THERE are two disturbing aspects to the disclosure by this newspaper that a pervert who abducted two young girls was housed at an Accrington bail hostel before he was jailed and committed sex offences in the town.

There is, to begin with, the dismissive attitude of the Probation Service to residents' understandable concerns about sex offenders being brought to live near their homes and families.

In this case, they were told that this man was "not a real sex offender." Yet, the court which jailed him regarded his menace as most real. It put him on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.

And this comes about when the service's professional judgment is already in serious question, following the startling revelation only last month of staff at this bail hospital putting another sex offender on a train without supervision after concluding he was a real risk to others and triggering a police manhunt when he promptly disappeared.

But if this suggests that the individuals responsible for these decisions require some assessment themselves, also worrying is the overlying smokescreen that the service is able to employ in regard to the community's concerns about sex offenders being in bail hostels.

We learn that it bluntly refuses to confirm to residents living near the Accrington hostel whether sex offenders are housed there. Indeed, they would not know about this latest perturbing case - one which illustrates their fears alarmingly- had it not been for this newspaper's exposures. But why should not people - parents, above all - be told whether people posing such a potential risk to the community are living in their neighbourhood? Why should they be prevented from being on the alert?

Is the Probation Service not accountable to the public it services or does it put its clients' interests first?

Answers please. And since only this week the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, was promising to reduce people's fear of crime, he ought to be the one to respond.

It must, however, be acknowledged that in whatever cavalier fashion the Probation Service seems to deal with the public's concerns, it is not they who admit sex offenders or those suspected of sex crimes to the bail hostels. They are sent there by the courts.

But if there is a policy that allows this - and it is clearly supported by the law's quite-correct neutral assumption of every suspect's innocence until proved guilty - then, surely, the time has come to earmark particular bail hostels for those accused of this category of offence and for these places to be publicly identified as such.

There is just too much secrecy about the present system. It works against the good and safety of the public - and it is not the task of the Probation Service, the courts or the law to support that.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.