A new register of child sexual abuse offenders promises to give children greater protections.
The new laws will be introduced to Queensland parliament this week, delivering on a key election commitment of the Crisafulli government.
Known as Daniel’s Law, named after 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, who was abducted while waiting for a bus on the Sunshine Coast in 2003 and murdered, the register will establish a three-tier system for publicly reporting information.
It will mean Queenslanders will be able to access a searchable database and apply for images of child sex offenders who live in their area.
Images and details of offenders who have failed to comply with their reporting obligations and whose whereabouts are unknown will also be available through a publicly available website.
Additionally, parents will be able to apply to police to find out whether someone having unsupervised contact with their child is a reportable offender.
The scheme will be administered by Queensland Police with safeguards put in place to prevent the misuse of information, the government said.
Premier David Crisafulli made the announcement at the Liberal National Party annual convention in Brisbane on Sunday, saying the law change will “arm parents with information to make decisions for the safety of their children”.
“Monsters cannot be allowed to lurk in the darkness, Daniel’s Law will help protect children who can’t protect themselves,” he told reporters on Sunday.
“Everything we do is about driving down the number of victims of crime and this will help prevent innocent children falling prey to predators.”
More details are set to be released in the coming days.
The proposal for the register has been controversial.
Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said the new law could do more harm than good as offenders’ names are often concealed to protect their victims.
“The council accepts that it is a fundamental human right of all persons, particularly children, to be protected from sexual assault. However, proposals such as Daniel’s Law are most likely to have the opposite effect and do harm to innocent people such as victims,” he said earlier this year.
“Given that the overwhelming majority of sex offenders are known to or related to their victims, the first people likely to be harmed by the publication of the names of sex offenders are the victims who may well be identified.”
Mr Cope said laws that focus on stranger danger could also create a false sense of security with familiar people, which may expose children to risk.
He also pointed towards public registers of sex offenders such as Megan’s Law in the United States, which have yielded mixed results in whether they lead to significant reductions in recidivism.
