Paedophiles could be spared jail and given counseling instead due to the massive volume of online child abuse images and scant resources, according to Britain’s National Crime Agency NCA chief Lynne Owens said the scale of the challenge facing undercover cops is so great, that it requires a radical re-think. RT reports: She said undercover investigators could approach offenders looking at low-level child abuse images online and ask them to seek help from charities. The program is bound to be controversial, however, as it would rely on appealing to the conscience of pedophiles. The NCA, Britain’s version of the FBI, said the program would not apply to offenders looking at higher-level images, who would still be prosecuted if their identities can be determined. Police in the UK spend about £1 billion (US$1.44 billion) each year investigating child abuse crimes, including the sharing of offensive images. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has reported an exponential rise in the number of webpages featuring child sex abuse images. IWF took down 68,092 web addresses last year, a rise of 118 percent on 2014 figures. Owens believes asking low-level offenders to seek counseling would stop them from going on to commit more serious crimes. [...]