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Produced by the Sentencing Academy

Sexual Harm Prevention Orders

Peer-reviewed research on the effectiveness and impact of sentences, orders, and requirements.

Rory Kelly, University of Galway

Published: 19 Sep 2025
Last updated: Sep 2025

Summary

This review assesses the effectiveness of Sexual Harm Prevention Orders (SHPOs), an order that may be imposed on application or conviction and the breach of which is a criminal offence. Both appellate court judgments and Home Office guidance emphasise that for an SHPO to be imposed, it must be effective. Yet there is little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the order. This review examines the existent research before turning to literature on comparable orders: Sexual Risk Orders and Stalking Protection Orders. Both orders offer useful points of comparison. There is a clear need for direct research on the effectiveness of SHPOs given their prevalence, their severity, and the fact that effectiveness is a prerequisite to their imposition.

Introduction

This review considers the effectiveness of Sexual Harm Prevention Orders (SHPOs). SHPOs were introduced by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 and came into force in March 2015. The order places prohibitions and/or requirements onto recipients, the breach of which is a criminal offence with a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. Examples include prohibiting certain forms of employment, limiting internet access, prohibiting travel overseas, requiring attendance at an alcohol or drug programme, and mandating polygraph testing (Home Office 2023). SHPOs may be imposed on conviction for a relevant offence or on application by the police to a magistrates’ court, and must last for a minimum of five years.

This bulletin first outlines the current use of SHPOs before explaining why the practical effectiveness of the order is an important legal issue. It then engages with the limited evidence on the effectiveness of SHPOs themselves before appraising two broadly comparable orders: Sexual Risk Orders and Stalking Protection Orders. There is a need for wider empirical work on the effectiveness of SHPOs, particularly because effectiveness is a requirement for imposing these orders. The sources used in this review include empirical and doctrinal work published in English since 2014.

The Current Use of SHPOs

The number of SHPOs imposed each year is detailed in the table below, which draws from the most recent Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements report (Ministry of Justice 2024). The peak occurred in 2023/24 with 6,113, an increase of 8% from the previous year. The lowest annual figure was in 2015/16 with 3,881 orders.

Table 1: SHPOs imposed, 2015-2024

YearSHPOs Imposed
2015/163,881
2016/175,935
2017/185,562
2018/194,603
2019/204,402
2020/214,336
2021/225,767
2022/235,662
2023/246,113

Effectiveness and the Imposition of SHPOs

The purpose of an SHPO is to ‘protect the public from offenders convicted of a sexual or violent offence who pose a risk of sexual harm’ (Home Office, 2023). The order may be imposed on conviction where two conditions are met: 1) the offender has committed a relevant sexual or violent offence; and 2) the order is necessary for the purposes of protecting the public from sexual harm by the offender. Relevant offences are listed in Schedules 3 and 5 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

The Court of Appeal provided guidance on the imposition of SHPOs in R v Parsons (2017) (as summarised in Kelly and Picton, 2020):

1) [F]irst no order should be made by way of SHPO unless necessary to protect the public from sexual harm. If an order is necessary, then the prohibitions imposed must be effective; if not, the statutory purpose will not be achieved.

2) Secondly and equally, any SHPO prohibitions imposed must be clear and realistic. They must be readily capable of simple compliance and enforcement. It is to be remembered that breach of a prohibition constitutes a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.

3) Thirdly, none of the SHPO terms must be oppressive and, overall, the terms must be proportionate.

4) Fourthly, any SHPO must be tailored to the facts. There is no one size that fits all factual circumstances.

For present purposes, the first requirement is key: SHPOs must be effective before they may be imposed lawfully. This requirement has been reaffirmed in more recent case law such as Dewey v R (2024) and R v Pearl (2025). The same requirement is reflected in guidance issued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS 2021, updated 2024) and the Home Office (2023). An assessment of effectiveness is neither peripheral nor separate to a legal analysis of SHPOs; it is a prerequisite to the imposition of the order.

