§ Dr. IddonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress has been made in trialing the vicious and sex offenders register. [100834]
§ Hilary BennThe Violent and Sex Offenders Register (ViSOR) will enable the Police and Probations services to register offenders and maintain a national, up-to-date, shared store of information on offenders, their risk assessments and, critcally, their movements.
The register will be piloted at two sites in November 2003. Subject to their successful completion, national implementation will start in January 2004.
In the meantime, forces have had the capability since August 2002 to search a database for information on offenders within their force area. This will help forces to track offenders, rationalise their business processes and ease the implementation of the full national solution, particularly in putting past records onto the new database.