Super-register planned for all sex criminals
Database of sexual attacks, domestic abuse and stalking may even include those who are suspects
DOMESTIC abusers, stalkers and sex offenders would all be registered on a single super-database under new plans.
Ministers are looking to set up a master register to enable police and probation services to track offenders following the death of Sarah Everard.
Sex offenders often change their name and/or address to avoid detection but would have to register new details, including the start of any relationships.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, wish to create the index after a defeat in the House of Lords last week on an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill for a stalkers register.
The proposal would create a statutory duty for offenders to be put on a national register and be monitored, like sex criminals. A government source said: “Creating multiple databases is never a good idea. The principle would be to set up one.”
The amendment is due to be considered in the Commons after Easter but a decision is likely to be part of a wider shake-up to protect women and girls.
Ms Patel’s consultation on violence against females received 78,000 responses in three days after being reopened in the wake of Miss Everard’s death. It could delay the final plans beyond the planned summer launch as officials analyse the 150,000 responses.
Plans for a register of stalkers were revealed in The Sunday Telegraph last week. It is thought a single database including a wider range of offences is now the most likely policy.
Other measures considered include a new offence of sexual harassment in public, championed by Nimco Ali, the Government’s independent adviser, and the formal inclusion of misogyny as a hate crime meriting longer sentences.
The campaign has been led by Laura Richards, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Homicide Prevention Unit, who has compiled a report into 31 cases where women were killed after police and other agencies failed to address their attackers’ previous violence.
They include women who died despite persistent abuse that should have been investigated, or who were not told about their partner’s previous violence.
Ms Richards, who also headed the Met’s Violent Crime and Intelligence Analysis Unit, backed expanding the Violent and Sex Offender Register to include any serial domestic abuser or stalker, defined as those who had committed offences against two or more people. She believed it could eventually be extended to include suspected offenders who may not even have been convicted, with other agencies such as social services also given graded access.
It could allow the courts to impose restrictions on computer use and monitor movement by electronic tagging and curfews.
Ms Richards said: “It would be the biggest cultural shift in my professional opinion to change the focus so that we look at perpetrators’ behaviour and ask questions about them instead of saying ‘Why was she out at 9.30pm?’.”