A registered sex offender from Sittingbourne has been jailed for accessing indecent images of children and breaching court conditions that were imposed to restrict his conduct. Steven Smith was convicted at Maidstone Crown Court in January 2022 of sexual communication with a child, causing or inciting a girl under 13 to engage in sexual activity, and making indecent photographs of children.
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Smith received a prison sentence of two years and seven months. However his release was subject to strict sex offender notification requirements (SONR) along with a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) which included conditions that allowed officers to have access to any device capable of storing digital images and to install monitoring software on his mobile phone and computer.
Smith was arrested again on 13 May 2024, after investigators identified he had accessed seven illegal images of children on his phone. A search was completed at his home address and several bank cards were located that he had failed to confirm to the police that he possessed. This, along with his failure to register his use of several social media usernames with officers, were breaches of his court orders.
He was charged and pleaded guilty at Maidstone Crown Court to making indecent images of a child and six breaches of his SONR. On Tuesday 12 November, the 44-year-old was sentenced to a year in prison. On his release, he will be subject to a further SHPO indefinitely.
Police investigator Thomas Briant said:
‘Smith was given the opportunity by the court to show he could reform and be trusted not to reoffend whilst living in the community.
‘Once we identified he was blatantly accessing indecent images of children on a phone we were actively monitoring, he was immediately arrested. This led to identification Smith had breached his court orders multiple times. He is now serving another prison sentence and will be subject to ongoing checks when he is released.’