Totally agree, although it depends what you mean by a 'certain amount of monitoring', because many SHPO are automatically discharged after 5 or 10 years without a court appearance. Its only the lifetime ones we are talking about, so how long should they have to wait to be reviewed and would it depend on what offence they had committed, or what sentence they received, or purely on their risk level?

Hi
It is a nice idea but I do have issues surrounding SOPO/SHPO as in certain circumstances they are deemed as a "default" solution when the "individual" scenario of the event/offence could suggest there is not a requirement for one.
As I have published before The Justice Inspectorates stated
<quote>Reoffending amongst sexual offenders is lower than that of general offenders. Indeed, those who are deemed lower risk have measured reoffending risks similar to the general population and some researchers argue that the resources to manage such cases would be better expended in primary prevention and victim support</quote>

In brief, if there is a need for a SOPO/SHPO to be issued to a (or a person becomes) a "Low Risk", after a certain amount of monitoring the system should be allowed to discharge the SOPO/SHPO without the requirement and RISK (to the ex-offender) of a Court appearance.
In times of overworked Courts, limited support both legal and financially to the ex-offender, surly a progressive society should be able to see the sense of a combination of the above thoughts?

Society suggests I must let go of all my expectations but I disagree, as whilst I have a voice, I have hope.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.
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This forum supports these words, thank you Unlock and your contributors.

The other day I came across some really interesting details of a plan for reactive management of SO. This idea was first presented in 2017 and it does appear to be operating in some police forces today.

https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/new-tailored-approach-to-managing-registered-sex-offenders-introduced

The idea is that if an SO has been rated as low risk for 3 years, and has no SHPO, then they no longer need to have any home visits. It was introduced in the year that the number of SO passed 50,000 for the first time and it was obviously intended to reduce the workload of police forces.

The number of SO right now is nearer 70k, so how many are being managed under this scheme? It really depends on the police force. Around 50% of all SO are classified as low risk, but very few are on the scheme. Just 70 out of 593 in one area. One police force uses a polygraph to assess who should be on the scheme, although that is not standard practice. One police force (Durham) sends uniformed officers round to visit SO, in a clear breach of the national policy. Lots of forces send just one PPU, when they should send teams of two. In London, the Met allows SO to be monitored by phone and even to complete their annual registration by phone or email. Many of these policies are in place, because there are too many SO and not enough officers to monitor them all.

There is no consistency of approach across the country. But the most obvious problem with reactive management, is that so many SO have an SHPO. That prevents many low risk people from being managed reactively, and forces the police to visit them. With the numbers set to increase to 100k by 2030, there really ought to be an expansion of the scheme to include SO with an SHPO, so that resources are being used effectively.