SEX offenders who have evaded supervision after serving their sentence should be named in public to help efforts to help track them down, the Scottish Conservative leader said yesterday.
SEX offenders who have evaded supervision after serving their sentence should be named in public to help efforts to help track them down, the Scottish Conservative leader said yesterday.
Annabel Goldie is urging Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to include these "missing" offenders on the Scottish Government website. She said Mr MacAskill had agreed with calls for missing sex offenders to be posted on a dedicated website,.
Ms Goldie added: "The Scottish Conservatives, like the majority of people in Scotland, are horrified at the number of sex offenders who have absconded, with insufficient measures taken to trace them. In October, we were further horrified to learn that not one of the sex offenders who absconded featured on the Scottish Government's website. That is an unacceptable state of affairs and it appears that in the intervening two months the required action has not been taken."
In November last year, a deal between police and the Crown Office enabled forces to publish pictures of wanted offenders on a website run by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
Mr MacAskill said at that time the government was sending a clear message to every sex offender in the land they would "crack down with the full force of the law".
The Tories want those who have absconded from police supervision to be named urgently and for the Crimestoppers website to be publicised widely. Ms Goldie also said the idea of using satellite tracking and lie detectors on sex offenders should be considered again.
She added: "We will continue to fight for automatic early release to be scrapped so more sex offenders are kept in jail for longer, but those who are released must be monitored effectively. There can be no compromise over public safety and if a sex offender disappears then they lose the right to anonymity."
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Mr MacAskill has made clear his view that where high-risk sex offenders fail to comply with conditions imposed on them or abscond, the police and other local agencies should consider all options, based on the specific intelligence available to them.
"That includes making their details available more widely - whether through the targeted disclosure system introduced for offenders who ignore warnings about their behaviour, or by publishing photographs, where considered appropriate, in the Press and/or online. However, decisions about individual cases are clearly operational decisions for the police, based on their specific intelligence and their assessment of the potential results of publishing or not publishing.
"We're also clear the public must have greater access to information about the work of the professionals tasked with managing sex offenders and keeping our communities safe, particularly for the most serious offenders."
