Secret locations for paroled sex offenders 'big trouble'

Signs went up around the West Coast town of Blackball because a paedophile was living there. Picture / Simon Baker

Giving parole to nearly 300 sex offenders without telling the communities in which they live is asking for "big trouble", says the National Party's law and order spokesman, Simon Power.

Figures released by the Corrections Department under the Official Information Act, show more than 120 of 292 sex offenders on parole are living in the lower half of the North Island.

But Corrections has refused to specify which towns for fear of vigilante action.

Mr Power said it was "outrageous" that Corrections was keeping the sex offenders' exact locations secret.

"Serious questions have to be asked about why these people get parole at all, particularly at a time when children are swarming all over our streets on holiday," he said.

"These people are a threat to the community and especially children - that's why they were locked up in the first place. They should serve their full sentences.

"But then, having let these people out, the Corrections Department should tell the public where they are living."

He said this information went to 'the very heart of the public interest", and Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor must explain why it was being kept "secret".

"Hiding behind the Privacy Act is not a good reason. What about the rights of our children?"

Corrections' general manager of probation and offender services, Katrina Casey, said it was not in the "public interest" to release too much detail regarding the whereabouts of paroled sex offenders.

Giving out the information could also lead to breaches of name-suppression orders made to protect the identity of victims, she said.

Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Garth McVicar said parole for sex offenders should be abolished.

The shock of unwittingly finding a sex offender in a community could provoke vigilante reactions, he said.

A Christchurch woman was driven from her home this month after a letterbox drop revealed that her brother, a convicted sex offender, could be granted home detention at her house.

In May, the town of Blackball, on the West Coast, mounted a vigilante campaign against a convicted paedophile.

Plans had to be scrapped last year to resettle serial sex offender Lloyd McIntosh after concerns about where he would be sent.

Also in May, an intellectually handicapped man was driven out of Whitby, near Wellington, after a smear campaign wrongly labelled him a paedophile.

Mr McVicar, however, said he believed that if people were kept properly informed and knew every effort had been made to rehabilitate sex offenders, the community would "be more forgiving than what the Corrections Department thinks". 


On parole

Sex offenders on parole, by region:
Taitokerau 12
Waitemata 22
Auckland 36
Manukau 17
Hamilton 27
Waiariki 28
Taranaki-Wanganui-Tua 34
Hawkes Bay-Gisborne 28
Wellington 33
Nelson-Marlborough-West Coast 9
Christchurch 31
Dunedin-Invercargill 15

- NZPA