European Data Collection on Sexual Offences Against Minors

The fight against the sexual exploitation of and trade in children has gained particular and renewed international attention in the last few years and has become one of the most important concerns in the context of international law enforcement policy and cooperation. Since 1998, policy makers have come up with new legal initiatives at global as well as regional levels in order to tackle this problem in a more effective and coordinated way. This proves that the time has come to match words and actions, and to come up with concrete and useful tools for law enforcement services and NGO's active in the areas concerned. The current study therefore examines the feasibility of the further elaboration and implementation of recommendations from a previous project (96/STOP/003) regarding the systematic gathering and administration of data concerning missing minors, minor victims of trafficking in or sexual exploitation of children and perpetrators of sexual offences against minors, with the goal to further prepare the practical setting up of several international databases with immediate relevance to the police and the prosecuting or investigating magistrates or officials, both in the EU Member States and the candidate countries. It is recommended to give Interpol a mandate to host an international database on missing persons and to create an EU monitoring centre responsible for the gathering and administration of reliable statistics and legal information on sexual exploitation of children and trafficking in human beings. It is also recommended for Interpol to host an international reference database on child pornography and to set up an analysis/intelligence child porn database at Europol. Regarding suspected and convicted sex offenders, it is proposed to create a database on pending investigations, an EU criminal records database and a database at Europol containing encoded information on both suspected and convicted offenders of sexual offences against children. Finally, it is suggested to create a European network of national DNA databases. The book also contains a summary of the conclusions in French.