Sex offender plans will not and cannot work
Dear Jacqui Smith,
You want to see “every child living their lives free from fear.” Hard to disagree with your sentiment, although your policy is likely to suffer from the law of unintended consequences. Allowing parents to ask if someone close to their family is a sex offender has an appealing simplicity to it and thankfully falls short of publishing details of where sex offenders live as they do in America. Even so, I am extremely concerned that it will horribly backfire at some point in future.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is how it will work: parents, carers and guardians can ask the police for information about people directly involved in their own children’s lives. The police will be obliged to look into the background of individuals and consider providing information to parents e.g. a previous conviction for sexual offences, domestic violence or an indication that the individual is suspected of being a danger to children. Child protection teams will be able to flag up someone who poses a threat to children, you will prosecute parents who pass on information about an offender to others in their community and other people unconnected to a child who ask for information will not be ignored, even if their concerns turn out to warrant action. On the face of it, I can see little wrong with this.
However, I always find it instructive to look a little beneath the surface whenever Labour announce a policy out of the blue because they always seems to be something wrong with it. This issue is no exception. Let us start with the obvious concerns. Police may disclose that an individual has been previously suspected of abuse, even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Seeing as there is no mechanism to stop malicious complaints, especially in light of the recent news that totally false allegations of abuse are held on personnel records for the entire duration of our careers, I find it disturbing that parents might get access to this information. In addition, your threat of prosecuting parents who pass on information about convicted offenders is likely to fall on deaf ears. Are you seriously suggesting that single parents who find out their new boyfriend is a paedophile won’t warn other parents living nearby? The threat of prosecution was brought in to prevent vigilante attacks, yet I cannot see how this would be enforceable. Vigilante attacks may sound like unnecessary media hype to you but I would be amazed if local communities sat on their hands in the full knowledge that a paedophile was living in close proximity to their children.
To be honest Jacqui, it all looks rather weak. Your party is in turmoil, your leader is losing grip with every day that passes and your slim majority of around 2,000 is likely to see the initials ‘MP’ wiped from your name at the next election. Given these circumstances, I cannot help but feel that this policy is nothing more than pandering to the Daily Mail brigade in a time of crisis for your party.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
you will prosecute parents who pass on information about an offender to others in their community
Completely unworkable.
Say that the Jones at No: 6 have kids that get on well with the Smiths at No: 2. They often walk round to each other’s houses to play. The Jones, being alert and concerned parents, ask for these details and discover that the bloke who has just moved into No: 4 is a convicted paedophile just released on parole.
Now, presumably the Jones tell their kids to keep clear of No: 4 and not to accept any invitations in for tea & cakes. Obviously, they can’t say this in front of the kids from No: 2; that would be in breach of dear Jaqui’s law. But what if they see all the children loitering outside No: 4? Can they ask them to move on? Or do they have to leave their own children there in order to avoid letting on? Can they call back their own children and order the Smith children to stay??
What if the Jones children tell the Smith children that they have to stay away from No: 4? The Smith children pass this on to their parents, who ask the Jones why they said this? What do the Jones say in reply? “Errr… Ummm… We cannot say anything on the subject, but strongly suggest that you ask the Police about local paedophiles…” ??
Fine in theory, but completely impossible to control the information in practice. Once again, too much policy and not enough thinking.
The real problem is that people can commit these offences and then (it seems) be released while still at risk of a repeat offence. An intelligent government would address this; either by looking at sentencing, prison regimes, parole rules etc, or by showing that the perception is mistaken. This kind of sticking-plaster policy just reinforces the perception without doing anything about the perceived problem.
Very good and realistic analysis. You’re right to say that this doesn’t address the underlying problem of people serving a sentence for sex offences but society still judging them to be dangerous. Can paedophiles be ‘cured’? Once someone has served their sentence and is released, surely they are now free regardless of their previous offence? Very tricky questions.
Why should the Daily Mail not be “Pandered to” Its readers are voters and their views are IMHO often sound .I cannot concern myself with the civil rights of child molesters we should never have reached a point where such obvious safeguards are an issue at all.
Having said that your instinct about the tining of this is almost certainly right .
Once someone has served their sentence and is released, surely they are now free regardless of their previous offence?
Well, yes they are, and so they should be. But in practice, all offenders are released halfway through on parole – one condition of which is that they are no longer a danger to the public. Some would question whether this essential safeguard is being properly assessed.
