Turning a light on dark crimes

By DOUG GRIFFITHS

Whistle-blowing websites mean sexual predators and paedophiles in the United States can no longer count on anonymity to hide their crimes.

But New Zealand is a long way from taking similar action, although some see legislation before Parliament as a step in the right direction.

Last week, the American Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional rights of sex offenders whose details are published on websites are not being infringed.

In a separate ruling, the court also decided that public safety was a priority, and rejected several challenges from convicted offenders who claimed that having details published on websites was effectively a second punishment. More than a dozen American states publish internet sex offender registers parentsformeganslaw.

In New Zealand, legislation introduced to Parliament by Act list MP Deborah Coddington aims to use database technology to make information about New Zealand sex offenders available to the Justice Ministry and police.

Eventually, Coddington would like to see a system that is kept up to date with a wide variety of information about offenders.

"At the moment the police do not know when a sex offender moves to live in an area," she says.

"I hope any New Zealand register would take the depth of records further than it is currently. I would like it to include any name changes, DNA profiles, current photographs and anything else considered relevant to keeping track of individuals."

Coddington said her main priority was to get some sort of register running before thinking about other ways of distributing offender details.

In 1996, she published the Paedophile and Sex Offender Index, a book naming sex offenders.

Authorities in the United Kingdom are applauding the introduction of the ViSOR (Violent and Sex Offender Register) system, designed to help police keep track of known sexual predators.

Its information is not made available to the public.

Coddington says such a system has more relevance to New Zealand than the American web-based tell-all system.

She does not think New Zealand is ready to have sex offenders' details officially published on the internet.

In 2000, Waikanae man Les Eldridge's bid to put sex offenders' details on his now defunct website www.childsafety1st.org.nz met with little enthusiasm from the Justice Ministry and Coddington.

Eldridge said he had agreement from the Department of Internal Affairs to include "a hall of shame" on his site. But he received a letter from Coddington's publishers complaining about what he was doing.

Coddington said Eldridge was going to put the contents of her book on his website, and she was "not happy with this".

Eldridge's request to the Department for Courts for details of offenders was also rejected.

Department spokesman Barry Ebert said conviction information was available to the public while before the courts, but criminal records were protected by the Privacy Act.

AWS Legal's Nic Soper says New Zealand has no laws stopping anyone setting up informational websites, but defamation laws do apply.

"As long as the references in any Sex Offender Register are related to court proceedings where suppression orders are not current, then there is no legal prohibition against the information appearing on the internet."