On the very first page of the registry, all of that offender's information will pop up on the screen, as will as a detailed map indicating where that offender lives, along with his picture and all the information.
The next couple of slides will show you what is contained in that offender's database. It has his name history. It has his status as to whether he's required to register or is non-compliant. It has an address history, which is also very important, because when officers are investigating crimes that have taken place a long time ago, they can query those addresses to determine whether or not an offender lived in that area. There is a phone history. There's a verification history, which is the responsibility of the police service that's responsible for that offender. The verification history is put in there to determine whether that offender's address and his particulars were verified by a police service.
In the next slide, his actual physical description is shown. Every one of those physical descriptors, as we'll see in slides later on, can be queried. If he's clean shaven, or has a bald spot, or even scars, marks, and tattoos, all of that information is put into the database, as well as his case history. The case history includes the agency that charged him, what the start date was, and a brief case scenario, which is very similar to the ViCLAS jargon that's used when they put out that information on the offence committed by the offender. Every word in that case narrative can be queried as well--you'll be able to see that in some slides--as can his conviction history.
These are some of the investigative benefits of the Ontario sex offender registry: it's a specific offender database for criteria sex offences; it allows the police and the offender to have a relationship, because the police are required by law to go to that offender's house to ensure that he lives there; it provides a reliable current address; and the police services in Ontario have 24/7 access to the database.
The police are accountable for the offenders in their area. There's no public notification, but there are provisions for notification to the public if the safety of the public is at risk.
As for proactive notification to the offender, this is done on three occasions. The police are required to serve that offender at the time of charge, because what happens is that the offender doesn't know that he is required to go on the registry when he has been convicted of one of those criteria offences. That's an issue after court. Once he's convicted, he's served. Then, if he goes into the institution, we at the OSOR also serve him.
We do have proactive software to identify non-compliance. Again, that's with the OSOR only, because we can determine when that person was released from jail or when that person was required to register. We do have an electronic connection between the provincial and the federal OMS, which gives us the release dates of offenders on the database, and that's crucial to determine non-compliance.
As for some of the other capabilities, we can do jurisdictional offender searches, provincial offender searches, radius searches, which we'll see in a second, and postal code searches. Through the inquiry builder, which is very good for the police services, if they have a description of an offender, they can search all those descriptors. We'll see that in a second.
We can also do text searches. Also, there are photographs, which is very important. We keep all the historical photographs, plus the current ones. Again, we're available 24/7. The OPP headquarters is also the NSOR centre for Ontario. We can do vehicle searches and we can do tattoo searches.
Under the inquiry builder, there are 196 different choices that the police services can choose from in order to try to track or identify a possible person of interest for a sex offence. This slide shows an example of an inquiry builder. This inquiry builder put in age, build, weight, hair colour, tattoo class, and eye colour; we can do right eye colour or left eye colour if they're different. What happens is that after you search it, the following people show up. There are five offenders there, all with their photographs and all matching that description.
The difference with the next slide is that we've taken out the tattoo; we're in the same query and we have 43 offenders. So it's very easy to narrow down your offenders with more information that the witnesses or the victim can provide to the police.
This is a key function of the OSOR. It's our radius search. The radius search we're doing here is 77 Memorial Avenue. That is a radius search of GHQ headquarters in Orillia. Again, it's fictitious. Once you put that information into the system and put a radius of 5,000 metres--which is five kilometres--a map pops up and identifies the address you want to run that from. For example, if you have a sexual assault at that location and you want to identify who your offenders are within that geographical area, you identify it on the map; it pops up on the map and you pinpoint it, You can identify the current addresses or you can identify all the offenders who ever lived in that jurisdiction. What happens is that the offenders show up; it gives you the offenders' addresses, their photographs, a detailed map of exactly where they live in relation to that offence location, as well as how far that offence location is. And that's very important.
This one depicts an area within the province in which we selected an area of a possible offence location. This shows what the potential is for a number of offenders showing up close to that area. If you don't have that information, it's very difficult to try to identify someone as a point of interest, because every one of those red marks is an offender.
We also have vehicle searches. This is new legislation that allows us to put in vehicles that are associated with offenders, not only owned or leased, but commonly used. That means their work vehicle if they're a cab driver or a truck driver. We can put that information in there. As well, we can describe what that vehicle is like. What happens is a victim will commonly say, for example, that the person was driving a blue van. We weren't able to get that information prior to the last legislation. Now we can go in and run a search of all blue vans and they'll pop up on the system.
Again, we're going to discuss quickly the extensive descriptor searches. Here's an example of a possible descriptor search of a suspect and a location. Every one of those will be run on the system and identify an offender.
We talked about photographs earlier. The next set of photographs is of a guy from our office in 1974, 1984, and 2004. But we do have photographs of offenders on there from year to year to year, and you wouldn't believe the change in them. Some people get a tattoo on their face, or grow a moustache or shave their head, and it's very important to have those historical photographs. This is an example of it.
Tech searches. Commonly, a victim will tell the police that she doesn't know any information about the suspect, but she may have information about how the suspect perpetrated his crime. By that I mean she or he may have been sexually assaulted at a residence and not know where it is, but the offender used a pillow during his assault, or used a knife. We can go onto the case narrative here, run the word “pillow“ in this case, and every offender who's ever used a pillow in the province of Ontario, or outside of Ontario and lives in Ontario, will pop up on the system. In this case, because it's fictitious, two people pop up. The next slide will show that in this case narrative, the word “pillow” pops up.
Currently, the OSOR monitors move-in and move-out dates of offenders' residences. This is very important, because that triggers non-compliance. We manage when the information is verified and by whom, so the police services are responsible for verifying the information.
Another important aspect is that all persons on the Ontario sex offender registry are also on CPIC in the SIP category, which is “special interest to police”. If a police officer on the road stops that person, they can identify a potential address where that person may have moved and provide that information to the OSOR.
Currently, we have 2,500 users on the system who access that system daily.
This is just showing if we wanted to find out how many females were on the system. There are 95 females on the OSOR.
In our last slide prior to some questions, as of May 2009, since the inception of SOIRA in December 2004, 5,169 offenders have been convicted of criteria offences in Ontario. Of that 5,169, only 3,007 have been issued form 52 under the national scheme and were required to register with the national registry. This equates to 58.17% of convicted sex offenders required to register on the national registry. All of these convicted offenders are on the OSOR.
Barring that, if there are any questions....
