Not all paedophiles should be sent to jail says police chief
A LEADING police officer sparked outrage yesterday after suggesting certain paedophiles should not be jailed.
Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, said those who view indecent images of children should not be charged with criminal offences unless they pose a physical threat to youngsters.
Lower level offenders should be given counselling and rehabilitation, allowing police to focus on the most dangerous paedophiles with access to children, Mr Bailey suggested.
Offenders who view online images should avoid jail only if they have been risk-assessed and shown to not have the potential to be in contact with children, he added.
His comments were criticised by child protection groups, with one warning his message could offer a green light to offenders.
Mr Bailey, who is also chief constable of Norfolk Police, said: “Let’s be really clear – somebody going online and using their credit card to direct the abuse of a child in the Philippines should be locked up, categorically.
“That individual who is not in contact with children and doesn’t pose a threat to children and is looking at low-level images...when you look at everything else that’s going on, and the threat that’s posed of contact abuse to children, we have to look at doing something different with those individuals.
“Does the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts and the police have the capacity to put them into the justice system?”
Mr Bailey, who is also head of Operation Hydrant, the national investigation into historical child sexual abuse, added: “They would still become a registered sex offender and that means they are still being managed.
“It gives us the capacity just to deal with the scale and volume of referrals that we are now consistently getting.”
He said police need to concentrate their resources on the offenders who posed the most serious risk to children.
He added they are currently arresting about 400 men a month and were still only seeing the “tip of the iceberg”.
But Peter Saunders, of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, slammed Mr Bailey’s comments.
He said: “Any kind of message that gives potential abusers the opportunity to think they may get away with it is extremely unhelpful to child protection.”
An NSPCC spokesman added: “Prison sentences serve a vital purpose in reflecting the severity of the crime, protecting the public, acting as a deterrent, and helping a victim see their offender deservedly brought to justice.
“If we are to stem this tide and protect more children we must make prevention and rehabilitation a priority. With the right support we can prevent offenders from abusing and help those who do harm children change their behaviour.”
THE suggestion from leading police officer Simon Bailey that paedophiles who look at indecent images online should not be charged with criminal offences unless they pose a direct threat to children is appalling. He believes that justice would be better served by offering counselling and rehabilitation to those who look at “low-level images”.
Bailey’s care in the community proposal is terribly risky. He and his colleagues have no way of knowing whether it will successfully prevent paedophiles from reoffending. Even with the best will in the world some people who present a grave danger to children are going to be left wandering the streets.
Furthermore his implication is that looking at “low-level images” is not a serious offence. This is completely wrong. The paedophiles who view these images online may not have physically abused a child themselves but they are funding those who produce such content. They must bear at least some of the responsibility for the suffering of the children featured.
Moreover in some cases viewing images online is just the start. Often it is a precursor to paedophiles committing far worse crimes. Treating the viewing of images as a minor crime does not provide a sufficient deterrent to further activity and fails to address their behaviour early enough.
Paedophilia is one of the very worst crimes that can be committed. It is shocking that anybody – let alone a senior police officer – could advocate relaxing the laws surrounding it.