§ Mr. BeggsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many convicted paedophiles are resident in each parliamentary constituency in England and Wales. [118417]
§ Paul GogginsMulti-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), established in April 2001 through the Criminal Justice and Courts Services Act 2000, imposed a duty on each of the 42 police and probation areas in England and Wales to work together to protect the public from sexual and violent offenders.
As part of these arrangements, each police and probation area is required to publish an annual report which includes details of the number of sexual offenders within their area. These are not broken down between offenders against adults and children. On 31 March 2002 over 47,000 offenders were covered by the MAPPA, which includes all offenders subject to the notification requirements of Part 1 of the Sex Offenders Act 1997 as well as other violent and sexual offenders. Offences for which the notification requirements (the "sex offender register") apply are listed in Schedule 1 of the Sex Offenders Act 1997 and include sexual offences against children under the age of 16 as well as adults.
Copies of last year's annual reports are available in the Library. The next MAPPA annual reports will all be published by September and copies will be available in the Library from September.
Statistics on offenders convicted for sexual offences against children are not collected at parliamentary constituency level.