Marcus Wood

Is this really a suitable 'address' for someone on the Sex Offenders Register?

There has been a very good response to my campaign to highlight the daft rules on sex offenders registration that means they can give police 'approximate whereabouts' instead of a formal address.

According to the Home Office "under section 83.7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, an offender who has no residence in the country must give the address or location of a place where they can regularly be found. If the offender is not regularly in the place they have given as their residence, they are in breach of notification requirements and they will be prosecuted."

So it appears that homeless sex offenders can get away with saying 'I live on a park bench in Torre' and that is satisfactory within the law, provided when the police go there they can find them.

Aside from the obvious strain on police resources (just how many of these people are the Police having to 'keep an eye on' ?) there are several other important issues here. On the one hand, if these people are so dangerous that they need to be constantly monitored by police then surely leaving them literally 'on the streets' is a serious security lapse.

On the other hand if they have been succesfully rehabilitated and are not a danger to society then why do we need a sex offenders register at all?

Either way this is another case of the Home Office making rules up to suit tomorrow's SUN headlines and then discovering loophole after loophole.