Cabinet gets registry petition

A petition that seeks the creation
of a publicly available sex offender registry in the Cayman Islands was
presented to government this week, more than two years after the document first
began circulating.

Sandra Catron, who unsuccessfully
sought public office in Bodden Town during the 2009 general election, presented
a copy of the 100-page document to Portfolio of Internal and External Affairs
Chief Officer Franz Manderson on Tuesday.

Mr. Manderson said the petition
would go to Cabinet members for review.

“That will be done within the next
21 days,” he said. “The elected officials will then make a decision as to what
happens with the petition.”

The petition has more than 1,100
signatures – not all of which are from registered voters – so it does not meet
the constitutionally required threshold to trigger a public vote on the matter.
However, Ms Catron said she was pleased elected lawmakers were finally getting
a chance to review suggestions about the registry.

“I think the intention was to just
send a very clear message to the government of the day that there are people in
the community who are very, very concerned about this issue,” she said.

The petition, in addition to
creating a public sex offender registry, also suggests mandatory minimum
sentences for sex offences, and seeks criminal background checks to keep foreigners
with prior sex offences from legally residing in Cayman.

“This just the initial step…but how
it’s actually going to work, I think the community at large need to have some
input in that,” Ms Catron said.

Mr. Manderson said the petition
would require a number of government departments to change how they handle
their business, and no one agency has full responsibility for the matter, which
led to the delay in accepting the petition.

“We just needed somebody to go
ahead and accept the petition,” he said.

A sex offender registry is a public
listing of individuals who have previously been convicted of sex crimes. In
countries where such a registry is used, anyone is able to access the registry
to find out whether a registered sex offender is living in their area.

Cayman Islands Attorney General Sam
Bulgin has previously opined that creating such a public register in a small
country could present difficult legal challenges.

Former Health Minister Anthony Eden
brought a draft bill to the legislature last year that would have created a sex
offender registry. However, the registry created under that proposal would not
have been available to all members of the public.