Another consideration regarding the information on the forum. Many of the regulars on here are convicted of sexual offences (unsurprising, as even a minor one-off community sentence for a sexual offence puts a lot more limitations on your daily life, until the day you die, than a long jail stretch for multiple counts of violence, theft, etc.

So due to the stigma of the sexual offences committed and the fact that people are often asking about entry to certain countries, getting out of a SOPO, ways around doing things, etc., a key priority is not to be identified by any law enforcement who may be browsing the forum. So with this guardedness, there may unfortunately be a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies, some of which are deliberate so as not to reveal your identity. This is understandable, IMO.

Well, you could start by telling them what is inaccurate and what corrections they should make.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

OK but the information hub is incomplete and inaccurate too so how can we help unlock improve it?

At the risk of sounding harsh that is not what the forum is for. You have the Unlock information hub for providing information, the forum is entirely based on our individual experiences of the justice system and beyond. I think it would be incorrect to suggest the information contained within is entirely accurate but it does provide an insight into the experience of others and I have found it invaluable since my arrest, conviction and beyond.

I'm looking here and on Unlock's site for answers to various questions, and only finding half answers and false assumptions on many things. It would be good to have solid, definitive answers, reviewed by experts and backed up by consistent confirmations of real life experiences, as it seems to be the blind leading the blind and ultimately a lot of bad advice being given out here. There are also very few users it seems, probably because of that.

The law is applied inconsistently by courts, lawyers and police, even though the very point of it is to be fair and equal. The difficulty in finding good quality information about different people's experiences allows such abuse to take place. It would be much better if one could go to your PPU for example and say "500 other people had their SOPOs discharged after 5 years this year so mine should be as well" instead of them each applying the rules however they see fit.

While the forum also is very hierarchically structured, that makes it harder for information to be in one place, and instead the good information is mixed up with the bad information.

P.S. sorry I should have put this in the feedback section but it helps make my point that it wasn't obvious to do so. Feel free to move it if that's possible for moderators.