Justice
Shared Protection 18 January 2010 Managing the horrific risk posed by Scotland’s sex offenders is a thankless task, but someone has to do it Paedophiles have become the acme of evil in modern society. Egged on by an often rabid tabloid media, we have arrived at a point where many men feel uncomfortable taking their own small children swimming, paediatricians’ offices are vandalised and the threat posed to children playing outside from strangers is thought to be ever-present. But the reality is that most children are abused by someone known to them, rather than strangers. That there are many degrees and forms of sexual offending. And that every sex offender is different and poses a unique threat of reoffending. Some may never commit another offence again and some need to be monitored closely for the remainder of their lives. As National MAPPA Coordinator, Willie Manson has to wrestle with these kinds of issues every day. Standing for Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, MAPPA is the means by which various interested bodies and authorities, from the prison service, to the police, criminal justice, social work and the NHS, manage registered sex offenders and restricted patients in the community. According to the official Scottish Government description: “Willie’s role is to provide a national resource to ensure the proper coordination of the work of the individual MAPPAs across Scotland, to provide support and advice to the responsible authorities in their role of implementing the joint working arrangements introduced by sections 10 and 11 of the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2005 and to assure the quality of the new arrangements.” MAPPA is relatively new to Scotland, coming into force in April 2007 and the MAPPA areas correspond with the eight Community Justice Authority catchments. Explaining the operation of MAPPA, Manson says: “One of the key roles of MAPPA is to make sure the resources to manage the risk are applied to those who are identified as being the most risky and one thing it will never do is eliminate risk completely. It is a point we try and make as much as possible. There will always be sadly, offenders and there will always be sexual offences and tragedies will still happen. It is the duty of the responsible authorities to manage that risk as best as possible and manage the local resources as best as possible to reduce that risk as best as possible but it can never be eliminated completely. “We manage the risks that come with these sex offenders. They aren’t all managed and monitored in the way people might think. We don’t have police surveillance teams on all of them.” In this regard, Manson says it is vital not to make the tabloid mistake of assuming all sex offenders are slavering monsters little better than animals driven to reoffend time and time again against anyone and everyone. He says: “Sex offenders have taken over from witches as the kind of pariah in society these days and there’s a huge amount of myth making out there about what sex offenders are. Sex offenders are not all paedophiles, for example. They offend against a variety of different people, male and female, vulnerability is the key.”The MAPPA approach, begun under the previous Labour/Lib Dem Executive and continued by the Scottish Government, seems to be working too. Figures released late last year show that only one in 68 registered sex offenders in Scotland reoffended in 2008-09. As of March 31 2009 there were 2967 registered sex offenders living in Scottish communities with a further 798 in jail. Of these 2825 complied with the notification requirement of the register while there were 136 breaches of the notification requirements, 47 fewer than for 2007-08. In all, 44 offenders were charged with a further sexual or violent offence. The reality is that every one of those 44 offenders will have made a drastic and often indelible impact on the life of another human being by their actions. Yet the sad fact is that we will never be able to fully eliminate such offenders and offences from our society. As Manson says, we can never remove risk from our society. But for every headline generated by a tragic attack, we should recognise that much good work is being done. Manson says that in many regards, such as the use of Orders of Lifelong Restriction (OLR), Scotland leads the world in the way it tries to protect society from such offenders. “You will never see a headline that everything is working well and things are being managed appropriately and the garden is rosy. Sex offenders are never good news. And a sex offender story is always in the negative. But there is a huge amount of evidence going around about the positive side of people working together and managing the risk. “If a sex offender was spotted and dealt with before they offended, that doesn’t make the papers but that happens day in day out, people working hard to reduce the risk, to identify where the risk might be increased and put measures in place to reduce that risk. There are large numbers of tools in the armoury now to reduce that risk. At one level, sex offender prevention orders are being used widely around the country to restrict sex offenders from certain behaviours or from going to certain places or meeting with certain people and they are used very effectively and they are policed and if people are found to be in breach of that, there are significant penalties and they find themselves back in custody pretty quickly. “It is probably worth mentioning that while OLRs are unique to Scotland, MAPPA in Scotland in my view is a world leader in many respects.” Manson also points to the deep integration of health services in managing offenders, again an initiative unique to Scotland.  “We have a tremendously well integrated health service in MAPPA which doesn’t happen in other parts of this country, never mind anywhere else in the world. The fact that health is so well integrated into MAPPA has been a huge step forward from my point of view because a large number of the offenders being managed within MAPPA have health issues that have probably gone unnoticed in the past and this now ensures they have health professionals with the MAPPA groups in each area that can have these issues flagged up to them. “The interventions for sex offenders aren’t just arresting them. There’s lots of other things that can be put in place and health interventions are one such measure,” he says. One of the most emotive issues surrounding sex offenders in the community is their housing. Put bluntly, nobody likes the idea of living next door to a paedophile or other sex offender. In this regard, Manson says the development of a bespoke strategy in Scotland to try and deal with the issue is also world’s best practice: “The fact that we have a strategy for the accommodation of sex offenders that everyone can understand is something that just doesn’t exist elsewhere. It provides clear direction and there is also funding for what are called solo sex offender liaison officers which are effectively housing officers in each area who have the primary responsibility for making sure that information is shared properly and they are involved in what is called the environmental scanning for accommodation for sex offenders, to make sure they are housed in the right place.” Further down the line, once suitable risk assessment tools have been developed, Manson says MAPPA may be extended to violent offenders. But in the meantime, he says he expects those using MAPPA procedures will become more and more skilled in managing some of the most dangerous people in society. He says: “It is basically common sense but all too often in the past, common sense wasn’t universally common. This is a process now that people can all relate to. It is happening the same way in every part of Scotland. There are more meetings to go to but people need to come together to discuss offenders and if it is working well in an area, then it should mean the resources are being applied to the riskiest individuals.” Related articles: Sealing the gaps 25 June 2010 New boy on the block 25 June 2010 More with less 11 June 2010 Seeking justice 11 June 2010 New man 11 June 2010 See all articles in this category Submit a comment |
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