The Limited Data on the Effectiveness of SHPOs

Given the substantial numbers of SHPOs imposed annually and the legal requirement of effectiveness, there is a clear need for data on if – and under what circumstances –  the order will be effective. A recent review of behaviour orders in England and Wales, by JUSTICE, found a lack of evidence that such orders – including SHPOs – are effective (JUSTICE 2023). The report’s core findings in this regard were that there is no national mechanism to assess the effectiveness of behaviour orders; no clear standard defining what ‘effectiveness’ means in this context; and that there are significant data gaps on the use and outcome of such orders. The review recommends an interdisciplinary Governmental review to assess the ‘efficacy and impact’ of behaviour orders.

In the context of SHPOs, one measure of effectiveness would be against their purpose of preventing sexual harm. In this context, there are two studies of note. First, in 2019, the Home Office undertook a review of SHPOs (Home Office, 2019). The Home Office study used mixed methods to assess the effectiveness of SHPOs in the limited context of protecting children and vulnerable adults abroad. The project included data collection on the number of SHPOs containing foreign travel prohibitions as well as semi-structured interviews with representatives from nine police forces and the National Crime Agency.

Interviewees reported that it is extremely difficult to obtain an SHPO with a foreign travel restriction, and few had in practice. Interviewees specified that an important obstacle was convincing a court that such a prohibition was proportionate. However, all interviewed forces believed that foreign travel prohibitions were generally not breached. The study indicates that SHPOs can be of use in the context of protecting vulnerable people abroad, but it has several limitations. First, it is not a general assessment of the effectiveness of SHPOs across all contexts, but focuses on vulnerable people abroad. Second, it relies on officer perceptions rather than measuring effectiveness directly. Thirdly, only one or two officers were interviewed per force.

A 2025 study examined a random sample of 188 people suspected of committing offences involving indecent images of children (IIOC) in Greater Manchester, of whom 86 were subject to an SHPO (Wainright and others 2025). The study covered a 10-year period from 2013-2022 and used data from Greater Manchester Police operational databases and the Police National Computer. It assessed the offending history of those in the sample, the requirements they were subject to, and whether these requirements had been breached.

For present purposes, the key finding was that being subject to notification requirements and/or an SHPO did not prevent recidivism and did not appear to have a deterrent effect.

Importantly, this study showed that being subject to registration notification requirements or SHPOs did not prevent recidivism. Common breaches of orders included concealing devices, deleting internet history, and installing cleaning software. These behaviours are suggestive of further IIOC offences taking place within this sample (Wainright and others 2025).

The study has several limitations. It is a small sample related to a single police force and, as with the Home Office Study, it focused on a subset of offending as opposed to all offences that may lead to an SHPO.

The two studies indicate limitations to the effectiveness of SHPOs with respect to the difficulty of obtaining them (Home Office 2019), and in their ability to reduce reoffending (Wainright and others 2025). Neither study, however, provides a holistic assessment of the effectiveness of SHPOs across relevant offences. With this significant limitation to the available evidence in mind, the following two sections examine studies on the effectiveness of comparable orders.

The Effectiveness of Comparative Orders 1: Sexual Risk Orders

A Sexual Risk Order (SRO) may be imposed on application to a magistrates’ court and differs from an SHPO because it does not require the person to have been convicted of a relevant offence. SROs are much less common than SHPOs, with 307 obtained between 2021 and 2023 (Whitten, Neyroud & Neyroud, 2025).

A recent study assessed whether SROs reduce sexual harm (Whitten, Neyroud, and Neyroud 2025). The study used the Police National Computer and Legal Service’s data from the Metropolitan Police Service to compare individuals made subject to an SRO with those for whom the order had been considered but not imposed. To measure sexual harm, the study relied on ‘sexual harm scores’ based on the seriousness of the offence for which subjects were arrested. The study found that the imposition of SROs is associated with an 84.5% reduction in sexual harm per month, with a still greater reduction of 93% for high-harm offenders. Both reductions were statistically significant. By comparison, there was an increase in sexual harm per month for those in the counterfactual population, but this increase was not statistically significant. 

