Human rights legislation is preventing a newspaper from publishing pictures of shoplifters banned from more than 200 city shops.

The York Evening Press has published a ‘hit list’ of the top ten serial shoplifters in York.

The thieves – all convicted in the courts – are being targeted by a band of retailers who have joined forces to ban them from their shops.

The paper carried a story detailing how pictures of all ten offenders were issued to all the shops in the Retailers Against Crime in York scheme.

But the photographs, for use by store staff, will not be on display in the shops.

The Evening Press attempted to obtain copies so that the public were able to see who they were.But both RACY and the police declined to release the images.

RACY said it feared breaching the Data Protection Act, while the police said they had a “duty of care” to offenders – and releasing the pictures might also breach the Human Rights Act.

The Evening Press believes shoplifting affects everyone, and that it should be allowed to publish photographs of the ‘top ten’.

Its editorial comment said: “We don’t want shoplifters in this city and this enterprising new approach to tackling the problem already looks to be reaping benefits.

“The most prolific offender, who has been barred from York’s shops for life, is now back in prison again, sentenced to three months.

“One apparent weakness of this scheme is that RACY and the police declined to hand on pictures of the offenders for the Evening Press to publish.

“The grounds given were fears of breaching the Data Protection Act and the human rights of the offenders.

“Yet publication of these pictures would identify the persistent offenders for those shops not yet signed up to the scheme and help to kick shoplifters out of York for good.”

Stewart Room, head of data protection at Rowe Cohen solicitors, explained that publication of the photographs by the Evening Press could lead to problems under the Human Rights Act, rather than with data protection.

He said: “The police can publish the information under the prevention or detection of crime criteria of Section 29 of the Data Protection Act 1998.

“The press would say publication is in the public interest and under the journalistic exemption of Section 32 I don’t see why they couldn’t go ahead and publish the photographs.

“But with human rights, proportionality is the issue. The shopkeepers need the photographs because they need to keep the shoplifters away, but the public are not threatened by them.”

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