Foreign

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that imposing a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison for individuals caught with child pornography is unconstitutional. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the minimum sentences remove judges’ discretion to impose sentences other than imprisonment when appropriate. The Criminal Defence Lawyers Association of Manitoba was quoted as saying, “The system

A police officer from South Yorkshire has been sentenced to three years in prison by Leeds Crown Court for extorting money from a suspected sex offender. PC Marie Thompson, the officer involved, exploited her position by impersonating a vigilante group dedicated to exposing sex offenders. She contacted a suspect under investigation for possession of indecent images of children, demanding £3,500

It always blows my mind when countries thought of as “third world” or “uncivilized” seem to have more insight and respect for human rights than the United States. Take, for example, Namibia — the African nation known most famously, perhaps, as the site of the first genocide of the 20th century, when German colonial forces massacred the Herero and Nama

The BBC recently reported on the closing of the Safer Living Foundation in Nottingham, England—a program that, for more than a decade, quietly and effectively worked with men convicted of sexual offenses to prevent them from reoffending. Despite its proven success, the project shut its doors earlier this year due to lack of funding. Why does this matter? Because the

The Queensland government will introduce legislation to parliament today to establish a sex offender registry, but unlike it’s US counterpart the legislation will include safeguards aimed at stopping vigilantism and prohibiting people from targeting offenders on the registry. Rather than blasting registrants information out there publicly, and allowing others to scrape the database and create their own copycat websites, the

The Queensland government will this week table legislation creating Australia’s first public child sex offender register. The Queensland legislation, to be known as Daniel’s Law, was named in honour of Sunshine Coast teenager Daniel Morcombe, who was abducted and murdered by a sex offender more than two decades ago. But will this new legislation actually work to make children (and