Internet child pornography arrests quadruple

Arrests for online child pornography offences have skyrocketed in the last two years, according to the latest government crime figures.

The number of people cautioned or charged with child pornography offences in 2003 was 2,234, more than quadruple the 549 people charged in 2001. Figures for 2004 are not yet available.

UK police chiefs and children's charity NCH are calling for the government to fund a new national law enforcement unit to focus specifically on these internet pornography offences.

The unit would be called the UK Internet Safety Centre and NCH estimates it would cost £3m to set up.

A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that such a unit could operate as part of the new Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which has been likened to a UK version of the FBI.

But he also admitted that the government is unlikely to "put a massive amount of money into this" and that funding would have to come from existing police budgets.

About a quarter of the existing UK police National Hi-Tech Crime Unit's (NHTCU) work is specialist computer forensic work on internet paedophilia cases, but the bulk of illegal web pornography investigations are carried out by the paedophile online investigation team at the National Crime Squad (NCS) – which dealt with Operation Ore - and local police child protection units.

A spokeswoman for the NCS questioned where the extra money would come from for a new dedicated unit and said much of the infrastructure is already there to deal with these types of crimes.

"It's not an idea we disagree with but any unit can never replace the expertise of the local child protection officers. You have also got the international element and really all of this is coming from servers abroad," she said.