Scottish courts fail to ban sex offenders from travel

Scottish police and courts have failed to ban a single child sex offender from travelling abroad to engage in child sex tourism.

Research undertaken by Strathclyde University has revealed that no Foreign Travel Orders were handed out in 2009, which prevents sex predators from visiting countries which are notorious for child sex trade.

However police and prosecutors in England and Wales have handed out FTOs on 13 separate occasions in the last two years, in a bid to hamper the movements of paedophiles to counties like Thailand and Cambodia.

17 convicted paedophiles are classed as missing, and it is believed that they are on the run from authorities overseas.

Research carried out by social work lecturer Beth Weaver looked at the effectiveness of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements for keeping record of high-risk offenders.

It has also been shown that the Sexual Offences Prevention Orders that are currently made available to the courts had only been used on a handful of occasions.

The research revealed that only 45 SOPOs, which ban convicted paedophiles from visiting areas such as playgrounds and schools, were issued last year.

The number of offenders that were returned to prison for breaching their SOPO doubled in the last year, while the number of those who received further convictions for serious or violent sexual crimes went up from eight to 44.

Justice spokesman for Labour, Richard Baker, has urged Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to commence a review into how to keep track of paedophiles, and to consider a total ban on convicted sex offenders from travelling overseas.