Sex offender monitoring defended with 300 missing

The Sun newspaper asked every force in Britain how many registered sex offenders were missing in their area. Forty-six forces out of 52 replied at the time of going to print, and in total the whereabouts of 316 sex offenders were unknown.

These included 128 in London, 30 in the West Midlands and 15 in Greater Manchester. Kent reported that there were 14 people on the sex offenders register who had gone missing, while in Sussex there were 11, and Humberside and South Yorkshire have eight missing each. Leicestershire and Thames Valley reported seven missing each.

Detective Chief Inspector Dave Riddick, from Greater Manchester Police, said the number of missing offenders, 15, is less than one per cent of the total number of registered sex offenders in the area.

He said: "None of those that are currently missing are classed as very high risk. Protecting people is our priority and through the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (Mappa), all serious offenders are rigorously managed and monitored by specially trained staff."

Each police force has arrangements with agencies including the local probation and prison services under Mappa to monitor those convicted of sex crimes.

Superintendent Bob Mills, from the West Midlands Police Public Protection Unit, said officers were working "continuously" to find those missing. He said that task "has to take place in a controlled and covert way to reduce the risk of the offender going further off the radar".

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: "The safety and protection of the public is paramount at all times when dealing with sex offenders. We take this matter extremely seriously and officers are proactively following lines of inquiry in order to trace these offenders to ensure that they are dealt with robustly for having breached the terms of their conditions."

Head of Kent Police's public protection unit Detective Superintendent Maria Shepherd said: "Protecting the people of Kent is our priority. We work with our partners to use all the resources available to us in order to best manage violent and sex offenders in Kent, helping to keep our communities safe. We will also work closely with other forces, in the UK and abroad, to ensure the law is upheld."

Sussex Police said that as of March 1, 10 out of nearly 1,000 registered sex offenders were missing. A spokesman said a "considerable amount of time and effort" is taken trying to trace them.