Tougher sentences for child porn

New guidelines for judges in child pornography cases would significantly increase jail terms for paedophiles such as Gary Glitter who download thousands of depraved images of children from the internet.

The disgraced Seventies pop star was jailed for four months in 1999 after he sent his computer for repairs and more than 4,000 photographs of children were discovered on the machine's hard-drive.

The judge at his trial described the material Glitter collected during 18-hour sessions online as "of the very, very, worst possible type".

Mr Justice Butterfield said: "The images are not simply of prepubescent children being abused in every way possible. This would be bad enough. They are of pre-pubescent children tortured, tied up, gagged and blindfolded."

The sentence - and the jail terms of between 12 and 30 months handed down to members of the Wonderland paedophile ring who amassed and traded hundreds of thousands of images - provoked deep public and professional concern.

Now the Sentencing Advisory Panel, the independent body set up to issue guidelines for judges, has recommended a tougher and clearer sentencing policy.

Panel chairman Professor Martin Wasik adopted a 10-point scale for measuring the seriousness of material involving children, and concluded that in virtually every case involving hardcore images, courts should be considering jail sentences.

Under the new plans, Glitter would have received between 12 months and three years in jail. He would have been given time off because of his guilty plea, but the proposals make clear judges should deliver tougher sentences where offenders are caught with large quantities of child pornography involving explicit sexual activity, sexual assault and sadism. Glitter's computer had thousands of images at the most serious end of the scale.

The panel's analysis of nearly 650 cases in 1999 and 2000 reveals nearly one in five offenders escaped with a caution. Of those sentenced, just half convicted for taking, making or distributing child pornography went to jail, while less than one-third convicted for simple possession were locked up.

The recommendations say sentences of between three and 10 years should be reserved for cases where the offender is actively involved in the production of highly pornographic images of children and where the offender has "commissioned or encouraged the production of such images".

Sentences close to the 10 year maximum should be reserved for cases where the production of the images involved a serious sex offence, in which the offender was closely involved or where the images were being widely distributed.

Courts should only hand out fines in cases where the images are at the least serious end of the scale, and community sentences would only be appropriate where the material has not been shared with other paedophiles and includes "no more than a few" explicit images.

The guidelines mean the seven men jailed last year as part of the Wonderland ring would have faced many years behind bars. Police retrieved more than 750,000 images, some of babies, and discovered the ring required new recruits to provide 10,000 pictures before they could join.

The new guidelines, produced at the request of the Court of Appeal, will come into force after April following consultation with police, criminal justice bodies, children's charities and academics. An internal report for the probation service seen by the Evening Standard last year revealed how dozens of internet paedophiles in London were being "set free" by the courts, and hundreds were escaping arrest altogether.

It said that even when police succeeded in getting evidence against offenders, the justice system failed to deal with them properly. It detailed eight cases, including a 50-year-old father of two given a community sentence, one man given 80 hours community service and another caught with more than 5,000 images of children being abused who was sentenced to three years probation.

A spokesman for the NSPCC said new guidelines had been urgently required: "Recent cases show the need for tougher sentences for these serious and nasty crimes. The law needs to catch up and the proposed changes are welcome, but there is still more to do to protect children fully."