An online petition calling for a minimum prison term of three years for offenders who sexually abuse children has garnered almost 3,000 signatures. It also calls for those guilty of offences to be placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life.
A ‘ministers’ response’ published alongside the petition, which will expire in July, said that the Sexual Offences (Jersey) Law 2018, which came into force in November, consolidated sexual offences into a single enactment and updated the law ‘to meet the needs and expectations of the police, prosecutors, modern Jersey society’.
Asked what he thought of sentences in Jersey, Detective Superintendent Stewart Gull said: ‘I contributed to the statement that was published alongside the petition as did the Law Officers’ Department.
‘I maintain that the sentencing here is stringent and it is more stringent than in many other jurisdictions.’
In Jersey law, maximum sentences are set for offences from which courts decide on a final sentence taking into account any mitigating or aggravating factors.
DSI Gull, chairman of the Jersey Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, which manages sex offenders, said there may be cases where it is relevant to keep an offender on the Sex Offenders Register for life.
‘In some cases, where there continues to be a risk to the public, that might be right. That is why individuals have to go back to the sentencing court to seek removal from the register,’ he said.
In Jersey, in contrast to the position in England and Wales, offenders are not automatically removed from the register at the end of the period, but must make a public application to be removed which is then determined by the court.
