Tartu law faculty opposes adding sex offenders’ photos to register

Tartu University’s Faculty of Law says a public photo register of people convicted of sexual offences would conflict with human dignity, the rule of law and European Union data protection law, and hinder their reintegration. The faculty’s assessment was reported by ERR.

The Justice Ministry wants to add portrait photos to criminal-record information about paedophiles to improve child protection. The faculty said it shared the goals of protecting children and reducing employers’ administrative burden, but could not support the draft amendment.

The faculty argued that displaying an identity document photo would not achieve the intended result because a photo would appear only when a check returns a positive result. It said the automated checks could instead be redesigned to meet their purpose while processing significantly less data.

The legal scholars said people do not lose their human dignity after committing a crime. They argued that people who have served their sentences must have a genuine opportunity to return to society, and that work, housing and supportive relationships help prevent further offending.

They said restrictions needed to protect children could be justified if they were necessary and proportionate, but public shaming and enabling vigilantism could not be legitimate aims in a state governed by the rule of law. The faculty also cited a recent Supreme Court statement that publishing criminal-record information after it has been deleted amounts in effect to a “lifelong additional social punishment” that makes reintegration harder and affects relatives, including minors.

The faculty said the proposal needed to explain why photos would protect children better than current measures, why less exclusionary options would not suffice, and how the measure would be prevented from becoming a tool for stigmatisation or vigilantism.

According to the draft’s explanatory note, photos are intended to address cases in which a person subject to a restriction gives the personal identification code of someone with the same name who is not restricted. But the faculty said the photo would not appear in that situation: a search using the unrestricted person’s code would return a negative result.

The legal scholars added that the Child Protection Act’s checking requirement cannot be properly met if an identification code is taken from the internet or provided verbally by a job applicant. The applicant must present an identity document, and the code must be taken from it, they said. In their view, the problem described in the explanatory note stems from the checking requirement being carried out incorrectly, rather than from a gap in the law, and a photo would not solve it.