POLICE are knocking on the doors of people suspected of viewing indecent images of children to warn them they are being monitored, as the scale of the problem reaches unprecedented levels.

Officers in Sussex have visited 24 homes since November to urge suspected paedophiles to stop viewing the images, often handing over warning letters.

Sussex Police’s Deputy Chief Constable Olivia Pinkney said police were being forced to prioritise for arrests the cases that posed the greatest threat because the scale of indecent images online was so vast.

She told The Argus: “Sometimes we can intervene very quickly and say, 'stop doing that, we saw you did that once.

“There are people who are curious and frankly would be horrified if anybody ever knew. And we are very quick with those people when we know about them to say, ‘look, we know what you are doing, you know what you are doing and that is that’.

"There are others who are downloading images, and then there is contact offending. It is all really awful and it is about where the threat and the harm is on that continuum and that is where we try and judge where our intervention is. ”

She said the lower-level intervention by police was only done if the viewing was “very, very, very infrequent – once kind of level”.

She added: “We know children have been harmed in the beginning, so it is not ok.

“We don’t argue that because someone has not harmed a child, they are just looking at it, that’s safe. Of course it is not safe - that child was harmed. So we don’t look at it lightly."

People who may have downloaded or viewed indecent images can be tracked by Sussex Police Paedophile On-Line Investigation Team (POLIT), via their computers.

A spokesperson for children’s charity the NSPCC spokesperson said the number of child abuse images in circulation was a huge concern.

He added: “Our own research in 2012 revealed just five police forces in England and Wales had confiscated 26 million child abuse images.

“The truly awful thing is that more and more children are being abused so these pictures can be produced and once in circulation they may stay there for many years."

“We know police forces are sometimes overwhelmed by these investigations but we want a strong message to go to offenders with appropriate sentencing.”

Sussex Police was unable to say as The Argus went to press how many people it was aware of viewing indecent images online, but one expert in child safety estimated it in the thousands.

Donald Findlater, director of research and development at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation child protection charity, added it made sense for police forces to focus their resources on the most dangerous individuals.

He added society needs to worry about the lower level offenders, adding: “They also need to worry about themselves, partly because they are breaking the law, but also because a proportion of people who start down that road may develop a stronger interest in children and go forward to act on it.”

Anyone who needs support in dealing with the issues raised in this article can call the confidential Stop it Now! helpline on 0808 1000 900, or visit www.stopitnow.org.uk.

WE NEED TO BE BETTER AT UNDERSTANDING YOUNG

What do you think are some of the main risks facing young people?

I really worry about domestic abuse for young people, with their carers but also among themselves. Relationship abuse among young people is very real and I worry about young people getting help. And I worry about keeping their privacy online.

You have spoken before about whether it is appropriate to criminalise young people for ‘sexting’?

I am not so worried now about that. If a young person is sending a nude selfie of themselves to another 15-year-old, the crime recording standards do not require that person to be a suspect any more. So we have got that sorted, which is good, because that was always nonsense. I want all police forces to know that they don’t have to put someone down as a suspect any more. Of course there is a line – it is about understanding the motives. The vast majority – and this is me sounding like a 45-year-old woman – is just young people flirting.

Do you want stronger measures to deal with chemical "legal" highs?

The market is exploitative – they are packaged to attract young people and make them seem safe and fun. No question, That is an abusive marketing campaign. I am all for anything that can get in the way of that.

How would you assess Sussex Police’s relationship with young people? In a recent Sussex Youth Commission report, there were a lot of negative comments about young people feeling targeted by stop and search.

We take that really seriously. In partnership with the youth commission we have now done the youth pact. I think stop and search has gone down by at least half but more importantly, what we are finding is it is staying steady. Often it is a safeguarding thing because children are often used to carry drugs and weapons. But young people’s perception is reality so if they think that we are hard to talk to then we need to listen to that and change. There was lots of really great stuff in that report as well. We need to be better as a police service about understanding young people and meeting them where they are at, not treating them as mini-adults. We have some brilliant people who do it fabulously, but I am not confident that everybody gets that.

Why are looked-after children disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system?

It’s complex. We know that if a child is living in a children’s home, police will be called sometimes for things that if it were my teenager – and I am the mother of a teenager – you would just deal with it in a different way. Now I don’t knock the staff in those homes, they do a really difficult job. But if you call the police, then I think there is a different expectation. Sometimes the staff want the police to take over and it is not for us to do that. I am really encouraging police officers and staff if they are called, report it - but it does not mean to say you have to arrest someone.

Do you think police and the court system get the balance right?

I still think there is work to do. The number of arrests has halved, which is fantastic. We are using much more of restorative justice. Often it is about saying sorry and making amends. I really want us to keep using that because it works.

Should councils take more responsibility for children who go missing persistently from care, as Sir Peter Fahy has said?

In Sussex we have a great relationship with local authorities and we do have young people who go missing a lot. It is something police should have a role in but equally not something they should do on their own and nor do we.

Given the pressures police are under, are other authorities going to have to take more responsibility?

No. What austerity has done is made us focus on what is that is really important. And we are more committed than ever to working with partners for the stuff that we know works and is really important. Repeat missing children, integrated offender management, troubled families – those kind of things are absolutely at the heart of healthy society. There are other things we used to do that were nice to have but not really at the heart of the policing purpose – that is where the changes are.

Do you have sufficient resources to deal with the rise in reported sexual abuse?

It is a huge priority for us and the commissioner. The precept increase over the past few years has been very much around protecting vulnerable people. We don’t see any let-up in the reporting to police. The number of staff now dealing with it is much greater now than it ever was.

How did your career in the police start?

I did maths at Cambridge and joined the police straight afterwards. I wanted to serve. I don’t mean it to sound cheesy but I really did. I have been hugely fortunate in my life – I had a great education and a supportive family, I knew I was really fortunate. I did not know much about it but thought, straight after university, I am going to go and do this and it worked out but I think a lot of that was about luck as well.

Does your own role as a mother affect your work for children and young people?

Probably. My son might say that it does.

Has it been hard to get where you are in your career with a child?

I think every parent, man or woman, has to balance and make choices and different priorities at different times. Most people in policing at a certain age are parents.