Two people have become the first in Queensland to face charges as a result of community reports stemming from the public sex offender registry.
Acting Police Commissioner Denzil Clark said on Sunday that so far, the community had reported nine offenders who had access to children, including two who were facing charges for not properly reporting to police.
“Of course, there have been several instances where, although they may not have been reportable offenders, we held concerns about that person and their access to children, and we engaged with that family and had conversations about protecting those children,” Clark said.
He said the reportable offenders could have had access to children or unsupervised contact with them in several scenarios, such as through sports clubs or personal relationships.
Police were investigating whether the remaining seven offenders said to have had access to children had breached their reporting obligations.
The register – named Daniel’s Law after slain Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe – was launched on December 31.
Premier David Crisafulli said at the time, it had given police and parents the tools to do their job.
“We are shining a spotlight on monsters who, for too long, have easily been able to lurk in the shadows,” he said.
In the first 10 weeks after the registry’s launch, it was accessed more than 205,000 times. Of those searches, just under half were made within the first week.
The register allows three kinds of searches: a full list of offenders who had breached reporting duties; locality searches; and a tool to make inquiries about suspected offenders.
Elements of Daniel’s Law available to the public
- Tier 1: A list of reportable offenders who have failed to comply with obligations and whose whereabouts are unknown (an offender’s full name, photograph and year of birth are accessible to members of the public who agree not to misuse the information).
- Tier 2: An online application for residents to view photographs of reportable offenders living in their local area.
- Tier 3: An online application for parents or guardians to inquire as to whether a particular person with unsupervised contact with their child is a reportable offender.
The state reported that during the first 10 weeks, 36,889 Tier 2 local searches were carried out, providing images of registered sex offenders living nearby.
All of the information is freely accessible, but users must agree to strict access guidelines.
However, people using the website have criticised it for having unclear boundaries on a “local area”, with some searches failing to bring up reportable offenders living as close as 5 kilometres from an address.
The premier said on Sunday he would “never shut the door on improving it [the register] and strengthening it”, but ruled out watering it down.
“I will always side with a victim and a family over a predator and a monster every day of the week … and everything we do should be about making the state safer,” he said.
Clark said police had only seen one case of misuse of the register’s information – when Brian Allan Smith posted identifying information on social media.
Crisafulli said that by abiding by the website’s rules, users had disproved claims raised before its launch that it would be misused for vigilantism.
“I have this view that, overwhelmingly, people are good, and they just want their kids to be safe, and this is proving it,” the premier said.
“You heard me speak a lot about community safety, and I won’t change in that regard – I want that to be a legacy of our government.”
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