While 'inside' I got to know this guy who's now on the sex offenders register. He heard this week that his police checks have increased from twice a year to once a month without him having been in breach of any conditions. Apparently since he's been on it they have added conditions and increased the severity several times without any breach by him. I always thought adding to a sentence without judicial review was illegal. It certainly should be.

No doubt the government think that this is getting tough on the causes of crime, but far from it. The way to encourage people to remain law abiding is to show them some respect and give them stability. They've already served their sentence. But the government have removed the carrot and left only the stick in place. He doesn't know what will happen from day to day. There is now no incentive for offenders to co-operate or go straight. He has no stability or security, and we know that these are things which ex-cons need to be able to focus them on the right path. It's now more likely that people on the register will re-offend in order to get back into prison because only prison can provide the needed stability in their lives - so these new home office rules are themselves the cause of crime.

Maybe this is the government's intention, so that they can report the increase in re-offending and pave the way for yet more draconian legislation.

I'm sure the papers will enjoy this, but I doubt any of the victims of re-offending will. It's bad news for everyone.

You have hit on one of my bugbears-the odious "Sex Offender's Registry" It's completly undemocratic and an attempt to meter out punish outside the courts.

Worse still: it doesn't actually work and is purely a political publicity fix to disguise the real causes of crime-a young alienated groups who don't get to share in the great 'dream economy' we are supposedly enjoying.

Statistics show sex offenders when released from jail have only a 5% re-offend rate. That's way down on the figures of other re-offenders in other areas of crime.

The UK will surely go the way of the US-where you get an 18 year old boy having sex with his 15 year old girlfriend and he on charges and a registered offender for life.

As for the checks-I believe offenders sign a sort of contract and any alteration would not be legal-not that that helps those who feel rather helpless.

This is part of the Trojan Horse to bring in full time survelance and control in other areas. Sex Offenders are chosen and demonised as the worst and like terrorists-have to be constantly monitired.

I reckon it's a way for governments to gain control of the Internet-every government hates an entity they can't control.

You can see examples happening everywhere: in the USA there is a young bloke called Justin Berry-google him. He claimed to be an abused kid because he "performed" for men via his webcam and then went to Mexico and started a porn website where young Mexican boys were paid to have sex with prostitutes. As an expose on him was about to appear in the NY Times-he managed to get immunity from prosecution from the FBI by handing over the details of his subscribers-about 1500 men. Now he goes around giving lectures and demands these bloke be arrested. Unfortunately for he and the FBI-all who joined his website thought the site legal as it quoted all the correct statutes and claimed every actor was "18" or over.

The FBI don't dare arrest one man as many are threatening to sue Berry for enducing them to join an illegal site. A group of young Mexican men who also appeared on his site when they were under the legal age are also forming a lawsuit against Berry and the FBI.

Same as in Australia-the police have been given millions of dollars to set up 40 men to pretend to 11/12 year olds luring men into attempting to commit a crime by talking in chat rooms. Then they introduced laws saying they wanted the right to arrest people at the "thinking" stage of a crime..
there you have it at last..thought crimes.

Meanwhile-the country is rampant with real child abuse in Aboriginal communities and all these coppers wears boots made by some kid in Vietnam.

Reading these posts makes me wonder if the British Authorities are in breach of the Human Rights laws. It seems incredible that people who have served their sentence, regardless of the nature of the offence, can have further punishments imposed upon them despite remaining within the law.

How does this tie in with the ruling that it is illegal to add days to a prisoner's sentence without judicial review? Isn't the principle the same?

I wonder if people on the register are afraid to make a challenge for fear of exposure, or fear of even worse conditions should their challenge fail.

Reminds me of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Shameful !

Ah it HAS been challenged and defended by the Government as NOT a punishment but as protection against future crimes.

The ECHR found in favour of that.

The ECHR found in favour of the sex offenders register as a central resource, but that was before the policy of imposing conditions and restrictions which can only be seen as extra punishments. Now, it seems, the intention is to push the ex-cons so far beyond the limit that they do re-offend. Therefore it cannot possibly be seen as protection against future crimes. In fact I could name two people who have re-offended as a direct consequence of their treatment under the register. I'm sure there must be more. They had tried to be law abiding but found that, due to their inclusion on the register, they could not get employment, could not get a house, were not able to make new friends without the police 'investigating' their friends to see if there were any iffy motives, could never have a family, and they were harrassed with increased visits by the police who imposed even more restrictions and conditions for no apparent reason. This drove them back into crime because the clear message was that they would never be accepted as law abiding citizens no matter how they behaved. They felt they were better off inside.

Obviously I won't publish their names because I am not a tabloid. But their crimes were as a consequence of the register. With this new policy I dare say the situation will get worse.

If the ECHR approves of all this, then there is little hope for anyone.

It's a wacky proposal-a defense against "future" crimes. I can't see how that could possibly be justified especially as any crime can happen within a moment-and take five minutes.

No it's clearly just ridiculous government over-reaction to make it appear they are doing something.

I take the view that, despite politicians and police bleating about crime figures etc-they are actuallly complete failures in their profession.

Obviously when a person joins the police force they accept all the privileges that go with the job ie: they expect permanent employment, superannuation , career advancement and so on.

In other words-unless crime continues or increases, they will be out of a job. It's within their best interests that the crime rate is high !.

Why not go a step further as the nutjobs who dream up these ludicrous schemes think-or as I'm sure tabloid newspapers demand. Publish the names and addresses, crimes etc of those on this "register".

That should keep the punters happy as it has in the USA where the sheeple who believe in all this stuff lap it up -except of course, as they are finding in suburbs in cities around the USA that when prospective buyers find out there is a"registered sex offendor" next door they began to bargain the price down or rapidly lose interest.

Those on the register should do as one did in Detroit whose neighbors who were screeching so loudly about his presense in the street. He personally wrote to every neighbor and said if each one gave him a gift of $10,000 he could sell up and move, or alternatively he could always save them some trouble and erect a large sign on his front lawn stating :

'SEX OFFENDER LIVES HERE'

For some bizarre reason the neighbors all suddenly became forgetful about the man's noteriety.