Low-risk paedophiles may avoid prosecution
‘How can the police service be expected to cope with all that, if, in the margins, we are still having to deal with ... very low risk offenders?’
PAEDOPHILES who look at indecent images of children but do not pose a genuine threat of physical abuse should not face criminal sanctions, the head of the police body investigating historical child sex abuse has said.
Simon Bailey, the country’s most senior child protection police officer, said “alternatives” must be considered as resources are at “saturation point”.
Police forces have come under pressure from rising reports of child abuse, with an average of 112 complaints a day, and increasing numbers of online and historical cases. Mr Bailey said low-level offending should be decriminalised and perpetrators offered counselling and rehabilitation.
He said the police were facing an “unprecedented volume” of reports of abuse. Reports of child abuse have risen by 80 per cent in three years.
Speaking to The Times newspaper, Mr Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) leader for child abuse investigation, said: “How can the police service be expected to cope with all that, if, in the margins, we are still having to deal with what I would describe as very, very low risk offenders, who, based upon good risk assessments, pose little if any actual threat of contact abuse? ...
“Those individuals that you can say with a degree of certainty genuinely don’t pose a physical threat – that to me seems to be a reasonable line [for taking an alternative approach].”
Mr Bailey has previously said that those who view child sex images online should be treated as patients rather than criminals.
A record number of internet pages with child sex images are being detected, with 68,092 sites taken down by the Internet Watch Foundation in 2015, more than double the previous year.
Mr Bailey is head of Operation Hydrant, set up in 2014 to oversee investigations into historical child sex abuse concerning prominent people, or historic offences in institutional settings.