Australia’s first public sex offenders register has gone live in Western Australia.
State authorities have created a website that provides the public with photographs and information on the state’s worst sexual offenders, and Queensland may follow suit.
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The initiative has been touted as legislation that will ‘protect the community’, but some critics aren’t convinced.
“It is leading Australia in providing parents with what would have been confidential information,” Acting Detective Senior Sargeant Darryl Noye told ABC.
“Previously they would not have been aware potentially that someone is a reportable offender if that person has access to their children.”
The Community Protection Website went live on Monday, publishing the names and faces of about 50 paedophiles, and it also facilitates parents asking police about the criminal history of people who have unsupervised contact with their children.
Though some groups have raised concerns about the website leading to mistaken identity and ‘vigilantism’.
Criminal Lawyers Association of WA president Linda Black said she could not see how the website would help the community, satisfied already with a system whereby anyone working with children needed police clearance, which is in place in the state.
“My primary concern is, once people have this information, what is anticipated they will do other than try and run the bloke out of town?” she said.
While the Queensland government has not considered an online register of sex offenders, the Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said his government would not rule it out.
Mr Bleijie said he also held concerns that publishing details of sex offenders would create “communities of vigilantes”.
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Under Queensland’s two-strike policy, people who are convicted of a child sex offence a second time receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.
WA doesn’t have a two-strike system in place, and critics of the website like Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnson calling for such legislation to be implemented.
“Western Australia needs two strikes legislation just like everybody else does,” she told ABC.
“The human rights of our children have to be placed as a priority over the civil rights of repeat, recidivist sex offenders.”
Your say: Do you think child sex offenders should be named and shamed?
