THE head of Britain's national online child protection centre sparked outrage yesterday by arguing that paedophiles who view child pornography should not necessarily go to jail.
Jim Gamble, of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said a police caution and treatment to address their paedophilia would, in many cases, be a better option than prison.
"We shouldn't be sending everyone that ever commits an offe
nce - particularly of the viewing kind - to prison," he said, adding that some offenders could be "managed" and dealt with by police caution in a way that allowed them to maintain their lives and their families.
His comments triggered incredulity from child protection experts and politicians, who said Mr Gamble was giving "completely the wrong message".
Mr Gamble said it was time to adopt a more "intelligent posture" in tackling the problem.
"[If] someone is at the beginning of the spiral of abuse, where there is evidence to indicate that this person may well benefit from a police caution and be managed, then, of course, that needs to be done."
A spokesperson for Children 1st, one of Scotland's leading childcare charities, said: "Sex offenders should get appropriate prison sentences, which doesn't always happen. They need to get effective treatment programmes and complete them before coming out.
"We support more effective treatment as well as prison, not instead of prison."
Michele Elliott, director of children's charity Kidscape, added: "If you download child pornography, you are just as guilty as the people who are taking the photographs.
"You create a market, because you want to view child pornography, therefore a child is abused for your pleasure. As far as I am concerned, that means prison.
"Obviously, that means different length prison sentences for different crimes, but as far as I'm concerned, there's a child victim out there, and justice demands that you go to prison for having been involved in the abuse of a child."
Bill Aitken MSP, the Scottish Tories' justice spokesman, said: "At the moment, offences of this type in many cases do not result in custody, but the point has to be made that one child being exploited in this type of filthy trade is one too many.
"Those who feed the porn trade in so far as kids are concerned should be aware that jail is appropriate. To suggest otherwise sends out a completely wrong message."
The number of websites containing indecent images of children has grown from 3,400 in 2004 to an estimated 6,000 last year. In its first year of operations in 1996, the Internet Watch Foundation, a global online watchdog, received 615 reports of internet abuse compared to 27,750 reports last year.
Mr Gamble later sought to clarify his views, issuing a statement which said offenders must face the "full powers of the criminal justice system".
He added: "In most cases, that will mean prison, in other cases that may mean an adult caution. In all cases it will mean that the perpetrator is introduced to a system that manages the risk they pose to society and, in particular, children.
"That is how cases are handled now. That is how cases should be handled."
Tory peer Lord Taylor of Warwick, who is a judge and patron of Kidscape, said it was "perfectly proper" for Mr Gamble to raise the issue, but he had used a clumsy form of words.
The full article contains 571 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
