The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, criticised the length of time taken to bring a North Yorkshire man to justice for distributing indecent videos of children of the worst kind.
He heard that Ryan Purvis, 31, had used the internet to send three videos to other people three and a half years ago.
According to national sentencing guidelines, defendants distributing indecent videos of children of the worst kind should receive between two to five years in jail with a discount if they plead guilty.
But the judge slashed Purvis’ sentence to six months imprisonment because of the delay in bringing him to court, saying any longer sentence would be unjust.
“Three and a half years to go from arrest to court is not acceptable,” he said. “It is not the fault of the police. They have many calls upon their resources.”
Unless more was done to enable police to process cases more quickly more sex offenders would receive substantially reduced sentences, he warned.
“If these cases are investigated quicker then sentences will not be slashed,” he said.
Purvis, of Hawkser, Whitby, pleaded guilty before Scarborough Magistrates’ Court to distributing three indecent images of children of the worst category, three charges of making indecent images of children by downloading from the internet involving all three categories of seriousness and one charge each of having a prohibited image of a child and extreme pornography.
It was his first court appearance. Magistrates decided the case was too serious for them to deal with and sent him to York Crown Court for sentence.
Magistrates can sentence defendants to up to 12 months in jail if they are guilty of two or more offences that can be heard by the crown court.
In addition to the six-month prison sentence, Purvis was put on the sex offenders’ register and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order, both for seven years.
For some time, judges and magistrates in York have regularly had to deal with cases involving sexual images of children where the offence was committed and the offender arrested years before they appear in court.
When a court asks the reason for the delay, it is told that there is a long backlog of internet devices such as mobile phones seized by the police waiting to be forensically examined for evidence of sexual and other offences.
