Registration of child sexual abusers and paedophiles as a preventive measure – A comparative analysis

Abstract

Child sexual abuse represents a complex product of many factors, such as social, cultural, economic and biological amounting to long-term consequences for the victim due to the child’s psychological immaturity during its developmental stage. One of the most important measures applied towards the prevention of such criminal offense is the registration of persons convicted of child sexual abuse and paedophilia in a special register. Despite being widespread, their implementation is not universal. The first part of this paper identifies the origin of such registers by analysing separate cases of the US and the UK. The second part manifests an international comparative approach toward the legislation and modality of selected countries which have successfully established and regulated sexual offender registries within their national legal systems. For that matter, five countries originating from different continents throughout the globe are analysed: the Balkan Peninsula (Macedonia and Albania), Europe (France), North America (Canada) and Africa (Kenya).