DAVID Filor is a paedophile. Last year he was given an open-ended prison sentence after being found guilty of child pornography offences.

The Court of Appeal ruled the sentence was unlawful and set him free.

Within 24 hours he was arrested outside the Newport Centre where he had been watching children in the swimming pool.

This time he was sent down for 30 months. But again Court of Appeal judges ruled this excessive and he is now free again.

There has been some understandable outrage at the decision and we publish more reaction from local politicians today.

We live in a society where, quite correctly, you cannot be locked up because of what you might do in the future.

But the courts must surely be some protection of the public from people like Filor.

The amount of manpower now likely to be used by the police and other agencies to keep an eye on this man is ludicrous.

Perhaps some relatively secure halfway house between prison and freedom is needed for people like David Filor.

We do not have an easy solution to this problem.

What is certain, however, is that if Filor commits worse crimes in the future then there will be some serious questions to be asked of those who have set him free.