An Evaluation of the Impact of Australia's First Community Notification Scheme

Abstract

In 2012, one Australian state became the first jurisdiction in Australasia to introduce a scheme that allows information about registered sex offenders to be released to the public. This study seeks to better understand the impact of the scheme from the perspective of the police. An analysis of interviews with police officers responsible for the administration of the scheme is supplemented with an analysis of official data relevant to its implementation. The results provide little evidence that the concerns voiced by the police about the introduction of community notification have been realised. There is no consistent view that it has significantly increased the workload of the police responsible for its management, impacted adversely on offenders’ psychological well-being, led to vigilantism or resulted in offenders’ non-compliance with reporting obligations. The findings of this study may usefully inform the development of policy and practice in places that are considering introducing similar policies.

Keywords:

• community disclosure
• community notification
• Daniel's Law
• Megan's Law
• notification
• public disclosure
• public notification
• sex offender register

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the police officers who participated in the interviews and to those who assisted in the administration of the research and data extraction. The authors would also like to thank Elli Darwinkel for her assistance.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A few Canadian provinces practise community notification but the federal government has thus far resisted pressure to enact federal legislation authorising community notification (Logan, 2011; Petrunik, 2003; Vess et al., 2011).

2. The scheme was later expanded in England and Wales to allow anyone with caretaking responsibilities for a child to make an application.

3. A ‘reportable offender’ is a person whom a court sentences for a reportable offence. The list of reportable offences includes sexual and other serious offences against children, as well as select serious sexual offences against adults and serious non-sexual offences against adults if the person has prior convictions of a similar nature. Reportable offenders are required to register their personal details with the police within seven days of their release into the community from custody or court, report to the police at regular intervals, and update the police with any changes in their personal circumstances, including change of address, employment and relationship status, club memberships, vehicle registration, carriage service providers, email addresses, and online user profiles. See Vess et al. (2011) for a more detailed explanation of reporting requirements.

4. Data were not available for 379 offenders.

5. The actual number of offenders subjected to tier one notification may be slightly higher on account of the fact that the data set only includes those who became a reportable offender prior to 1 September 2013. It is possible that a small number of individuals who became reportable offenders after this date were subjected to tier one notification as well.

6. As per the previous note, the data set from which this figure was derived only includes those who became a reportable offender prior to 1 September 2013.

7. As per note 5 above, the actual number of offenders subjected to tier two notification may be slightly higher on account of the fact that the data set only includes those who became a reportable offender prior to 1 September 2013.

8. Derived from each offender's stated ethnicity and his or her ethnic appearance as recorded by the police.

9. A person whom a court has found poses a serious danger to the community as per relevant legislation.

10. It is not possible to compare those subjected to tier one notification with those subjected to tier two notification due to the fact that this would violate the assumption of independence (as five offenders were subjected to both tier one and tier two notification).

11. Separate Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests were conducted to test the assumption of normality. As this test is known to be highly sensitive, a probability value of p < .001 was used. The distribution of registration length was non-normal for those subjected to tier one notification, D(39) = 0.43, p < .001 (Z_skewness = 3.62, p < .001, Z_kurtosis = 4.02, p < .001), those subjected to tier two notification, D(80) = 0.38, p < .001 (Z_skewness = 1.60, p = ns, Z_kurtosis = −1.65, p = ns), and those not subjected to notification, D(1910) = 0.41, p < .001 (skewness = 6.57, kurtosis = 45.79).

12. The variances in registration length were unequal for the group subjected to tier one notification, F(1, 1947) = 109.58, p < .001, and the group subjected to tier two notification, F(1, 1988) = 915.42, p < .001.

13. A further 11,913 searches were initiated but not completed.

14. There are in fact four different offence types that relate to failure to comply with the legislative requirements pertaining to reportable offenders. However, due to the low overall number of violations, these four offence types were combined for the purposes of data analysis, and only the totals are provided.