Fury over shocking rise of sex criminals freed to strike again
THE number of sex offenders who strike again after being put back on the streets has risen sharply – sparking calls for urgent reform of the way they are supervised.
The number of perverts and paedophiles convicted of a similar crime within 12 months of being freed from jail or let off with a community sentence has soared by more than 50 per cent in only two years.
An unprecedented total of 20 were back in the dock in 2015-16, the figure having climbed from 13 to 18 the previous year.
The surge has been fuelled by recordbreaking numbers of sex cases coming to court, meaning police and social workers now have extra culprits to monitor in the community.
But the latest Scottish Government statistics also show reconviction rates are starting to rise for registered sex offenders (RSOs) even as they are falling for most other categories of criminal. Last night, campaigners warned that the system is reaching saturation point.
Margaret-Ann Cummings, whose eight-year-old son Mark was murdered by a convicted paedophile in Glasgow in 2004, said: ‘The Scottish Government was well warned this upsurge was coming and it is disturbing that no action was apparently taken to meet it.
‘Police and social workers are trying to manage more sex offenders against a background of squeezed budgets. This encourages RSOs to think of themselves as the needle in the haystack, which is all some need to reoffend.
‘Sadly, the true figure will be higher because, uniquely for sex offences, victims will often take time to pluck up the courage to report a crime and those cases will have been missed by this survey.
‘Short term, extra resources must be found to beef up supervision. Longer term, there needs to be reform of how RSOs are dealt with: longer, more effective sentences and giving the community the chance to be an extra set of eyes and ears for the authorities.
‘Doing nothing is no longer an option when people’s lives are at risk.’
In 2012-13, there were 624 RSOs sent back to their communities, of whom 13 were convicted of another sex offence within 12 months. A year later, the figure had risen to 18 out of 709.
Now the latest statistics show that for those released in 2014-15, it was 20 out of 876, showing a rise of 54 per cent in two years.
While the reconviction rate for violent offenders committing violent crimes has fallen from 9.8 per cent to 8.4 per cent, the rate for sex offenders committing further sex crimes has risen from 2.1 per cent to 2.3 per cent.
In 2015, a report into RSO monitoring by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland and the Care Inspectorate warned: ‘It is likely there will be an increased number of investiganature tions, detections and prosecutions which may present a challenge to the capacity of agencies responsible for sex offender management.’
The authors said that the current target of one specialist officer for every 25 RSOs was starting to slip and was probably ‘not sustainable’. They called on ministers to ‘understand the emerging and scale of sex offending in Scotland to better inform future planning arrangements’.
Last night, Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘It’s extremely worrying to see this rise. All the signs were there to see this trend might begin to emerge, yet the SNP has done very little to give police and social work the additional resources they so badly need. We need to make sure only offenders who we are certain are no longer a threat to communities are given the opportunity to be released.’
Last night, a Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The monitoring of sex offenders is tougher than ever before with greater police powers and a range of measures for high-risk offenders – such as surveillance, electronic tagging, curfews and restrictions on where they can go or who they can contact.’
‘The true figure will be higher’ ‘The SNP has done very little’