Online groomers: profiling, policing and prevention

The Internet has greatly facilitated the ways in which paedophiles can groom children and young people. This important book offers numerous new insights and, in the process, provides a sound conceptual approach to understanding continuing developments in: · characteristics of the Internet · how these are explored and exploited by sexual offenders to groom their victims (from the initial targeting of sites where children and young people visit online, contacting their potential victims and forming a bond, through to the abuse taking place) · legislation against online grooming · the conviction, understanding and treatment of offenders · preventing them from causing harm. It is a useful tool as it pulls together such an enormous volume of diverse information into one place, compares different ideas, and looks at how they may work in different settings. I certainly learned a few things from sources I had never even heard of. Martin C. Calder Of immense value to anyone responsible for the care or safeguarding of children and young people, it is relevant to a wide range of practitioners, policy makers, managers, trainers, lecturers, researchers, students, as well as IT and knowledge management professionals. It places examples from current technology and laws within the rapidly developing international context of online child protection; and provides policy and practice information on: · profiling online groomers - it discusses characteristics of the Internet relevant to online grooming; describes how offenders use the Internet to identify and communicate with potential child victims; and presents a stage model for use in the assessment of online groomers, to classify offenders in terms of seriousness over time. · policing online groomers, by all concerned agencies working together - it explains and analyses various approaches to: how legislation can be improved; how developments in knowledge management can help; the potentially supportive roles of information technology; and police performance management. · preventing online grooming offences, again by all concerned agencies working together - it introduces concepts of online sex offending prevention; describes recent initiatives to protect children online (including offender monitoring, international databases of offenders and victims, and joint efforts to trace individuals who use credit cards to access illegal sites); and presents a new approach to educational awareness and Internet safety, describing programmes to help safeguard children and young people. It uses international examples to illustrate larger concepts and cases, and the difficulties involved in tackling a world-wide problem where individual countries have their own laws protecting children, but where there is no concerted law enforcement and international legislation to combat child abuse; and where there is no direct governance of the Internet by an international body to curb illegal online content and activity. Above all, this book demonstrates how people working in many different specialisms and countries can co-operate to help ensure children and young people remain safe online.