Police to review criminal profiling after paedophile's $25,000 compensation

Police are to urgently review their rules on criminal profiling after a $25,000 damages payout to a convicted paedophile.

The district court decision, which police are considering appealing against, said the privacy of Barry Grant Brown was breached when a police pamphlet identifying him was placed in his neighbour's letterboxes.

The pamphlet, headed "Convicted paedophile in your area" included a "dishevelled and furtive" and "by no means flattering" mugshot of Mr Brown and brought him a level of public attention "amounting really to vilification", Wellington District Court judge Robert Spear said in a decision released on Monday.

In awarding Mr Brown $25,000 damages, Judge Spear said that after the pamphlet was distributed in August 2001, Mr Brown went from anonymity to being a target subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

"This form of direct public attention to [Mr Brown] ... continued even after he moved in late August 2001," Judge Spear said.

"His public profile was, by then, such that he was readily recognisable in the Wellington areas in which he moved. He started to receive hate mail at his new address, he was verbally abused by other occupants and neighbours at his new address, and that continued for some months into 2002.

"Additionally, he was singled out by a particular person who took strong exception to him as he made his way to a particular church hall on a regular basis. He was physically assaulted by that man on a regular basis.

"When he arrived at a church hall for the 2001 Christmas dinner he was refused entry solely because of the public notoriety that accompanied him."

Mr Brown, who has been assessed by psychologists as being of "borderline intelligence", has a history of sexual offending against young people dating back to 1982.

He was convicted in August 1998 of kidnapping and indecently assaulting a 5-year-old boy, and released on parole on special conditions in July 2001.

Those conditions, including that he attend counselling, expired in January 2003.

The judge said it was "not just of passing interest" that Mr Brown had not come to the notice of the authorities for any offending of a sexual nature since then.

His lawyers had called evidence from criminologist Dr Gabriel Maxwell, who agreed with a Community Probation Service assessment that Mr Brown had a high risk of reoffending but was not a hopeless case.

Although he had not committed any sexual offence since 1998, he was convicted of assaulting a STOP programme counsellor in 2002, an attack Judge Spear said had come about because of stress caused by the pamphlet.

The judge said that in preparing the pamphlet, then Senior Sergeant Peter Cowan - now an inspector and the Wellington City area commander - had probably become so focused on protecting his community that "the question as to whether his actions might or might not be unlawful or contrary to good policing standards, did not come fully into his consideration".

Judge Spear said the pamphlet had been a novel and drastic step, but breached police guidelines on criminal profiling.

"The danger of such a self-righteous approach is that it is invariably accompanied by an arrogant conviction that what the person is doing is morally right despite any rules to the contrary."

A police spokeswoman said the guidelines on criminal profiling - last revised in 1993 - would now be reviewed.