What if a Child Sex Offender is Living in Your Area?

Protecting our children is always a priority and one of the most frightening things which could unnerve a parent might be to discover that a child sex offender is living within the community. Although it’s likely to cause you to harbour great resentment and could worry you, the UK has implemented strict measures to protect the public from known sex offenders. All of these measures working together are designed to ensure that the threat from a known sex offender who has been released back into the community poses as minimal a risk as is possible and the whole procedure is carefully monitored and managed.

How Is It Monitored & Managed?

These days the courts have been granted more powers in terms of being able to issue longer prison sentences, open ended sentences and, in the most dangerous cases, even ordering a life imprisonment sentence in the severest of cases. They can also issue Sexual Offences Prevention Orders that forbid offenders from taking part in particular activities and engaging in certain types of behaviour as well as there being strict legislation in place concerning vetting procedures for working with children.

Offenders also need to comply with the Sex Offenders Register and give their name and current address to the police, which must always be updated if there are any changes and their failure to do so can result in a prison term of up to 5 years.

How Can I Be Sure That My Child is Safe?

There are a number of organisations who all work together to ensure that the safety and security of children comes first if a sex offender may be living in the community. These include:

• Police
• Probation and prison service staff
• Housing, health and social services

MAPPA Management

The organisations outlined above combine to form what’s known as a MAPPA team. MAPPA stands for ‘Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements’ and no matter where you live in the UK, you’ll have a MAPPA team working within your area. Their role is to monitor and manage sex offenders who might be living within a community and to ensure that they don’t offend again. Some of the methods they use include:

• Regular police visits and interviews
• Ongoing reviews and assessments of the risk the offender poses as well as surveillance of high-risk offenders
• Treatment to reduce the risk of re-offending
• Placing offenders in supervised accommodation where they can be closely monitored, tagged and placed under curfew if necessary
• Recalling offenders back to prison where they have breached conditions associated with their release

Do I Have The Right To Know?

You local MAPPA team produce an annual report which explains how sex offenders are being managed in your area as well as the number of known sex offenders who are living in the community. In addition, the police have in place what is referred to as ‘controlled disclosure’, which permits them to share specific information about the names and addresses of known sex offenders living in the community with those individuals and organisations which have a professional responsibility for either the safety of children.

These organisations include leisure centres, schools, employers and landlords and there are a number of pilot schemes which are currently being trialled in specific areas of the country whereby some parents and carers are able to gain access to more detailed information about known sex offenders living in the area in terms of their name, address and workplace, if they have one. And, in certain individual instances, the police may decide to share any relevant information with you if you feel there is a direct threat to your child as the result of any report you’ve made to them.

Why Don’t We All Have The Right To Know?

The problem of simply ‘naming and shaming’ all known sex offenders who are living in the community is that there is a danger that they will become victims of persecution and maybe even usually law abiding citizens will form vigilante groups to act against the offender. The problem with this is that it will often simply drive the offender underground where they’ll disappear and then pose an even greater risk to the public as the authorities would then be unable to monitor and supervise their activities. If that was to happen, then it is likely to increase the number of incidents of re-offending.

However, if you have reason to suspect that a person is or has engaged in committing a sexual offence against a child or you have believe that a person is acting suspiciously around young children within the neighbourhood, then you should report these matters to the police.