Serious violent or sexual offenders travelling across European Union Borders: Ideological and ethical challenges of information exchange
| Author | Hazel Kemshall,Sarah Hilder |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2066220316678749 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Probation
2016, Vol. 8(3) 128 –145
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2066220316678749
ejp.sagepub.com
Serious violent or sexual
offenders travelling across
European Union Borders:
Ideological and ethical
challenges of information
exchange
Sarah Hilder
Nottingham Trent University, UK
Hazel Kemshall
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Abstract
The relative ease of international travel, coupled with open borders across much of
the European Union provides capacity for some serious violent or sexual offenders
to utilise these advancements to increase their opportunities to offend. In 2013, an
EU-funded project reviewed existing information exchange systems and the challenges
of collaborative working across EU Member States to manage such offenders. This
article reviews key issues arising from that research, and a range of ideological, ethical
and legal differences and constraints that impact upon the choices and actions of law
enforcement and probation personnel.
Keywords
Public protection, information exchange, cross border, violent or sexual offenders,
rights, privacy
Corresponding author:
Sarah Hilder, Criminology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Email: sarah.hilder@ntu.ac.uk
678749EJP0010.1177/2066220316678749European Journal of ProbationHilder and Kemshall
2016
Article
Hilder and Kemshall 129
Introduction
The SOMEC (Serious Offending by Mobile European Criminals) project was commis-
sioned by the European Commission Directorate-General for Home Affairs running
from 2013–15.1 It brought together a range of European Union (EU) law enforcement
and probation personnel to investigate the use of existing mechanisms for information
exchange available to EU Member States, to assist in the monitoring and management of
serious violent or sexual offenders who are mobile across the EU community. The
research pathway led by De Montfort University2 sought to fulfil two specific project
aims, namely:
To identify the methods and effectiveness of information exchange mechanisms
used by EU Member States in the management of serious violent or sexual offend-
ers travelling across borders.
To explore critical success factors and provide recommendations to facilitate the
improved exchange of information for the prevention of crime.
These aims were achieved, firstly, via the mapping of existing criminality information
exchange mechanisms and their relevance to the single, transient serious violent or sex-
ual offender (see Hilder and Kemshall, 2014) and, secondly, via a field study focusing on
the understanding and use of such mechanisms by relevant operational law enforcement
and probation staff (see Kemshall et al., 2015a). The methodology comprised: 37 struc-
tured interviews with Law Enforcement (LE) personnel from 23 Member States using an
interview schedule of pre-determined questions;3 and 28 structured interviews with
Offender Management (OM)/Probation personnel from 20 Member States. In addition,
structured interviews with experts were also conducted on key EU-wide information
exchange systems such as ECRIS, EUROPOL, Schengen SIS II; law enforcement offic-
ers in SIRENE Bureaux; Embassy Liaison Officers; and with specialist law enforcement
officers responsible for combating serious sexual and violent offending. The interview
schedules were developed following initial background interviews with subject experts,
a literature review and test interviews with country partners. The interviews were com-
pleted by the research team, including a lead policing expert and probation specialists
and were quality assured by the lead researcher.
Initial findings and draft recommendations were disseminated via three task groups
held in the United Kingdom (UK), Latvia and the Netherlands attended by 37 LE and
OM participants from 17 different Member States. These task groups largely comprised
of those OM and LE personnel who had previously participated in the structured inter-
views and enabled a limited participant check and validation of findings. Case studies
were also collected to illustrate current practice.
Whilst the study targeted lead law enforcement and offender management personnel
in Member States, the difference in national structures and local organisation meant that
inevitably a range of differing personnel with varying policy and operational responsi-
bilities participated. A comprehensive evaluation of participant recruitment, the develop-
ment of research tools, limiters to the data and the iterative process of comparative
analysis that was applied are detailed in the full report (see footnote 3). Participant
To continue reading
Request your trial