Thousands of child sex offenders are going unmonitored in the community, with more than 200 missing from the system entirely due to a lack of policing resources.

President of the Police Association of NSW, Tony King, tells Deborah Knight the increasing workload with child abuse offences and monitoring paedophiles means “we simply don’t have enough police dedicated to protecting and investigating offences against our kids”.

“There’s now 4,000 current registered people in our communities, but over the years there’s been no increase in police numbers to actually do this work.

“It’s fallen to already overstretched and overworked police.”

The union says over 200 sex offenders are missing entirely and have slipped through the cracks by either giving fake addresses or changing address without telling anyone.

Mr King also reveals of the 4,000 offenders on the child protection register, in one month only 67 of them were actually checked.

“When you look at the reoffending rate of about 46 per cent… that’s why the register was created.

“The repercussions are that we can’t protect our kids.”

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