Released sex offenders face lie detector tests
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One in three sex offenders released from prison may have had unsupervised contact with children, a trial for the Probation Service involving lie- detector tests has indicated.
And three of the 30 men testedneeded "significant action" to prevent them reoffending, the study found.
The trial was conducted by two American polygraph examiners on sex offenders on probation in the West Midlands, Northumberland and Surrey last year. They were asked questions about their past offending, current behaviour and fantasies, including whether they had been in contact with children or looking for contact.
Professor Don Grubin, of the sexual behaviour unit at Newcastle University, who supervised the trial, said: "Everyone disclosed information relevant to their rehabilitation. About a third revealed unsupervised contact with children, and with three of them, we believe, if intervention had not been taken, they would have reoffended. The men themselves said as much afterwards, in retrospect, if action had not been taken."
Of the three cases, one man was returned to a hostel, child protection proceedings were started in another and the third had his supervision increased.
Professor Grubin said he was in talks with the Home Office over a possible larger trial involving up to 200 offenders.
Lie-detector tests are widely used in the United States for monitoring sex offenders and in criminal inquiries, custody evaluations and professional sexual misconduct cases. In Britain their use is at an early stage and doubts over their accuracy mean they cannot be used by police or accepted as evidence in court.
The Probation Service is considering using the tests to help monitor paedophiles if they can be shown to be reliable.
Sandy Gray, a polygraph examiner from Arizona, said: "Paedophiles are very deviant and usually very skilled at being manipulative. The polygraph examination is, by far, better than simply accepting their word for what they are doing."
Roger Stoodley, who led the police inquiry into a paedophile network that included the child killer Sidney Cooke, said sex offenders were practised liars and could fool the most sophisticated equipment.