's report and ministers are now carefully considering its
recommendations. We expect to publish the report in the next few
weeks.

"Sex offenders may be small in number, but they rightly generate
considerable public concern. Every agency involved in managing sex
offenders - council social work and housing services, the Scottish
Prison Service and the police - must do everything possible to
minimise that risk and protect the public."

Kenny MacAskill, the SNP's justice spokesman, said he supported the
police's demands for new powers. "These powers may appear Draconian,
but when they are weighed against the hardship these people can cause,
my sympathies are with the community, not the individual," he said.

His Scottish Conservative counterpart, Annabel Goldie, said: "The sex
offenders' register exists for a purpose and that is to allow us to
keep track of these criminals. If our senior police officers are
saying their existing powers are insufficient to protect the public
then we must at least listen to their proposals."

But John Scott, head of the Scottish Human Rights Centre, said giving
police the right to monitor people in their own homes was a dangerous
step.

He said: "If police get all of these powers, I doubt it will actually
make the public any safer. We have to be so careful at times like
these that we do not rush into giving police sweeping new powers just
to satisfy the immediate emotional response to a tragic event."
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