Sex Offender Policing Unit (SOPU)

Once you are placed on the Sex Offenders Register, you will be ‘managed in the community’ through the MAPPA process. This will involve having a police officer from the Sex Offender Policing Unit (SOPU). The SOPU police officer will be the person who is ‘responsible’ for managing you in the community.

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The Sex Offenders Register is not supposed to be part of your punishment.  It is supposed to be separate from the punishment part of your sentence and instead it is supposed to be about making sure that you and the community around you are safe.  Unfortunately, the experience of many people on the Sex Offenders Register is that they feel as though their SOPU police officers are punishing them for the duration of their time on the Sex Offenders Register.  

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There is a clear imbalance of power between the SOPU police officer and the person who has been convicted of the offence.  It is therefore not uncommon for people to feel as if they have no choice but to comply with the police officer’s requests, even when those requests feel unfair or over the top.

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This is why it is really important for people to not only know their rights, but to understand what SOPU is and how it operates in practice.

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The purpose of the information on this page is to empower people, to not only make informed choices regarding how they are policed, but to enable people to challenge bad practice and demands that are unreasonable and without justification.

What do SOPU do?

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There are guidelines that inform what SOPU do. However, what happens in practice depends on where in Scotland you live. Some SOPU officers will tell you their job is to make sure the notification requirements are enforced. Some will say their job is to manage ‘offenders’ in the community. Others will say that their job involves the assessment of risk. All of these things are true. Part of their role involves completing forms and gathering evidence as a part of the policing process and part of the role involves completing risk assessment forms when a person is sentenced and throughout their time on the SOR. How you are managed will depend on the level of ‘risk’ they consider you to be.

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MAPPA Level 3 is the highest, with Level 1 being the lowest. People who are assigned as MAPPA level 1 will be managed by SOPU alone. Most people fall into this category.

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Within MAPPA level 1, the lowest level, you can then be described as very high, high, medium and low risk. The police will use this risk level to decide how often to visit you in your home as well as the level of monitoring and other supervision you are subjected to.

What are some of the criticisms of SOPU?

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No matter where you live, the SOPU police officer will be responsible for making sure you are complying with all of the notification requirements of the Sex Offenders Register.  However, they also have what are called discretionary powers that they can use to manage risk.  This means that, if they think you are a risk, they are allowed to ask you to do things that go above and beyond the legal notification requirements.

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The problem with these discretionary powers is that the police are often very risk averse. This means they might treat a person as higher risk than they actually are.  And it isn’t just people who have been convicted of an offence who think this.  In 2022, a report into the Police Led Management of Sex Offenders in England was published by former police chief Mick Creedon. In his report he made a number of criticisms of the way police ‘manage’ people convicted of a sexual offence. One criticism was that the police are far too risk averse. By this he meant that the police have a habit of placing everyone in as high a risk category as they can. In the report, Creedon calls for a better system in which those who pose the highest risk are managed more intensely, while less attention is given to those who pose the least risk.  

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Another criticism Creedon made was that all too often, the system for managing people convicted of a sexual offence is used by the police as a means to punish rather than rehabilitate people. In the report, Creedon calls for a different approach to managing those who are subject to notification requirements, one that upholds people’s human rights. This rights-based approach is, he claims, central to any healthy democracy. The state, he says, has to balance public protection with the rights of individuals. People have to be able to serve their sentence and move on. Once rehabilitated, they must be assisted in their reintegration back into playing a full role in society.

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Given both of these criticisms, it is important to really understand the difference between which notification requirements are legally binding and which are not.

Notification Requirements versus extra police demands

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When you are on the Sex Offenders Register, the demands made of you fall into two broad groups:

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1)     Legal notification requirements, such as the requirement to inform the police of your place of residence, your passport details, bank account details as well as foreign travel notification. More information on the notification requirements can be found on our Sex Offenders Register page.  If you do not comply with the notification requirements, you can be arrested and face a fine or prison or both.

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2)     Non-legal, extra requirements, also known as ultra vires (beyond the law) demands. These are extra demands that the police might make. They are not legally enforceable and the person who is subject to notification requirements is not under any legal obligation to comply with them. You are not breaking the law if you refuse to comply with these demands and so you cannot be arrested. However, without the powers of arrest or threat of arrest, the police use other means of enforcing their extra demands.

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In the case of SOPU, there are two broad tactics the police use to enforce the extra demands:

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-       One is to increase your level of risk if you do not comply. This means more home visits and more police attention. Many people, in order to have as few visits from the police as possible, simply comply with whatever the police demand of them, even if they are in no way obliged to do so. This is a very useful tactic for the police, since most people do not know their rights, and many do not have the resolve to refuse, even when they are under no legal obligation to comply.

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-       The second tactic the police use is the threat of disclosure. A common threat from the police is: “If you don’t comply with our demands, then we will have no choice but to disclose the offence to your neighbours/colleagues/ friends and family”.

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Given that ‘risk’ extends the powers of the police, they can, in some situations, largely do whatever they feel is necessary. However, that does not stop you from trying to uphold your own human rights if you think that your rights are being violated.  

How can I know if my rights are being violated?

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This section is designed to provide some knowledge of what your rights are in relation to being subject to notification requirements. Please be aware that if you have an additional order, such as a SHPO, then you will need to check the conditions of your order to be sure what is and what isn't legally required of you.

