‘Low-risk’ child abuse viewers should get caution, says report

LOW-RISK offenders who view child sexual abuse images online should be spared prosecution and instead issued with conditional cautions, according to the Police Foundation.

In a major report about online child abuse, the policing think tank also proposed a legal change to exempt children who share naked images from prosecution under obscenity laws, provided there is no evidence of exploitation.

The measures would enable police to focus investigations on offences where there is a genuine risk of physical abuse or grooming by paedophiles.

Police chiefs welcomed the report, warning of a “huge” rise in children self-generating and sharing indecent images, of which there are 18 million reported by Facebook alone in a year.

Dept Chief Constable Ian Critchley, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child abuse, said in this type of crime “children need to be supported and educated, not criminalised”.

He emphasised the need “to differentiate between these cases, and cases where children are exploited, blackmailed, groomed... and abused”.

The foundation said the internet had enabled the production and consumption of child sexual abuse material on “an industrial scale”, leading to a “monumental surge” in demand on services.

The report advised the Government to pilot a scheme of conditional cau- tions for offenders where police established there was no risk of more serious sexual abuse. Offenders would have to attend and pay for an educational course and would be logged by police.

They would also be subject to advanced DBS checks barring them from working with children.

The report cited a 450 per cent rise in sexual grooming offences – from 7,500 to 42,000 since 2016-17 – and an 800 per cent rise in prosecutions under obscene publication laws, from below 5,000 in 2013-14 to 31,712 in 2020-21.

Two thirds of teams said they lacked the forensic resources to investigate crimes, with charging rates falling from 51 per cent to 9 per cent.

Rick Muir, the Police Foundation director, said forces were “totally overwhelmed” by millions of images referred by social media firms.

‘In this type of crime, children need to be supported and educated, not criminalised’