Lie detector tests for paedophiles ‘to prove they are safe to leave jail’

PAEDOPHILES should have to pass a lie detector test before being released from prison, a former child protection police chief has said.

Jim Gamble QPM, the former head of Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP), has called for sex offenders to be denied automatic release after serving half their sentence unless they can prove they are no longer a threat to children.

Polygraph machines are used to manage some sex offenders after release, but Mr Gamble said he wanted to see them become “standard operating procedure” for all paedophiles, as part of a tougher release and parole regime.

“There should be no automatic release (for paedophiles),” Mr Gamble said in an interview with The Telegraph. “There should be an automatic trigger, as the Human Rights Act requires, for release to be considered. But that should only be done where an evidence-based judgment is made to suggest that individual no longer represents a risk.

“Every person involved offence should be subject

Mr Gamble also called for more paedophiles to be arrested and jailed to create a “credible deterrent” for those going online to groom children and view indecent images.

His comments come as the Home Office said at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse last month that it still considered alternatives to jail, such as civil penalties, for those caught with in sexual to a polygraph. indecent images. The National Police Chiefs Council has said it is struggling to cope with the more than 400 people being arrested over indecent images every month.

However, Mr Gamble said jail should be the starting point for people found with indecent images as they had proved they had a “deviant sexual interest” that made them a threat to children.

“It should only be when you have significant levels of evidence and informed credible risk assessment that you consider any alternative to that. Because, otherwise, slaps on the wrist don’t work.”

Mr Gamble, 59, who began his career in the military police, rose through the ranks of the police in Northern Ireland before being made head of the child safety agency CEOP when it was created in 2006. He resigned in 2010 in protest at a decision by the then home secretary, Theresa May, to merge the organisation into the newly created National Crime Agency.

Mr Gamble, who is chief executive of an online safeguarding company, called for a law banning people from masquerading as a child online without a reasonable excuse or lawful authority.