Police unable to keep tabs on all 'monitored' sex offenders due to officer shortages

CONVICTED sex offenders released from jail are not being properly monitored because of police cuts, it has been warned.

A senior coroner said there is now a “postcode lottery” of risk from more than 91,000 criminals who require regular checks.

Many forces are struggling to staff units dedicated to monitoring them.

They are having to prioritise who they keep tabs on because of shortages and a rise in numbers of those being released.

Fears emerged during an inquest into the death of vulnerable Elizabeth McCann, 26, who was raped and strangled by convicted

sex offender Simon Goold at his flat in Ashton-under-Lyne, Tameside in August 2022.

Greater Manchester Police was criticised over its monitoring of Goold, who was on a life licence after being released from a jail

term for rape in 2019.

In a report, South Manchester’s Senior Coroner Alison Mutch warned: “The inquest was told that a significant number of police forces were struggling to staff their Sexual Offender Management Units adequately.

The level of supervision of sex offenders in the community was being ‘risk managed’, which is posing a risk to communities.”

Latest figures show there were 91,040 registered sex offenders requiring multi-agency monitoring by the end of March 2023.

With levels growing annually there are fears that number will top 100,000 by 2029.

The rise is due to an increasing number of people caught with indecent images of children, and other online offending.

There were 147,000 officers in England and Wales in 2010, but under Tory Coalition cuts this shrunk to under 127,000 by

2018. A push to recruit 20,000 new officers by last year saw levels rise to around 150,000.

However, Elizabeth’s inquest was told staffing issues had been known by senior police managers for many years, with a decision

taken to manage far below appropriate staffing numbers.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman said: “While of little consolation to Elizabeth’s family, our Sex Offender Management

Unit has since doubled in size.”

A spokeswoman for Women Against Rape said: “It’s not a one-off. The coroner warns of the risk of future murders. This man

was a danger to women. Police and probation staff were careless, untrained, unsupervised.”

The National Police Chiefs Council said: “Policing in the UK has a number of effective tools to manage registered sex offenders

and the risk they pose to the public. This will always be a complex area of work.”

Donna Jones, Chair of the APCC and PCC for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, said: “Elizabeth McCann was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender who should have been being monitored in the community.

"The concerns reported by the coroner following the inquest into Elizabeth’s death about the number of police forces struggling to adequately staff their Sexual Offender Management Units are extremely worrying and must be acted upon so that women and all those in local communities are protected.

“The public quite rightly expects that those who pose a potential risk but are living in the community will be properly supervised. "Policing and offender management must, therefore, be suitably resourced. Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are working every day to ensure their local forces prioritise the tackling of violence against women and girls.

"The job of the police is to keep the public safe and PCCs will, on the public’s behalf, hold chief constables to account so that the failures that contributed to Elizabeth McCann’s death cannot happen again.”