If you want to know why we never seem to be able to develop a sensible and proportionate policy towards prosecuting sex offences look no further than the comment threads beneath this morning’s story about Chief Constable Simon Bailey.
Bailey, speaking on the Today programme, suggested that men who view child porn should not automatically be jailed but should instead be cautioned, put on the sex offenders’ register and made to attend courses on offending. This, he says, has become necessary in order to concentrate police resources on the most dangerous offenders – those who are a physical risk to children – and to prevent the Crown Prosecution Service becoming clogged up with cases. Operation Hydrant, the investigation into child sex offences which Bailey leads, is already investigating 400 people a month, which he described as the ‘tip of the iceberg’. According to the NSPCC there could be as many as 500,000 Britons viewing child porn.
I know from experience what to expect on Twitter when you make any suggestion which amounts to less than the summary castration of sex offenders. Chief Constable Bailey’s lawyers might like to have a look into some of the casual allegations made against him by keyboard warriors – suggesting that he must have something to hide if he wants to ‘decriminalise paedophilia’. Actually, he has said no such thing. He hasn’t suggested that viewing of child porn should cease to be a criminal offence, or even stop being an imprisonable one – only that that it should not be responded to with formal prosecution in all cases.
Bailey has merely pointed out what should be obvious: that sex offences against children, like all other offences, come in various degrees of seriousness. Yes, it is right that it should be a criminal offence to view child porn because even if you are not yourself physically harming the children you are creating the market which leads to children being abused. But it would be very easy for the police to scoop up huge numbers of offenders at the minor end of the spectrum – those viewing moderately indecent images – and have them banged up in jail. That would earn them plaudits in some quarters for taking the scourge of child porn seriously, but it would do nothing to tackle more devious operators: including the people who are physically abusing children or who are producing the porn – and who, unlike your average offender, tend to be rather cleverer at hiding their activities through the dark web and by other means. If anyone wants to advance a rational argument why the police should spend their limited resources on the low-hanging fruit in order to maximise prosecutions – at the cost of letting many bigger offenders escape justice – I would love to hear it.
As for the internet mob suggesting that Chief Constable Bailey needs to have his laptop seized and examined, surely it would be more logical for someone who is a closet sex offender themselves to try to conceal their activities by conforming to the mob view that no punishment is severe enough. That which we criticise in others, as the adage goes, tends to be that which we most dislike in ourselves.
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