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A former federal agent from America with 27 years experience of catching violent sex offenders, was issuing the instructions.

"Sit down, sit up and look straight ahead," he said. "Put your feet flat on the floor, rest your palms on your knees and don't move."

On the chair I was sat on was a mat, and wired pads were stuck to my hands. I was told to raise my arms above my head so he could strap two coiled lengths of black plastic around my chest and abdomen.

An aneroid sphygmomanometer, otherwise known as a blood pressure measuring tool, was strapped around my right arm.

The cables were plugged into the laptop.

I was about to take the opening analysis for a polygraph test used by on sex offenders as part of a plan to manage them in the community after release from prison.

It is a new scheme being used in the Midlands to detect if sex offenders have breached their prison release conditions and is the latest tool in the authorities' arsenal to keep tabs on offenders in the community.

For example, if they are not allowed to go within a mile of a school, but do, and then answer 'no' during the test, their bodily reactions should give them away.

If the test signals that they are being untruthful, they will subjected to an investigation which could land them back in prison.

All those tested are also monitored under the Multi Agency Public Protection
Arrangement otherwise known as , a joint effort by police and probation services to supervise more than 50,000 sex offenders and violent criminals living in the community.

In Panorama: Freed to Offend Again we examine how this system - designed to protect us - actually works.

We meet the relatives of victims killed by monitored offenders, I go out with the police to meet a high-risk sex offender who claims he has changed and we gain exclusive access to a Mappa meeting as it decides the risk level of a man about to be released.

Each year the government publishes a report telling us the number of re-offences committed by 25% of those on the Mappa list deemed the most serious risks.

In its report for year from April 2007-March 2008, it was reported that only 79 serious further offences were committed by this group.

What they've not told us is the serious further offences committed by some of the other 75%.

Using freedom of information requests, we thought we'd try and find out. What we was that, worrying, there were far more than the government has chosen to disclose.

Freed to Offend Again raises concerns that some offenders are not being monitored at the appropriate level and that those who are re-offending are not making it onto the official statistics released to the public.

The government says accuracy worries are behind a delay in plans to reveal the full re-offend figures among all of the Mappa offenders.