A national strategy focused on collecting more detailed data about child grooming gangs has been launched by the Home Office.
The Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy aims to identify and convict offenders who operate in groups by gathering more information about the characteristics of gangs, including their ethnicity.
This initiative has been welcomed by the NCA, GCHQ, and charity NSPCC who said it received more than 40 calls a day about child sexual abuse since the pandemic began.
This comes after a paper published by the Home Office found that it is difficult to draw conclusions about the ethnicity of offenders because existing data is too limited.
BBC News
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Some 320 of the UK s most dangerous child sex offenders have been arrested since the first coronavirus lockdown, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
Investigators have been focusing on tracking down offenders who operate online.
The operation led to a total of 4,760 arrests and 6,500 children safeguarded between April and September last year.
Meanwhile, the Home Office has launched a strategy to collect detailed data about child grooming gangs.
The Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy aims to identify and convict offenders who operate in groups by gathering more information about their characteristics, including ethnicity.
It also involves investing in the national child abuse image database to identify offenders more quickly, protecting police from frequently being exposed to indecent images, and enabling parents to ask officers if someone with access to their child is known to them for cases of abuse.
Government publishes new strategy to protect children from sexual abuse
The Home Secretary has published a new national strategy to protect children from all forms of child sexual abuse.
The
Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategysets out how the Government will use new legislation and enhanced technology to stop offenders. This includes investing in the UK s Child Abuse Image Database to identify and catch more offenders more quickly – for example, by using new tools to speed up police investigations and protect officers wellbeing by avoiding them being repeatedly exposed to indecent images.
The strategy is based on the following three objectives:
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