Friday 17 April 2015

Using Polygraphy to Understand and Manage The Risk to Children Posed By Men Involved in Downloading Indecent Images of Children

About 50% of men who download indecent images of children also commit contact offenses . However few of those arrested for the offense of downloading indecent images will admit more than the police can prove. This leads to the police conducting lengthy forensic examinations of the arrestee’s computers and other digital media. This rarely produces any evidence of contact offending. Therefore the police and the courts are rarely able to distinguish those who pose a danger to the children that they meet from those who do not.

The sentencing guidelines for possession or making indecent images are such that the majority of those found guilty of possessing even very large quantities of the most serious material receive a sentence of a year or less.

Short sentences of less than a year lead to a time served of 26 weeks  which is too short a time for the offender to participate in any meaningful programme that delivers behavior change. Internet sex offending courses which last for 35 weeks and which are not available in prisons reach a small proportion of the UK’s 50,000 suspected internet sex offenders . In 2012, 354 men completed the community based Internet sex offenders treatment programme which is run by probation trusts . Low intensity sex offending courses which are available in prison to those serving sufficiently long sentences are not allocated to offenders whose only offense is downloading or possessing indecent images.

The natural reluctance of offenders to talk to the police while under investigation and the relatively restricted offering of sex offender treatment programmes for internet offenders means that many dangerous men are never confronted about the most harmful aspects of their past offending and therefore little can be done to anticipate future offending.

Polygraphy breaks this cycle. For reasons not fully understood people, even with secrets to keep, will take polygraph tests, as volunteers. Trials with internet sex offenders, on bail and awaiting forensic examination of their computers who had  previously been considered on all the available evidence to be low , even very low risk, have lead to many to make significant disclosures about past very serious offending (previously unknown to anybody).  Polygraphy enable police and MAPPA teams to set risk levels for offenders at safer levels, leads to the protection and rescue of previously unknown victims and keeps communities safe.

visit: www.bikal.co.uk

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