‘Keep our kids safe’: Crisafulli moves to legislate child sex offender register
Photos and details of dangerous child sex offenders living in Queensland would be made public by the end of the year, Premier David Crisafulli announced on Sunday, under an initiative to be known as Daniel’s Law.
Neighbours would also be able to apply for images of high-risk reportable offenders living in their local area, while parents and guardians could find out if adults who had unsupervised contact with their children were current reportable offenders.
Details about Daniel’s Law, promised during last year’s election campaign, were revealed by the premier at the Liberal National Party’s state conference held in Brisbane this weekend.
The law is named after Daniel Morcombe, who was abducted and murdered in 2003.Credit: ninevms
“If you commit hideous crimes and try to hide, Queenslanders deserve to know who you are and where you are to keep our kids safe,” Crisafulli said in his keynote address on Sunday morning.
“We believe the rights of victims and the rights of parents come before the rights of offenders and the rights of paedophiles.”
The new legislation was set to be introduced to state parliament this week, with the state government planning to pass it by the end of the year.
Crisafulli said more information would be revealed in coming days about how the register would work, including safeguards that would prohibit people misusing information about offenders.
The law would be named in recognition of Daniel Morcombe, the 13-year-old boy who was waiting for a bus on the Sunshine Coast in 2003 when he was abducted and then murdered by Brett Peter Cowan.
Cowan had a previous history of child sex offences, and a 2019 inquest into Daniel’s death recommended further consultation on proposals for a national public register of child sex offenders.
However, 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.”
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.
With AAP
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.