The hope and theory of a sex offender registry is that it does a number of things. It allows police to be aware of where individuals who pose a potential risk of repeat offending may be. As you know, perhaps the best predictor of whether you will commit an offence in the future is whether you've committed an offence in the past, and in a whole range of crimes, unfortunately.
We hope that our rehabilitation and other interventions reduce that risk and that our community integration is effective, but you cannot always be sure of that. This provides another measure for police awareness when someone represents a risk.
In our most dangerous cases when people have served time, under our system they get released into the community eventually, even if they are considered at a high risk of reoffending. There are people like that. This provides an opportunity for the police to monitor them and to be aware of their presence. In exceptional cases--it does happen occasionally and only in exceptional cases--there is an opportunity to provide public notice to the community itself so the community can be aware of the risks that exist.
That is the objective. Where were there gaps before? Well, if someone managed to avoid registration through a plea bargain or oversight, when they were eventually released into the community they were not subject to that kind of oversight. This bill seeks to address that. Those who have deliberately or just by happenstance committed their offences outside of this country would potentially at present escape that kind of oversight. This seeks to solve that kind of problem.
This bill is really aimed at making the device that we put in place to achieve that purpose more effective at filling in the gaps that exist.