UK Police Reportedly Lost Track of Over 500 Dangerous Sex Offenders Living 'Among the Public'

Sexual offenders are among the largest offence groups amongst prisoners serving immediate custodial sentences, according to UK government statistics. 64,325 Category One registered sex offenders were registered in the UK at the end of March 2021.

The UK law enforcements have lost track of 516 sex criminals that they had to be monitoring, The Sun has reported, citing obtained data. According to the report, harmful offenders are living unobserved "among the public".

“It is scandalous that there should be more than 500 loose and unsupervised in our communities. These individuals could pose a serious risk to public safety and locating them should be an urgent priority for police forces. The policy of not publicising these names to alert the public should be reversed immediately,” David Spencer, of campaign group the Centre for Crime Prevention, said, as quoted by The Sun.

The Sun reveals that most of the missing criminals are in London – 233.

Moreover, level 2 offenders, who pose a “high or very high risk of serious harm”, are among those absent in at least two regions.

There are three ‘risk levels' in the UK. Level 1 involves normal agency management (cases with a low-medium risk of serious harm to others), level 2 - often called local inter-risk agency management (cases with a high or very high risk of harm to others) and level 3 - reserved for those deemed to pose the highest risk of causing serious harm.