Internet sends mixed messages

“Perverts keep out: the government gets tough on internet paedophiles who groom vulnerable youngsters online.” This was a headline in The York Press, 7 February 2007, following the announcement by Home Secretary John Reid of “tough new measures” to force internet paedophiles to register their online nicknames and e-mail addresses with the authorities. Reid also ordered a feasibility study of an online alarm system that would notify police every time a convicted paedophile uses registered details to log on to an internet chatroom.

Reid’s crackdown was intended to mark European Internet Safety Day. Unfortunately, the Home Secretary’s timing was inauspicious. Just as Reid announced his plans, the prison overcrowding crisis erupted into a political row when a judge refused to send an internet paedophile to jail because of the shortage of prison places. Derek Williams’s six-month sentence for downloading child pornography was changed to a suspended sentence, apparently following the Home Office’s instruction that only ‘serious