Registered sex offenders (FOI ref: 1434A/24)
Request
Please state how many Registered Sex Offenders (Category 1) your force had responsibility for as at 1.1.24?
Of the above, the number of wanted or missing, and their MAPPA levels
Response
Please find attached our response.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.
Please state how many Registered Sex Offenders (Category 1) your force had responsibility for as at 1.1.24?
As of 04/01/2024 we had 4751
Of the above, the number of wanted or missing, and their MAPPA levels
Current wanted or missing:
86 WM as of 23/09/24
85 are MAPPA 1
1 are MAPPA 2
There are 4,751 registered sex offenders within our region of which the whereabouts of 86 are currently unknown.
This includes those who have not registered as part of their requirement under the Sexual Offences Act, and represents just under 2% of those we robustly manage on a daily basis along with our partner agencies.
We have detectives who specialise in monitoring sex offenders who work with our partners to actively locate these people. Our intelligence suggests 44 have left the country but we continually work with our police colleagues across the world to trace them.
None of those who are currently wanted or missing for sexual or other substantive offences; they are all wanted for either failing to appear at court, or are facing a recall to prison.
As a matter of course, details of all missing registered sex offenders are circulated on the Police National Computer and to all forces and law enforcement agencies.
Our approach to finding these people is assessed on a case by case basis so we can maximise, rather than compromise, our opportunities to find and arrest them.