This book seeks to track the origins of sex offender registers, their purpose and the law and policy that underpins them in various parts of the world.

Sex offender registers are not really registers at all but a set of ‘legal requirements’ that fall automatically on a person convicted or cautioned for a designated sexual offence; the term ‘register’ is a form of shorthand for these requirements, designed to be a contribution to greater public protection and community safety.

This book provides the first serious and detailed narrative of the conception and implementation of the sex offender registers. It seeks to do so in a clear and easy-to-follow text that will be both informed and critical and will also serve as a resource book for those wanting to make further study of the process of registration and monitoring.

It looks in detail at the practice of implementing registers and considers questions about their effectiveness in monitoring sex offenders and the implications of someone being on a sex offender register. The book examines the legal challenges to registers and monitoring and the position of registrants in the context of human rights and seeks to place registers and monitoring in the wider context of what is being called the surveillance society.

The Registration and Monitoring of Sex Offenders will be key reading for students of criminology and criminal justice, surveillance and human rights and practitioners in criminal justice fields of policing, probation, social work, children’s services, the judiciary, prison work and others.