What does the public think about sex offender registers? Findings from a national Australian study

Abstract

This article presents data from questions about sex offender registration orders in a large national survey on Australian public opinion about adult sex offenders. It outlines the legislative frameworks that govern these registers in Australia and discusses the use of public registers, the research on the effectiveness of sex offender registers, and Australian attitudes to such registers. Our surveys of three cohorts of members of the Australian public reveal strong public support for sex offender registers, especially for cases involving child victims. However, there was also support for judicial discretion in the imposition of orders and reduced support for automatic registration where a non-custodial sentence is imposed. The Australian Government has recently announced the establishment of a national public sex offender register, but our findings show limited support for this approach. The implications for policy and practice are considered.

Key words:

• Australia
• jurors
• public opinion
• sentencing
• sex offender registers

Acknowledgements

This study would not have been possible without the generous support of state and territory courts, judges and Attorneys-General. We gratefully acknowledge their willingness to participate in this research by granting us access to their jury pool members or otherwise assisting us with undertaking this work. Special thanks are due to the Victorian Juries Commissioner and his staff, who enthusiastically and wholeheartedly supported our work, Emeritus Professor Arie Freiberg and George Zdenkowski, for their work in the early stages of the project and to Rachel Vermey for her help with data analysis.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Lorana Bartels has declared no conflicts of interest

Karen Gelb has declared no conflicts of interest

Caroline Spiranovic has declared no conflicts of interest

Kate Warner has declared no conflicts of interest

Lynne Roberts has declared no conflicts of interest

Julia Davis has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Tasmania, Human Research Ethics Committee (approval number H0013681) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Participants from trials/cases involving child exploitation material were excluded from these comparisons, due to the different nature of these crimes and lower number of cases involving this type of crime.

Additional information

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The project was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Project ID: LP 130100083 with the following partners: Department of Justice, Tasmania; VSAC; Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration; and the and the ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner. Funding was also received from the Australian National University and University of South Australia to support this research.