The Big Story: Name and shame

In a first in the country, Kerala has decided to establish a registry of sex offenders, a record available to the public of people who have committed sexual crimes. This was announced in Governor P Sathasivam’s speech to the Kerala Assembly on Thursday and comes a week after a popular Malayalam movie start was abducted and sexual assaulted.

There were widespread protests in Kerala after the attack, as the Opposition and some in film industry questioning the state’s ability to protect women.

The government is yet to provide details about the format of the registry and how it would work, though it has said the records would be made public for employers to profile potential recruits. On the face of it, the idea of a registry of sexual offenders seems like a potent deterrent for crime.

One of the primary reasons repeat offenders get away with sexual crimes is the social stigma attached to rape. It is not uncommon to see rape survivors being forced to compromise with their attackers instead of filing complaints against them. Courts have given sexual offenders lenient sentences after they promise to compensate the woman or even forced survivors to marry their attackers. This gives the offender the anonymity to continue with such horrendous crimes.

The basic idea of such a registry is to name and shame the offender. But such a mechanism comes with its own perils if it fails to adhere to fundamental principles of criminal justice, which assume innocence till a person is proved guilty.

It is important to ensure that the registry will include only those who have been convicted by the courts and not those on whom cases have merely been registered. This is how such registries function in countries like the United Kingdom. If the registry does not have proper checks, there is scope for misuse to settle political scores.

Further, the registry is not the ultimate solution to curbing sex crimes. It has to be accompanied by measures strengthen the judicial system, which at the moment takes an woefully long time to complete trials and render justice to the survivors.

The Big Scroll

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Punidtry

  1. On the triple talaq controversy, The Hindu speaks to three people with varying views on whether the Supreme Court should intervene and reform this aspect of Islamic law. 
  2. In the Indian Express, Gautam Chintamani writes on how the transformation of the politician into a villain reflects the people’s loss of faith in the political system. 
  3. In the Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar examines the threat that “twitterisation of news” poses to the traditional media as more politicians prefer the social media over traditional media to communicate. 

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