This is a strange concept for the police chiefs council to invent and no one really knows what it means. But I note that the politicians were quick to deny that any arrests are going to be delayed.

So I wondered how it might apply to non contact image offences, as this was one of the things mentioned by Yvette Cooper in Parliament today. Are these non priority or not? 

The police receive thousands of notifications/allegations about these offences every year. They already prioritise certain types of people. Those tend to be people working with children, such as teachers. After that though it's less clear who is considered a priority. Logically they ought to go after fathers who live with children, rather than single men, but in terms of risk assessments, men who have never married are actually considered a higher risk to children, than those with partners. So that doesn't help.

If you take risk of harm to children as your guide, then that is also confusing. The children in the images are most likely not known to the men viewing the images and they have already been harmed, so for the most part they are not in any danger of imminent future harm from the person viewing the images. That would suggest treating these viewers as non priority arrests.

Then we have the prison issue. Again, if you look at the sentencing guidelines, image offences are regarded as very serious and they should attract an automatic custodial sentence. However, if we look at what happens in practice, only about a quarter of these men will receive a prison sentence.

If you want to keep the prison population as low as possible, then according to the sentencing guidelines, you should not arrest these men, because then you would have to lock them up and you don't want that. But if you look at the reality of sentencing behaviour, then you should arrest these offenders, because you know they probably won't get sent to prison by the courts, meaning it won't fill up the jails. 

So, on the one hand, these offences are seen as a priority, but on the other hand they are not.