The promises and perils of developing a national sex offender recidivism database in Australia

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Current Issues in Criminal Justice

ISSN

10345329

Volume

32

Issue

3

First Page

359

Last Page

367

PubMed ID

10.1080/10345329.2020.1807701

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

School

School of Arts and Humanities

RAS ID

32232

Funders

Australian Research Council https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10345329.2020.1807701

Grant Number

ARC Number : LP140100275

Grant Link

http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP140100275

Comments

Spiranovic, C., Ferrante, A., Buscot, M. J., Griffiths, C., Allan, A., Wong, S., ... Morgan, F. (2020). The promises and perils of developing a national sex offender recidivism database in Australia. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 32(3), 359-367. https://doi.org/10.1080/10345329.2020.1807701

Abstract

© 2020 Sydney Institute of Criminology. Much of what we know about sexual offenders and risk management is derived from empirical studies on sex offender populations in North America. In comparison to Canada and the United States, the evidence base in Australia on sexual offender risk management is under-developed. In this paper, we describe a current research project tasked with developing a national sex offender recidivism database to advance the evidence base in Australia. It is argued that a national database would advance knowledge and practice in the field of sex offender risk management in Australia in a multitude of ways. Yet there are many obstacles and difficulties in developing such a database. After putting forward a case for the need for such a database, we outline the issues we have encountered and the approaches we have adopted to develop this database. It is intended that this contemporary comment may not only alert readers to this emerging data resource in Australia but also function as a road map to guide future empirical research on offender population databases in Australia.

DOI

10.1080/10345329.2020.1807701

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