Australia

This page considers offender registration regimes in Australia.

It covers -

• introduction
• Australian databases
• state/territory registers

The page supplements discussion elewhere on this site regarding privacy, security, government personal data registers and commercial profiling.

     introduction

The shape, coverage and maintenance of registers reflects the range of Australian and overseas regimes, with

• offences that encompass penetration, 'grooming' of minors, possession of child pornography and consensual activity by people under the age of 21
• differing compliance periods, information provision requirements and penalties
• differing access conditions in theory and practice (eg police and other officials in some jurisdictions have discretionary authorisation to release information from non-public databases)

     Australian regimes

Australian constitutional arrangements mean that the different states/territories and national government each maintain offender registers, although there have been moves over the past three years for greater information sharing and standardisation.

The Australian regimes, reflecting the shape of Spent Convictions arrangements and wariness about the effectiveness of community notification, involve non-public registers that have evolved from existing criminal conviction or other databases and that contain a range of information such as

• offender name
• residential address
• employment address
• car registration
• fingerprints
• nature of offence

At the federal level a National Sex Offender System is centred on the CrimTrac agency, custodian of the national fingerprint and DNA databases and inheritor of federal sex offender registers developed by the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) and Australian Federal Police (AFP) over 1995-97. The system encompasses sharing of information across state/territory borders.

In 2002 the then federal Minister for Justice & Customs, Senator Ellison, called on all governments to establish sex offender registers with consistent legislation. That information would extend existing federal data. State/territory governments will remain responsible for monitoring movement of individual offenders within their jurisdiction; sharing via CrimTrac will assist surveillance of offenders who move interstate and "facilitate assistance being provided to overseas agencies".

The Minister commented that the Government

does not support the release of offenders' details to the community, because in other countries public disclosure has led to attacks against offenders or innocent people being mistaken for offenders.

That comment reflected studies by law reform and other bodies concluding that official/private community registers "fail to achieve their goals and lead to significant unintended consequences".

It was envisaged that the registration system would be vetted by the federal and state privacy commissioners and be underpinned by passage of consistent legislation in each jurisdiction, addressing for example suggestions that the national register should include both suspected and convicted child sex offenders.

Enhancement of information sharing arrangements and legislation over 2004-05 saw establishment of registers in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It was reflected in abnnouncement mid-2005 that details of intended overseas travel by convicted paedophiles had been provided to the Thai and Indonesian governments, which refused entry by those individuals.

State/territory legislation includes -

• Victoria Serious Sex Offenders Monitoring Act 2005 | here
• Victoria Sex Offenders Registration Act 2004 | here
• NSW Child Protection (Offenders Registration) Act 2000 | here
• NT Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Registration) Act 2004 | here
• QLD Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2004 | here

The model state/territory register of child sex offenders - the NSW Child Protection Register - was established under Child Protection (Offenders Registration) Act 2000 (CPOR). It obligates particular offenders against children to keep the state police informed of name, date of birth, residential address, employment, motor vehicle registration, the offences and travel arrangements for a specified period of time. Offences under the Act include anything done outside NSW that would constitute an offence in the state.

Registrable persons must attend a police station near their residence within 28 days of sentencing, release from custody or entry to NSW (whichever is later). Any change must be notified within 14 days. Before travelling interstate or overseas a registrable person must alert the police to each state/nation to be visited, duration of stay, and approximate return date.

The CPOR register covers two classes of offences: murder, sexual intercourse or persistent sexual abuse of a child (ie under 18 years of age) and acts of indecency punishable by imprisonment for 12 months or more, kidnapping, causing a child to be in sexual servitude, promoting or participating in child prostitution and possessing or publishing child pornography.

Noncompliance without reasonable excuse or knowingly supplying police with false/misleading information attracts a maximum penalty of imprisonment for two years and/or a fine of around $11,000.

The compliance period reflects the number and type of offences, including prior convictions. It ranges through life, 15 years, 12 years, ten years and eight years.

In Queensland, under the Sexual Offences (Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2003 and Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2004, offenders can be ordered to report to the police within 48 hours of being released from custody if the court is satisfied that a 'risk' exists. Offenders may also be required to report to police at nominated intervals. An offender making a report at a police station or other approved place is entitled to make the report out of the hearing of members of the public and is entitled to be accompanied by a support person of the person's own choosing.

Print and online private community registers have attracted criticism from civil liberties groups, government officials and privacy bodies. The most prominent was arguably Deborah Coddington's 1997 The Australian Paedophile and Sex Offender Index, apparently based on media reports with some checking against court records but criticised as "incomplete and misleading" - through for example a failure to identify some convictions that were successfully appealed
in court at a later date or emphasising 'strangers' rather than the family members/associates responsible for most child offences.

How many people are listed on the state/territory registers? The answer is unclear. As of late 2002 some 636 offenders had registered with the NSW police, reported as a 95% compliance rate.

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