ABSTRACT Much of what we know about sexual offenders and risk management is derived from empirical studies on sex offender populations in North America. In comparison to Canada and the United States, the evidence base in Australia on sexual offender risk management is under-developed. In this paper, we describe a current research project tasked with developing a national sex offender recidivism database to advance the evidence base in Australia. It is argued that a national database would advance knowledge and practice in the field of sex offender risk management in Australia in a multitude of ways. Yet there are many obstacles and difficulties in developing such a database. After putting forward a case for the need for such a database, we outline the issues we have encountered and the approaches we have adopted to develop this database. It is intended that this contemporary comment may not only alert readers to this emerging data resource in Australia but also function as a road map to guide future empirical research on offender population databases in Australia.

中文翻译：

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在澳大利亚建立全国性犯罪者再犯数据库的前景和风险

摘要我们对性犯罪者和风险管理的了解大部分来自对北美性犯罪者人口的实证研究。与加拿大和美国相比，澳大利亚在性犯罪者风险管理方面的证据基础尚不完善。在本文中，我们描述了一个当前的研究项目，该项目的任务是开发一个国家性犯罪者累犯数据库，以推进澳大利亚的证据基础。有人认为，国家数据库将以多种方式促进澳大利亚性犯罪者风险管理领域的知识和实践。然而，开发这样的数据库存在许多障碍和困难。在提出需要此类数据库的案例后，我们概述了我们遇到的问题以及我们采用的开发该数据库的方法。