PRESS RELEASE

WEST MIDLANDS MEP HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR EUROPE-WIDE CRIME REGISTER

 

Issue Date: 10^th February

A West Midlands MEP has taken steps to alert people to a potential loophole which puts her constituents at risk.

Nikki Sinclaire has written to both Ken Clarke and the European Commission to ask why loopholes exist that allows serious offenders to roam unknown in our society.

The East Anglia Daily Telegraph published a story detailing how a man who was convicted of rape in Germany in 2006 managed to live in Surrey without notifying police of his record. Jouzas Kancauskas, who is a Lithuanian national, was later arrested for a less serious offence, and this is when his history came to light.

Neither Kancauskas nor the German authorities were obliged to declare the conviction, and Nikki Sinclaire feels this is a serious loophole which could be abused in her own constituency of the West Midlands, allowing for people with serious convictions in their history to live unmonitored and unknown to the local police.

Nikki said, “This is a highly serious issue. Whilst the UK has a register for sex crimes, other European Countries do not.  It is a further example why the European Union just doesn’t work – it is the responsibility of government to protect its citizens, this government is failing to put in place suitable measures to do so.  The UK should have tighter control of who comes into our country including EU citizens”.

“I will continue to highlight issues such as these which endanger the safety of the very people I represent. “