What they Do
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre is dedicated to eradicating the sexual abuse of children. That means we are part of UK policing and very much about tracking and bringing offenders to account either directly or in partnership with local and international forces.
But our approach is truly holistic. Walk through the CEOP Centre today and within any one team you will find police officers specialising in this area of criminality working with professionals from the wider child protection community and industry. You will find seconded staff from organisations such as the NSPCC, teams sponsored by the likes of VISA and SERCO and experts from government and corporations such as Microsoft offering specialist advice and guidance.
That approach is dedicated to building up intelligence that in turn drives the business, informs our operational deployments, steers our CEOP Academy programmes to law enforcement, child protection and educational sectors and drives our dedicated Thinkuknow programme for children and parents of all ages.
It is an approach that sees the development of specialist areas such as our Behavioural Analysis Unit, our approach to victim identification or the development of our Child Trafficking Unit as well as filtering into all areas of our outreach activities such as the Most Wanted initiative and our public awareness plans.
In fact the real lifeblood of the CEOP Centre is intelligence – how offenders operate and think, how children and young people behave and how technological advances are developing – all are integral to what we are about and what we deliver.
But similarly our results would not be possible without inclusion. So we are about opening the policing doors to new ways of thinking around this crime, working with industry, government, children’s charities and the wider policing community to explore all options and possibilities. In fact we want and will explore all options because we believe you can never stand still when dealing with such a complex, ever changing issue and where apathy can and does result in devastating consequences.
Our Faculty Approach
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre is part of UK law enforcement and as such can apply the full range of policing powers in tackling the sexual abuse of children. But the organisation is very different in its set up not least because of the high volume of specialists who work alongside police officers but also because of the faculty approach that underpins our structure.
The Intelligence Faculty manages the flow of information across the organisation and to external agencies such as local UK forces or international authorities. Such intelligence is translated into assessment reports in line with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. and then disseminated as appropriate.
But there is much more than assessment and dissemination. Intelligence is researched and developed and specialist units are working with local and international forces to manage the risk posed by sex offenders.
Similarly the CEOP Centre works to locate perpetrators and track registered offenders who have failed to comply with their notification requirements under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
This includes tracking offenders who travel abroad by either disrupting or preventing their travel, disseminating intelligence to international forces and specifically targeting offenders while they remain overseas.
The Harm Reduction Faculty is multi faceted. A Safer-by-Design focus works to deliver market intelligence, liaising with the technological industry and fine-tuning guidelines that look to minimise the possibility of present and future technology increasing the risk of sexual abuse to children.
At the same time, training, education and public awareness specialists work together to raise the knowledge, skills and understanding of parents, children, young people and a wide and diverse stakeholder community including dedicated skills training for those working with sex offenders.
The international team takes the overall approach on to a much wider stage, working with overseas authorities and specialist agencies to share good practice, enhance tracking capabilities and minimise the risk caused by the global internet.
The Operations Faculty breaks the mould of traditional policing working with forces to minimise volumes, risk and impact and providing a law enforcement response that seamlessly connects the online and offline environments.
Specialist policing focus is placed on issues such as organised crime profiteering from the publishing or distribution of images, support for local forces in areas such as computer forensics and covert investigations as well as working with international authorities to maximise policing powers.
The Operations Faculty also incorporates the UK’s only national victim identification programme which works solely to focus on identifying child victims of online abuse backed up by a sophisticated database and cutting edge software to support investigators in sharing any intelligence that can be gathered from seized images.