Then, assuming that an offender did for once reach the end of their sentence having been refused parole at every stage, and was released (without parole) while still a danger to the public, then it is reasonable to infer that either (a) the sentence was too light or (b) someone in the prison system hadn’t done their job.
Of course, both concerns could be entirely without foundation. But there is a public perception that they are not, which is reinforced by idiotic plans such as this, by CRB-related paranoia, and so on.
It should be quite simple; either address the problem, or address the misplaced perception. But there are no headlines in those routes; there are no opportunities to create state-funded burocracies; and (most significantly) a degree of administrative competence is needed.
“I cannot concern myself with the civil rights of child molesters we should never have reached a point where such obvious safeguards are an issue at all”
*sigh*
The whole point is that a large proportion of those on the sex offenders’ register are, in fact, not sex offenders. There are endless people who have been falsely accused who are still down on the list. These are victims of tabloid hysteria, & their civil right certainly deserve to be protected.
Unless you think Robert Murat etc deserve to have been persecuted.
Unless you think we can use 42 days to lock up anyone whose face/skin colour doesn’t fit.
LFAT urged you to think twice, you didn’t bother.
For the record, I agree that those who actually are child molesters, convicted as such, should be much more severely punished than they currently are. But we are dealing with people who are often wholly innocent.
Indeed. Innocent people having accusations kept on file cannot be tolerated. We are damning innocent individuals to a life of being labelled a child abuser and if Jacqui Smith goes ahead with this, innocent people might end up getting hurt – literally.
From the research I’ve seen, no-one has yet found a way of ‘curing’ sex offenders, making the issue of releasing them at all a very contentious one seeing as they necessarily pose a risk to the public. Whether or not the prison system can therefore cope with these people is a massive concern of mine.
Actually re-reading LFATs post he makes it quite clear that you might not have ever been convicted of anything .That is a worry, and I can well imagine how such an accusation might be maliciously made
For convicted fiddlers however I cannot see the problem with the emotively termed’ chemical castration’ or , come to think of it , the much maligned ‘Cutting their genitals off with a rusty spoon’.
I am not sure whether these people are to blame for their lusts: perhaps they are not. But they shouldn’t be at large. It enrages me when an abuse takes place & they say the police are seeking “known paedophiles” in the area. What are they doing walking the streets? Whether it be in prison or in a mental home, anyone of any variety who is an offender not fully rehabilitated should be kept away from us.
In that case, the innocents who are mistakenly on the register might not get such a hard time.
As with ID cards, we shouldn’t have to suffer for the actions committed by offenders.
But, like I said, how do you judge if a sex offender is “fully rehabilitated”?
Just a small aside from the seriousness of the implications of this ludicrous idea. As you said Jacqui Smith may have to remove MP from her name in the not too distant future.
Well I can’t find a P but if you remove the M from Smith- it might explain why she is still in power, as it were!
It’s hard to tell, since they seem to have a lifelong condition which may flare up. Some of them are aware that acting on their desires would be wrong & want help overcoming them.
Candid, please do not tarnish the Sith name by associating them with Jacqui Smith – dark Jedi Knights are far too cool for Labour.
Asquith, the only problem is that there isn’t an objective way to assess ‘desire’. If there was a test for it, our lives would be so much easier. Subjective questioning would be useful but science hasn’t figured out another way of assessing their mental state so trying to work out if they are still a danger is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
Sorry, I don’t buy this “It’s not their fault, they’re ill” line.
It’s partly because it is applied to such a wide range of people, be they paedophiles, alcoholics or fatties. However, it is mainly thanks to the blogger (whose identity I can’t remember, sadly) who pointed out that he had never heard of a single instance of a paedophile commiting an offence in sight of a uniformed police officer. Hence, he reasoned, they are evidently able to control themselves when they want to.
Likewise, I (personally) am quite greedy and quite acquisitive. There are, nevertheless, many attractive and expensive things that I do not have but would like to. Despite this, I manage to keep my theft-related fantasies in an entirely hypothetical form.
It is, simply, a question of self-control; if those who can’t exercise it want to plead that they are ill, then they belong in Broadmoor for life.
“mainly thanks to the blogger (whose identity I can’t remember, sadly) who pointed out that he had never heard of a single instance of a paedophile commiting an offence in sight of a uniformed police officer.”
That’ll be the one and only Dumb Jon.
The lengths some paedophile rings go to to help and support others in evading capture proves the point quite nicely.
There will always be pros and cons to every scheme that is concocted. And I believe that with this issue, we all really have to think things through and see which would benefit people better.