Dumfries and Galloway sees six-year high in sexual crime reports
Police link increase to crackdown on online offenders.
A crackdown on online sex offenders has led to police recording the highest number of sexual crimes in six years in Dumfries and Galloway.
The region’s police force has increased staffing numbers in digital forensics teams, which is directly leading to more creeps behind computer keyboards behind arrested.
Chief Superintendent Steven Meikle, Divisional Commander for Dumfries and Galloway, recently revealed that a sharp rise in sexual crime statistics for the region is down to the activity to track down online offenders.
Speaking at Dumfries and Galloway Council’s recent police, fire and rescue sub-committee, Chief Superintendent Meikle said: “The continuous biggest driver towards an increase in sexual crime in the region is online offences, which is in the main viewing sexual activity or images or communicating indecently.
“We have increased our resources within our digital forensics teams – and this is subsequently generating increases.
“It’s a kind of domino effect, which is leading to additional offences.”
He added: “The overall detection rate for sexual crimes in this region is 63 percent, and that stands proud in Scotland.”
The police chief presented a crime report, which covers April 1 to September 30 this year, to the council and invited questions from elected members.
The report stated that overall sexual crime has increased by 22 percent (53 crimes) against the five-year average to a total of 298.
At first glance, these figures were extremely alarming as they represented the worst level of overall sexual crime in Dumfries and Galloway for the last six years.
However, the police chief explained that many of these were online incidents, rather than physical attacks.
Meanwhile, the number of domestic abuse incidents rose to 896 between April and September this year, which is an increase of 118 incidents (15 percent) on the five-year average.
Those which resulted in a crime being established is 457, which is 41 crimes (10 percent) above the five-year average.
The domestic abuse detection rate is 69 percent, which is a four percent improvement on the five-year average.