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The police have the power to increase your risk level or disclose the offence in the name of ‘risk management’. These decisions cannot be taken lightly, however.  Indeed, all of the extra demands the police make are, due to their lack of legal status, themselves subject to the protections provided in the Human Rights Act 1998.

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So, the first thing to do is ask yourself, does this demand the police are making of me meet the standard tests laid out in Article 6 of the Human Right Act 1998?

Is it:

a)      Necessary?

b)     Proportionate in relation to the offence? (This means that it isn’t over the top)

c)      Legitimate in aim? (This means that it has to have a purpose)

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If what is being asked of you fails to meet all three of these tests, then it cannot be reasonably imposed.

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Let’s look at each of the extra demands most commonly made by the police.

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Home Visits

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What is the purpose of the home visit?

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The home visit has a range of functions, including the following:

• Check the person lives where they say they live
• Carry out on-going risk assessments. The police use Static, Stable and Acute risk assessment matrices
• Carry out environmental risk assessments. See below.

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When the notification requirements were set, they were tested against possible challenge through the Human Rights Act. This meant that the legislation, once passed, did not provide the police with an automatic right to enter your home. However, if you refuse the police entry, they can seek a warrant from the Sheriff Court, which will give them the right to search your home and the ‘things in your home’, which includes your devices and private files.

Entering and looking around your home

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The police will ask to enter your home and to have a look around. This is for the purpose of carrying out both a personal and Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA).

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An ERA must be carried out in the following circumstances:

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·       for every new registered sex offender on initial registration and any subsequent change of address.

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After that, an annual review will be carried out for the following people unless the Responsible Authorities record justifiable and defensible decisions for not completing one:

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·       everyone managed at MAPPA level 3

·       all MAPPA level 1 high/very high-risk

·       those people who are subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order or a Risk of Sexual Harm Order (these have now been replaced by the SHPO and the SRO)

·       those people who have committed contact offences against children or adults at risk of harm

·       any other person who is subject to notification and it is deemed necessary to do an ERA. For example, home leave addresses and additional registered addresses.

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Point of Note

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Since the police do not have an automatic right to enter and search your home and the things in your home, if you refused they would have to seek a warrant from a Sheriff. The Sheriff would have to satisfy themselves that the request was necessary and proportionate.

While you can provide access to the police, you are under no obligation to allow them to search your home or anything in your home. Of the extra demands the police make on people subject to notification requirements, denying access to your home is perhaps the most risky, as there are ways in which the police can enforce this request through obtaining a warrant.

If they arrive with a warrant, they will have been granted permission by a Sheriff to do so and you can be arrested if you refuse.

Device Checks

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In almost all cases, the police will ask to check your devices. Unless there is a specific order granting them access to such, you are under no obligation to hand over any devices for any kind of inspection.

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If you have an internet or digital offence, the police may use, as a justification for having access, the ‘nature of the offence’. If a person has been convicted for a communication offence and are banned from contacting a certain person, the police may argue that it is necessary and proportionate.

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However, ultimately, if the police have concerns about a person’s online behaviour, they can seek a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO),which will extend the licencing conditions to include things such as device checks. If they don’t have a SHPO, or they applied to the Sheriff and the request was denied, it will be difficult for the police to justify their demand to access your devices.

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Point of Note  

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It is up to each individual whether or not they allow the police to check their devices. The police enforce their extra demands through a range of threats, including increasing a person’s risk, which means more visits. The choice presented by many police units is straight forward; comply with their extra demands and have the number of visits reduced, or refuse to comply and have more frequent visits.

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If the police believe it to be necessary and proportionate, they would have sought a SHPO. That they didn’t, or that it was refused, suggests your situation does not warrant it.

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One way to get clarification is to email your SOPU officer and ask why device checks are, in your specific case, necessary, proportionate and legitimate in aim.

Requests For Information

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You are under no legal obligation to give the police information.

• The police will almost always ask you to let them know when you are away from your home and staying at another address. The notification requirements are clear. If you reside at an address for seven days or more in any 12-month period, you have to notify the police at a reporting station. This means you have to go to a police station and register the address. If you are staying at an address for less than seven days, no legal requirement exists. Despite this, in many cases, the police will ask that you inform them of any and all overnight stays away from your registered address of residence.
• The police may also ask that you tell them if you are going for a job, what the job is, and what it entails. However, Scotland has an incredibly comprehensive criminal record disclosure system. It is therefore unlikely that this demand could be considered necessary, proportionate and legitimate.
• If you are going somewhere or are involved in an activity, the police might ask about the people you are with. However, you are under no obligation to tell them anything that relates to a third party.

How can I defend my rights?

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Ask your SOPU officer for their Police Scotland email address. Use this to ask for clarification and to challenge decisions.

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Ask the SOPU officer what level of risk you are being managed at. This is extremely useful, since the level of risk is supposed to inform the frequency of visits and level of monitoring you are subject to.

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If you think the demands being made of you are not necessary, proportionate and legitimate in aim, as prescribed by the Human Rights Act 1998, then ask for clarification. In some circumstances, blanket policies are applied to everyone they manage, irrespective of the offence. It is therefore reasonable to ask for justification in your own case.

If the police refuse to give you any information, then you can consider a Subject Access Request, an official means through which people can obtain information that the police hold about them.

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