Discussion about name change for offenders

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It is frightening that perpetrators with a changed name can apply for a new passport and driver’s license and then live with a clean slate, said Labor MP Sarah Champion. MPs from the ruling Conservative Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP) have also criticized the current arrangement. Victims of sexual violence followed the debate in the visitors’ gallery.

Under current law, convicts have a duty to report changes to personal information, Champion said. “If sex offenders violate these requirements and are therefore threatened with imprisonment, they must be caught first.”

According to research by the BBC, 729 perpetrators were missing or wanted between 2019 and 2021. According to victims and activists, this is mainly due to name changes.

Champion said more than 16,000 criminals were accused of violating their reporting requirements between 2015 and 2020. “Unless we urgently improve this system, we will have to accept that hundreds more criminals will continue to disappear from the system designed to protect us,” Rotherham’s MP said. Between 1997 and 2013, more than 1,400 children were abused there.

(SDA)

Source: Blick