More access to paedophile PCs

A new study has highlighted the growing problem of paedophile’s downloading an increasing number of child pornography images from the internet in their homes with relative impunity.

Senior officers are concerned that new powers to monitor convicted paedophiles in their homes don’t go far enough. Websites that contain indecent images of children has rocketed from 3,400 in 2004 to 6,000 last year. Internet Watch in its first year of operation received 615 reports of child abuse sites. Last year this figure was over 27,000. The new report from Dr Julia Davidson, Westminster University, calls for “regular monitoring of all registered sex offenders’ home computers”.

Detective Superintendent James Cameron, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland’s management of offenders working group, told the New Scotsman: “It would be helpful if we had unlimited powers to examine the computers because there are obvious implications to sex offenders having access to computers in the house.”