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Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has flagged plans to introduce a national public register for child sex offenders, saying it will have a "strong deterrent effect on offenders and ensure that parents are not in the dark about whether a registered sex offender has access to their children".
But looking at similar schemes implemented in other countries, the case that a registry will reduce sex crimes against children doesn't quite stack up.
The Australian Institute of Criminology, a government crime and justice research agency, released a report just last year stating research into the effectiveness of registries is mixed at best.
While we don't have the specifics of what a national registry would look like, we do know that under Mr Dutton's proposal information about offenders will be published on a website and will include their name, date of birth, photo, the nature of their offending, and their general location (ie postcode).
But this plan will only come to fruition if the states sign up.
Do the states already have something in place?
Western Australia established an operating database back in 2012, although access to it is limited.
Local residents can enter their name and drivers licence to request information on missing registered sex offenders and sex offenders living in their area. Parents can also submit a request as to whether an individual who has contact with their child is a registered offender.
In the Northern Territory, a bill was proposed in 2015 to introduce a public sex offender registry available online to any member of the public, local or interstate. The site would have published the names, whereabouts, physical descriptions and photographs of convicted serious sex offenders, but the legislation was deferred after concerns raised by stakeholder groups.
Ahead of the 2018 state election, the Victorian Liberals promised a sex offenders register with images, but that election was won by Labor and we haven't heard anything about it since then.
What about internationally?
In the UK, a child sex offender disclosure scheme known as 'Sarah's Law' applies to all forces across England and Wales.
The scheme was introduced in 2011 after a high-profile campaign by Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was murdered by a convicted paedophile in 2000.
The US has a string of laws tackling the issue, including Megan's Law, which effectively requires all states to mandate community notification.
The catch-all law in the US is the 2006 Adam Walsh Act, which set up the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
SORNA provides national guidelines for registering sex offenders, and requires states to widen the number of covered offences and include certain classes of juvenile offenders.
In South Korea, the names, ages, occupations and details of crime of convicted rapists and child molesters are posted online, after a 2001 decision by the government's Commission on Youth Protection. The data is also posted on the bulletin boards of central and provincial governments.
Peter Dutton says a registry will be a strong deterrent… will it?
TL;DR: Probably not.
Based on a government report and what some experts and key stakeholders have said, a national registry probably won't make a significant change.
The AIC report mentioned earlier in this article found there was little evidence that the US SORNA policies reduced reoffending, and that some studies actually showed SORNA increased sex offence recidivism.
However it did find there was some evidence that SORNA has a general deterrent effect on first time or non-convicted sex offenders in the community, likely due to the perceived risk of being placed on a public register.
The report said the impact of WA's registry on reoffending was yet to be measured, although police and practitioners had raised concerns that public registration was counter-rehabilitative and could increase the risk of reoffending.
You can read the full report here.
Here's what some experts and stakeholders said:
Criminologist and senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Dr Xanthe Mallet told ABC TV it's difficult to measure how much of a deterrent a registry would be for first-time offenders.
"The problem with it is that this really focuses on stranger and acquaintance attacks, but what we know is that a significant proportion are actually people who are very well known to the child, even family members, and it will have no impact on that at all.
"We also know that only one in seven sex offenders repeat offend. It's actually a low repeat offence rate, even if you hear it's very high, that's in fact not the case. So what we should do is target the ones who are likely to reoffend — that's the way we're going to protect the community.
Dr Mallet said systems like the ones in the UK and Korea did not reduce fear in the community, and could actually have a number of negative impacts.
- It could increase fear in the community for people who discover an offender is living close by;
- There could be an increased burden on police as a result of vigilantism;
- It could affect neighbourhood house prices if an offender lives in the area;
- Not all offenders are the same, for example a juvenile prosecuted for sexting could end up on the register.
Here's what child protection groups said:
President of the Blue Knot Foundation, Cathy Kezelman, told AM that, while there's evidence to show a public register could be a potential protection against high-risk offenders, for low-risk offenders it may not be a deterrent at all.
Ms Kezelman said there were other potential risks to the register system, like a fear-based society in which offenders may be targeted and vigilante behaviour might be encouraged.
She said a lot more information was needed about how the register would work.
"We also need to understand that the vast majority of children are sexually abused in the home, family and neighbourhood.
"So Blue Knot's stance is that children need to be protected and safe at all times, but we need to understand — from overseas studies and also from WA, which has a public sex offenders register — what the stats are and what the true impacts of this are, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction."
Other measures which could be introduced to keep children safer include:
- A public awareness campaign
- Encourage people to report abuse by teaching that it's it's everybody's business
- Active interventions
Hetty Johnston, the founder of child protection organisation Bravehearts, said the Morrison Government's call for a Megan's Law in Australia was nothing but a political stunt.
"I understand totally why the Government are doing this and I understand 100 per cent why the public might want to support it," Ms Johnston said. "I did when I first heard of Megan's Law in the USA. But when you look at the facts it is clear that this solution simply does not work to protect children.
"It makes the community feel better but it does not protect our children."
Ms Johnston said the Government would be better off protecting children by calling for a royal commission into the family law system and toughening up laws "that currently release dangerous sex offenders back into our communities".
Topics: child-abuse, community-and-society, sexual-offences, law-crime-and-justice, federal-government, government-and-politics, australia, united-kingdom, united-states
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