Hi everyone, recently found this forum and was hoping to get some experience from people who have been in the situation that I will be in shortly.  Long story short for me, convicted of a sexual offence, custodial sentence and will soon be starting my license period on probation.  I will have an SHPO and license conditions involving monitoring my devices.

Si, I have read some threads on here about what the people who come and visit your house to check your devices can and can't do, for example, on another thread there is a point about them not being allowed to search the house.  I aim to be spending the initial part of my license staying with family, who I have been lucky enough to have their support through this period.  If am therefore staying with them, do PPU or the police have a right to search their devices also as we are sharing an address?

I would be grateful for any information on these visits that people can provide from their own experience as this may determine where I want to live in the future, as I don't want to put any more burden than I have already done on my family.

Thanks in advance for any answers.

The visits by PPU are the same regardless of whether you are on license or not.

It is correct they do not have the power to search your house, they can ask you though but you can politely decline their request. To search your house they would need to either have a warrant or arrest you which would allow them to perform a search which is highly unlikely to happen

If you are living with other people they have no rights to inspect/search those devices. If they see the device when they visit you then you can politely explain it belongs to X and you have no access to it. If you do share a device with another family member such as a laptop then that would need to be registered and inspected but I would highly recommend you do not share devices.

Whilst they can ask to speak to your family they don't have to speak to them but you can have them with you for support. If you do choose to have a family member with you then make sure they are fully aware of what you have done as this may well come up in the conversation.. When they visit my partner often says hello and makes an excuse to go to another room which never causes a problem.

PPU visits vary a lot by police force and individual officers, some do not follow the right procedures/rules and are difficult to work with. Others are more reasonable and I have been lucky so far with both my Offender Managers that they have been reasonable. 

Richard has pretty much covered everything I was going to say, the only other thing I could include is depending on the offender manager. They might make threats with warrants if being denied access to search the property, my previous OM did a few times but this was while my application to discharge the SHPO was on going, so he was pretty much just going on a power trip and salty I was making the application. 

Because you share the property with family it is likely they will only focus on the areas you reside most, and where the devices you use are located. If anything they may ask to peak in all the rooms or to just say a hello to anyone else in the property, but you are still under no obligation to allow this.

Thanks for the replies.  It is really useful to be able to get responses from people who have been through this.  

They may ask you personal questions you wouldn't want to answer even in front of family, just a quick warning.