Meeting of the Parliament 03 December 2015
I thank the cabinet secretary for that clarification, but it is still not in any way a statistic that we can be proud of.
Urgent analysis needs to be carried out to establish what has gone wrong and to rectify the situation as a priority.
That brings me to the Scottish Conservatives’ proposal to address and reduce the risk, which is for sex offenders to lose their right to anonymity if they breach the notification requirements that are imposed under the terms of their release. Losing the right to anonymity in those circumstances is entirely justified, to protect the public, reduce risk and aid the police in their efforts to locate the individual. It would serve as a powerful deterrent to any sex offender who might consider breaching the terms laid down in the violent and sex offenders register. There is a balance to be struck between allowing someone who has served their sentence the freedom to integrate back into society and protecting the communities in which they are placed.
It is evident from the MAPPA report that, 10 years on from the Justice 2 Sub-Committee report on the management of serious sex offenders, much more requires to be done to ensure that local communities are protected. At the very least, communities have a right to expect that everything that can practically be done is being done to ensure that tragedies such as the murder of Mark Cummings are never repeated in their neighbourhoods.
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