FIVE convicted sex offenders are currently missing or wanted by Dorset Police.

Officers are actively seeking the whereabouts of the indi-viduals, who are all on the sex offenders’ register.

But the force said it was unable to reveal any details about the missing offenders, such as who they are or their offences.

Offenders are also ranked in ‘levels’ depending on the serious-ness of supervision they need.

The police, which is just one of several agencies involves in dealing with sex offenders, have not disclosed the levels of the missing sex offenders.

At the time of the last annual report published by the Dorset Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements Management Board (MAPPA), there were 574 registered sex offenders in Dorset.

Claude Knights, pictured, dir-ector of charity Kidscape, said regardless of level, one missing sex offender is ‘one too many.’ Although she said she doesn’t know how five missing compares to the rest of the UK, if any registered sex offender is una-ccounted for then ‘safeguarding the public is not as it should be.’

She said she could understand that the police don’t want to cause any ‘unnecessary worry’ but to have five missing offenders is ‘far from ideal.’

She added: “The ideal situation is not to have any registered sex offenders unaccounted for.

“It is concerning because they are on the register for a reason and one would hope, that costing what it does, MAPPA would pre-vent them from going missing.”

She said she hoped the board was doing ‘everything it possibly can’ to rectify this.

The number of current missing offenders came to light as the result of a Freedom of Information request by the Echo.

Dorset Police refused to give any further details about the offenders.

Level one offenders need ordinary agency management, level two is where the active involvement of more than one agency is required.

Level three is where senior oversight is required to monitor an offender.

Of Dorset’s registered sex offenders, 14 were cautioned or convicted for breach of notifi-cation requirements.

Two, who are level 2 offenders, were sent back to custody.

A new report giving numbers as from March 31 this year is due to be published around the end of this month.

But when the Echo asked how many sex offenders were currently missing or wanted, a spokesman said: “As at October 9, 2013, there were a total of five registered sex offenders classed as missing or currently recorded as wanted, and being actively sought by Dorset Police because they have broken notification requirements.”