IT could have been another Soham. If Philip Bargh had not panicked and let his young victim go, we might so easily have been reporting a shocking tragedy.

What Bargh did was terrible enough. His abduction of a nine-year-old girl at knifepoint was a sick and cowardly crime, and the stuff of parents' nightmares.

As so often with these cases, the trial of Bargh revealed he was a known sex offender. In one court appearance he was described as a "predatory paedophile".

Despite this, he received short prison sentences. Extended jail terms might not have been enough to deter him from further crimes, but they would have protected children for longer.

Bargh's record ensured the authorities kept a close eye on him - but not close enough to protect the nine-year-old he snatched from a York playing field in June.

The organisation charged with supervising Bargh and his like, the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), defended its record today. It points out that the police and probation officers paid regular visits to Bargh, and he was sent on more than one sex offender programme, although these clearly failed to change his behaviour. While it is impossible to arrange a 24-hour stake-out of every known paedophile, few will be reassured by the MAPPA chairman's resigned comment that "the most dangerous offenders... will from time to time re-offend".

In an age of sophisticated computerised surveillance and electronic tagging, we can and must do more to keep men like Bargh away from children.

Updated: 09:55 Tuesday, November 01, 2005