OTTAWA, CANADA — Canada’s national sex-offender registry has not been responsible for solving a single crime in the five years of its existence. In fact, the database is only accessed about 165 times a year, authorities say. Police want the registration rules and procedures changed to make the data more useful and relevant.Law enforcement officials testified before a House of Commons committee on Tuesday, saying the registry, which is supposed to help keep track of how sex offenders look and where they live, is ineffective because it doesn’t contain enough information. In addition, the information it does contain often is out of date.
According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer in charge of the database, the biggest problem is that registration is not automatic. Judges are tasked with whether to require offenders to register, so the registry does not include most offenders. According to Pierre Nezan, prosecutors frequently forget to include a registration requirement at sentencing, and some trade away registration as part of plea deals.
Another issue, according to Nezan, is that authorities are allowed to consult the database only after a crime has occurred, not in order to prevent registrants from reoffending.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said the committee is considering changes to the underlying law that would make sex-offender registration automatic and require provinces to participate. Ontario, for example, prefers its own system to the national database because Ontario officials believe the province’s method of tracking sex offenders is more effective.
The Ontario database requires automatic inclusion of convicted sex offenders and is accessible by police at all times. In addition, it requires registrants to notify authorities before they move or take vacation. The national system allows registrants 15 days after moving to notify authorities and doesn’t require notification of vacations that last fewer than two weeks.
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has urged the national government to adopt Ontario’s model, which the province codified in 2001.
Eleven thousand Ontario registrants compose the majority of the national database of 19,000 people. Even so, Ontario Provincial Police Superintendant David Truax said he believes only about 50 – 60-percent of the province’s convicted sex criminals are included in the national database.