The core limitation of the study’s method is that it was not a randomised trial; as the authors note: ‘We cannot rule out any possibility of third factors explaining away the difference in outcomes between registered cases with no SRO and those which did receive SROs.’ Other limitations include the use of arrests as a proxy for sexual harm, and differences in the demographic make-up, with those not subject to an SRO being, on average, five years younger than those who were subject to an SRO.

The Effectiveness of Comparative Orders 2: Stalking Protection Orders

The Stalking Protection Act 2019 introduced the Stalking Protection Order (SPO) (Kelly 2020). The order is available on application by the police to a magistrates’ court. A conviction is not required before an order can be imposed; and breach of a restriction or requirement is an offence.

The Home Office, and HM Courts & Tribunals Service undertook a mixed-methods review of SPOs that included surveying police officers and magistrates’ legal advisors; interviewing a victim; collecting informal feedback from Police and Crime Commissioners and the National Stalking Consortium; and analysis of quantitative data provided by various state bodies (Home Office, and HM Courts & Tribunals Service 2022).

The principal finding of the review was that ‘generally Stalking Protection Orders seem to be working well.’ 78% of police respondents (of 138 responses) and 61% of legal advisors (of 23 advisors who answered the question) thought that the orders were effective in reducing the risk of stalking. 70% of police officers with experience of monitoring and enforcing the order also said that they had not experienced problems in this regard. 65% of officers thought that those subject to an SPO mostly or completely adhered to them. However, the National Stalking Consortium, comprising organisations and individuals with expertise in stalking, raised a number of issues with SPOs, such as the police failing to respond to breaches of SPOs promptly.

A key limitation of the review is that it assessed stakeholders’ views of the effectiveness of SPOs rather than assessing effectiveness directly. A related limitation is that only those officers and legal advisors with experience of using the orders engaged with the review. Only 20 of the 92 legal advisors surveyed had been involved in an application for an SPO. The interview with the single victim with whom the Review engaged could also not be published to preserve anonymity. It should also be noted that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust submitted a super-complaint on behalf of the National Stalking Consortium on the police response to stalking after the review was published (Suzy Lamplugh Trust 2022). The super-complaint included strong criticism of the use of SPOs, such as extreme concern with the under-use and under-enforcement of the order along with many cases of stalkers being undeterred. The joint response to the super-complaint accepted that the use of SPOs was ‘worryingly low’ and noted a lack of awareness of the order among investigating officers, as well as examples of delays of several months in completing SPO applications (College of Policing, HMICFRS, IPOC, 2024).

Conclusion

There is a clear need for direct research on the effectiveness of SHPOs across all the offences to which they can apply. SHPOs are imposed frequently, with over 6,000 imposed in 2023/24 alone. These orders may have significant implications for recipients’ daily lives, and breach is a criminal offence. As a point of law, the prohibitions that make up the order must be effective. Yet research on whether SHPOs reduce the risk of sexual harm is limited with few studies, and those studies that do exist being context-specific. What the existing evidence does indicate is that there may be issues – in at least some contexts – with obtaining and enforcing SHPOs. By contrast, research on SROs indicates that their imposition can reduce sexual harm. Evidence on SPOs is more mixed: the initial Government review demonstrated that the order was perceived to be working well, but expert bodies have raised substantial criticisms related to under-use and under-enforcement. A key lesson is that any future review of SHPOs should include both direct assessment of effectiveness and examination of stakeholder perceptions to provide a comprehensive understanding of their impact.

This Bulletin is part of a series on the effectiveness of sentencing in England & Wales. Other Effectiveness Bulletins can be found here.

For further information, contact Annalena Wolcke at a.wolcke@sentencingacademy.org.uk

References

Cases

  • Dewey v R [2024] EWCA Crim 409
  • R v Parsons [2017] EWCA Crim 2163
  • R v Pearl [2025] EWCA Crim 994

Legislation

  • Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014
  • Sexual Offences Act 2003
  • Stalking Protection Act 2019