Lie detector tests will be given to all high risk sex offenders in prison in bid to prevent future attacks

Sex offenders will be given compulsory lie detector tests on release from jail in an effort to prevent future attacks.

Those who are found to be at high-risk of carrying out further abuse will be recalled to prison  or face a change of their parole conditions.

No10 wants mandatory tests for all high risk sex pests after a successful trial in the Midlands.

Change: Sex offenders will be given compulsory lie detector tests on release from jail in an effort to prevent future attacks

Probation officers hooked the offenders up to polygraphs while questioning them over their future movements and intentions.

The study found that the lie detector tests led to offenders being more honest with their probation officers.

They made twice as many disclosures to staff as those who were quizzed without the polygraphs.

 

More...

• Inmate, 70, linked to unsolved child rapes and murders in 1970s after breakthrough in DNA technology has horrifying history of sex abuse
• Father of two children aged 5 and 12 found living in abandoned school bus is reunited with them after leaving prison... and now he's fighting to get them back

Their revelations included admitting to contacting a victim or entering an exclusion zone. Some confessed to fantasies, suggesting they would offend again.

Offenders also reported that the tests helped them to manage their own behaviour better.

The lie detector tests would be on top of other rigorous conditions that sex offenders face once they have served their prison sentences.

These include signing the sex offenders’ register, restrictions on where they live and being banned from entering certain areas or coming into contact with potential victims.

A No10 source said: ‘It’s vital that we protect the public from serious sex offenders.

‘That’s why the conditions after they leave prison need to be both strict and rigorously enforced.

‘The pilot schemes using lie detectors to manage offenders in the  community have been a success.

Result: The study found that the lie detector tests led to offenders being more honest with their probation officers

‘So now we’re looking at how it could be rolled out to provide  probation officers with more information to manage the most serious  sex offenders.’

The tests were carried out between April 2009 and October 2011 in the East and West Midlands probation regions.

There are around 3,000 sex offenders on licence in the community at any time, with more than 750 considered to be the most serious cases.

The compulsory use of lie detectors was challenged under human rights legislation but judges backed the  use of polygraphs, saying that they were ‘proportionate’.

Legislation to test polygraphs on sex offenders was introduced by Labour. The Coalition is now planning secondary legislation to use it  on the most serious sex offenders in England and Wales.

The risk of paedophiles reoffending or disappearing after their release from jail is a real one. Last year 57 registered sex offenders were charged with a further crime.

And 843 offenders were on the run from the police in the year ending September 1, 2011, nearly 700 of whom had been untraceable for more than a year.