Trinidad and To­ba­go passed a pub­lic sex of­fend­ers reg­istry law in Sep­tem­ber 2019. The T&T Pub­lic Sex Of­fend­ers Web­site, sex­of­fend­ers.gov.tt, was of­fi­cial­ly launched on March 3, 2023, fol­low­ing fur­ther leg­isla­tive amend­ments. This was laud­ed by ac­tivists who had ad­vo­cat­ed for this reg­istry to de­ter crimes and pro­tect the pub­lic from dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.

For weeks, the web­site http://sex­of­fend­ers.gov.tt/ has been non-func­tion­al. The web­site has been in­op­er­a­ble for at least three weeks; the ex­act time­frame for it crash­ing is un­known, as I have on­ly been track­ing it since ear­ly April.

A vis­it to http://sex­of­fend­ers.gov.tt/ re­veals a 404 not found er­ror. A 404 Not Found er­ror means the serv­er can­not find the re­quest­ed page or file. This usu­al­ly oc­curs be­cause of a page that has been re­moved, moved, or un­pub­lished, bro­ken in­ter­nal or ex­ter­nal links, mis­con­fig­ured routes or serv­er rules or miss­ing files.

The cus­tody of this reg­is­ter web­site lies with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. The Sex­u­al Of­fences Amend­ment Act No. 13 of 2021 states, in sec­tion 9: “48. (1) The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice shall, in re­la­tion to a sex of­fend­er, have con­trol of a web­site to be known as the Pub­lic Sex Of­fend­er Web­site, des­ig­nat­ed for the pub­li­ca­tion of in­for­ma­tion re­ferred to in sub­sec­tion (4)(a).”

I had hoped that the web­site would have been re­stored af­ter a week or two, but as of April 25, at 10 am, while writ­ing this col­umn, it re­mains down. This is un­for­tu­nate and means there is an is­sue with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice unit re­spon­si­ble for main­tain­ing and up­dat­ing the reg­istry.

A few days of is­sues with any web­site is un­der­stand­able, but for a ma­jor law en­force­ment web­site to crash for al­most a month is in­ex­cus­able. It is even more sad­den­ing con­sid­er­ing that T&T was the small­est coun­try in the world to pass a pub­lic sex of­fend­er reg­istry law on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2019. Leg­is­la­tion must, how­ev­er, be ac­com­pa­nied by well-re­sourced law en­force­ment ef­forts to be ef­fec­tive.

The crash­ing of the pub­lic reg­istry web­site then rais­es the ques­tion: Has the TTPS been trained in the prop­er use of sex of­fend­er reg­istries? Most of the re­duc­tion in crime from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sex of­fend­er reg­istries in the US comes from po­lice fol­low-up at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, as of­fend­ers are tracked when they move from place to place.

In the pa­per “Do Sex Of­fend­er Reg­is­tra­tion and No­ti­fi­ca­tion Laws Af­fect Crim­i­nal Be­hav­iour?” by Prescott and Rock­off, it was stat­ed,

“Us­ing de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on the tim­ing and scope of changes in state law, we study how reg­is­tra­tion and no­ti­fi­ca­tion af­fect the fre­quen­cy of sex of­fences and the in­ci­dence of of­fences across vic­tims, and check for any change in po­lice re­sponse to re­port­ed crimes. We find ev­i­dence that reg­is­tra­tion re­duces the fre­quen­cy of sex of­fences by pro­vid­ing law en­force­ment with in­for­ma­tion on lo­cal sex of­fend­ers. As we pre­dict from a sim­ple mod­el of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour, this de­crease in crime is con­cen­trat­ed among “lo­cal” vic­tims (eg, friends, ac­quain­tances, neigh­bours), while there is lit­tle ev­i­dence of a de­crease in crimes against strangers.”

Bet­ter soft­ware avail­able

The Of­fend­er­Watch Net­work is the lead­ing sex of­fend­er reg­istry man­age­ment sys­tem in the Unit­ed States. The soft­ware pack­age serves as a so­phis­ti­cat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion tool for law en­force­ment, uni­fy­ing thou­sands of agen­cies in­to a sin­gle, in­te­grat­ed data­base. This con­nec­tiv­i­ty al­lows for re­al-time track­ing of of­fend­ers as they move across ju­ris­dic­tions, en­sur­ing com­pli­ance and pub­lic safe­ty. Be­yond po­lice tools, it pro­vides a vi­tal pub­lic ser­vice through com­mu­ni­ty por­tals and a spe­cialised fam­i­ly safe­ty app. These re­sources al­low cit­i­zens to view lo­cal maps, re­ceive neigh­bour­hood alerts and mon­i­tor their chil­dren’s dig­i­tal in­ter­ac­tions for po­ten­tial threats from reg­is­tered of­fend­ers.

I have con­tacts in Of­fend­er­Watch and have been of­fer­ing their soft­ware pack­age to the T&T gov­ern­ment since 2020. Nu­mer­ous let­ters have been sent to both the present and past ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Of­fend­er­Watch main­tains a re­la­tion­ship with the FBI and US Mar­shals and could, in the­o­ry, as­sist in con­nect­ing TTPS of­fi­cers with train­ing in how to prop­er­ly im­ple­ment the sex of­fend­er reg­istry.

Every po­lice sta­tion must re­ceive some sort of train­ing, as the law pro­vides for lo­cal po­lice sta­tions to as­sist in up­dat­ing the in­for­ma­tion on the reg­istry, as of­fend­ers may change their ad­dress.

The crash of the web­site for over three weeks shows that the rel­e­vant unit in the TTPS needs to be prop­er­ly re­sourced and trained in or­der to main­tain the Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry.

I urge Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and the Prime Min­is­ter to ur­gent­ly heed my pro­pos­al to up­grade the reg­istry to the same soft­ware pack­age used by the FBI.

Fur­ther­more, an au­dit of the func­tion­ing of the reg­istry to date would be nec­es­sary, in or­der to as­sess whether the law has been prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed and if it has suc­cess­ful­ly de­terred crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

This reg­istry is a key com­po­nent in the fight against crime, and I hope this col­umn is brought to the at­ten­tion of the rel­e­vant of­fice hold­ers.