Weblog entry #243 for simonw
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#243
CEOP
Posted by simonw on Tue 22 Apr 2008 at 05:25
The UK news is a buzz with the news that arrests for child abuse in the UK using the Internet are up.
Behind this is CEOP, part of the Serious and Organized Crime Agency.
That the numbers are up is hardly surprising, as the agency is relatively new.
Behind the headline figure, it cost just under 9 million pounds to disrupt the activities of 55 sex offenders, and initiate(!) investigations into the identity of 36 abused children.
Now clearly any abuse of children is unacceptable, but one wonders how effective this spending is compared to other forms of policing and social care in improving childrens lives. It would be harsh to judge CEOP on these raw numbers of ~200,000 GBP per sex offender disrupted, as they have done substantial amounts of training of other professionals. But I just wanted to highlight that one shouldn't let the media highlight one aspect of a news story, without critical examination of other aspects. Someone might be trying to spin a story to say save their department from being axed for being inefficient for example.
Behind this is CEOP, part of the Serious and Organized Crime Agency.
That the numbers are up is hardly surprising, as the agency is relatively new.
Behind the headline figure, it cost just under 9 million pounds to disrupt the activities of 55 sex offenders, and initiate(!) investigations into the identity of 36 abused children.
Now clearly any abuse of children is unacceptable, but one wonders how effective this spending is compared to other forms of policing and social care in improving childrens lives. It would be harsh to judge CEOP on these raw numbers of ~200,000 GBP per sex offender disrupted, as they have done substantial amounts of training of other professionals. But I just wanted to highlight that one shouldn't let the media highlight one aspect of a news story, without critical examination of other aspects. Someone might be trying to spin a story to say save their department from being axed for being inefficient for example.