New sentencing guidelines for offenders convicted of possessing, creating or sharing indecent photographs of children will come into force later this month.

It will mean that the current Copine scale will no longer be used in the sentencing of such cases.

Instead, the Isle of Man will categorise indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs based on the scale issued by the Sentencing Council of England and Wales.

The Copine (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe) scale assesses the severity of images using a rating of one to five, with five being the most severe.

Under the new guidelines images will be ranked from A to C, with A being the most serious.

It will be applied for convictions brought under the 2021 Sexual Offences and Obscene Publications Bill.

The application order will be laid before this month’s Tynwald sitting, and the new sentencing guidelines will take effect from April 21.

An explanatory memorandum for Tynwald members sets out the reasons for the new guidelines being applied.

It states that in addition to providing a common basis upon which the indecent photographs can be categorised, it will enable the police to carry out automated assessment of the severity of the images using the Child Abuse Image Database.

‘This will offer key benefits recognised as being associated with this technology, including saving time in grading photographs and pseudo-photographs, and avoiding unnecessary additional distress to investigators otherwise required to review numerous such photographs and pseudo-photographs individually,’ it says.

Although the new categorisation scale is being applied, the order makes it clear that it is a question for the court, in an individual case, to determine what information or guidance it chooses to rely upon in sentencing an offender.

The sentencing guideline being applied to the island is a modified version of the one issued by the Sentencing Council of England and Wales.