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Under consideration PE2208: Implement mandatory collection and publication of child sexual offender data
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to:
place a statutory requirement on public bodies to collect statistics on the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of child sexual offenders
to collate and publish the data annually.
Background information
The Casey Audit recommended a National Inquiry into predominantly Pakistani grooming gangs, where victim profiles were that of majority Caucasian girls. The Casey Audit emphasised that poor data collection inhibited accurate profiling of group based child sex offenders, recommending improved data collection.
The Audit described profiles of the act of grooming employed by gangs and an association of asylum seekers with child sexual exploitation gangs.
Senior Scottish institutional figures have recognised that grooming gangs have existed in Scotland for the last decade.
Action has been promised but nothing has occurred.
Data collection by Police Scotland and other bodies is woefully inadequate. Communication and knowledge are key safeguarding requirements in terms of preventing child sexual abuse.
In over 50% of cases related to sexual crimes, nationality and ethnicity are not recorded. Police Scotland also stated that public disclosure of current statistics revealing the profile of sexual crime data would be too expensive to retrieve.
Publication of this data is particularly important in light of recent asylum policies.
1 signature
This petition is now under consideration
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