Pilot schemes start on Monday 15 September in four police areas in Britain - Hampshire, Cleveland, Warwickshire and Cambridgeshire - allowing parents and carers to seek details of the background of friends, neighbours and relatives who have unsupervised access to their children.
And single mothers can also discover if a new boyfriend is a convicted paedophile.
All very laudable but here is where the problem occurs. Sara Payne whose daughter was murdered by a paedophile explains: “Say you have a new babysitter you want to be sure about. You can get peace of mind by going to a police station and registering your application to see if there’s anything worrying in his or her background.“You will be vetted and have to sign an affidavit that you will use the information responsibly."
You will "sign an affidavit that you will use the information responsibly" and there's the rub.
Firstly, there is always the possibility of a mistake in the information held by the police. The last time the News of the World published a list of paedophiles some poor sod who isn't sexually interested in children got his head kicked in because he had a similar name to a paedophile.
Secondly, how can the police be sure that the information will be used "responsibly"? How can they know that the details will not be passed on to vigilantes?
Before anyone accuses me of being soft on paedophiles, I know of one way that would stop any paedophile abusing another child - lock them away FOR LIFE.
3 comments:
I'd suggest an even more draconian measure for ensuring paedophiles were stopped from abusing children. It would also prevent them from having children... but I agree, this sort of information is open to abuse or sheer ineptitude. The notion that a single mother might not be able to ascertain that a new partner is a paedophile is very scary. Gives me an idea though (I write crime fiction, I hasten to add).
I noticed you listed Jeffery Deaver as an author you read. My editor recently mentioned that she edits Jeffery Deaver!
You're suggesting that by making the names of sex offenders public, it will encourage vigilanteism. Check your local paper. The names and addresses of sex offenders are already public via court reports -- presumably subject to the same forces of human error you fear will come in to play here. As for the actual threat of vigilanteism I'd say it's negligible. The incident you refer to happened eight years ago and in the wake of a rather sudden and brutal public awareness of the problem of sex offenders in the community; feelings were running very high during that period. All this scheme does is make it easier to obtain information that in most cases is already in the public domain, and if it isn't, then should be.
Post a Comment