Reports of Islanders accessing indecent images have doubled in the past year, a senior police officer has said.
Detective Superintendent Alison Fossey – who has led the police’s work on violence against women and girls – spoke to Bailiwick Podcasts to mark Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness week.
She explained that online crime is a “growth area” for the force.
The States of Jersey Police work in partnership with the National Crime Agency, which sends intelligence reports to Jersey.
“Just as an indication of the growth, it’s up 200% in terms of the information that the National Crime Agency is sending to us about individuals in Jersey accessing indecent images online,” Det Supt Fossey said.
“For every intelligence report, we have to evaluate that report, do a lot of research, apply to the Bailiff for a warrant and execute the warrant.
“That’s doubled, that demand, in the last year. And I was told yesterday that that is just continuing to increase.”
She added that “every investigation” features an online element – ranging from messages sent in an abusive relationship or sexual images taken to be used as blackmail.
“Often in domestic-abuse investigations, there will be that digital element to it – the messages, the threats.
“Then in the sexual side of it, you may have an offender who has taken images of their partner and is then using those images to blackmail them. When the relationship falls apart and that person no longer wants to be with them, then that’s when the blackmail will start. That’s a common one.
“Other common ones are among young people who don’t often realise where that image that they may have consented to be taken at the time then ends up.”
As a result of the increased online element to crime, the States police is looking at investing in the Digital Forensics Unit and training detectives to use online tools.
“It’s not second nature to everyone,” Det Supt Fossey said. “For a lot of our younger officers it is, but for some of the rest of us, it can be more tricky.
“A lot of these offenders are extremely devious. They know how to hide stuff online and how to make it difficult and that’s why we have the specialists in the digital forensics unit.”
Detective Constable Carla Garnier, who investigates domestic abuse and sexual offences, added that examining phones can lead to other offences being uncovered.
She said: “When I joined the police in 2009 we didn’t really do that much phone work. But nowadays there is no investigation that we don’t take some sort of electronic device from the suspect.
“I can’t even describe how big that job is because we need to rely on other departments to extract what we need and then we need to analyse and try to establish whether there’s something that we can actually use for evidence.
“And there are times, of course, that we find other evidence of other offences that we then need to also investigate. Sometimes, from a simple phone examination, you find an awful lot of not just relevant stuff to your case, but maybe other cases.
“I would say that it’s growing massively and the digital world is just enormous.”