Fears over database on criminals

The ViSOR database is accessible by every UK police force

A probation chief has raised concerns about a new computer database that holds information on sex offenders and violent and high-risk criminals.

The Chief Inspector of Probation in England and Wales, Andrew Bridges, said there were signs the system was not as accessible to staff as it should be.

The Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR) is used by UK police forces.

Mr Bridges said he was "fearful" about what inspectors might find when they examined the system in more detail.

ViSOR is a secure database containing details of 77,000 criminals.

System roll-out

It connects police to a national computer network so that officers can share information.

Previously, police and other agencies relied on local databases to record details of offenders.

Since April it has been rolled out to prisons and probation offices in England and Wales.

But Mr Bridges said there were early indications that probation officers were encountering technical and logistical problems, with difficulties retrieving and entering information.

His concerns are touched on in a follow-up report into the case of Gary Chester-Nash, who murdered a cleaner in Cornwall in 2005 while under probation supervision.