Long list of reasons why this register is failing the public

THE phrase slips from the newsreader's lips so easily that it has become part of the daily news landscape. Someone convicted of an offence in a Scottish court has, in addition, been "placed on the Sex Offenders Register". Occasionally it is expressed as "required to sign the Sex Offenders Register".

Whatever the variation, it conjures an image that somewhere there is a large leather-bound volume in which the names of men and women who have been convicted of a sexual crime, and whom we should keep an eye on even when they have served their senten...