© Reuters
Chief Superintendent Gavin Thomas, president of the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales, has called for a different approach to rehabilitating those who have viewed indecent images of children online but have not committed contact offenses.
Citing the rapidly growing sex offenders' register, Thomas warned that police do not have the resources to properly monitor all of those on the list.
"One of the major concerns from our members is managing the register already, and it's growing. For offenders at the highest level there are visits to be made [and] monitoring access to the internet," he told the Times.
"Should we be going down the criminal justice route or, based on a proper assessment, should we be going down the health route? At the moment I am not seeing alternative thinking on how we deal with this issue as it grows and grows and grows," he said.
There are nearly 45,000 offenders on the register today, up from 32,000 a decade ago.
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