Demystifying the Sex Offender Information Registry

I want to talk to you today about the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. We call that soira for short S-O-I-R-A. What is this? Well in Canada for sexual crimes for certain designated sexual offences a person whose found guilty or pleads guilty is required to register with the police. And this is can be for 10, 20 years or even a lifetime depending on the designation of the offence. The level of the sexual crime that’s been committed. So what happens here? They have to register with them, they have to keep them advised of any change in employment, they have to keep them advised of change of address. So this is a database here. This is for protection the public of course, because a person has been convicted as a sex offender The police want to keep tabs of where they are. If there’s future crimes of sex offenders in that area of course, they might be at least not suspect but you know, a person of interest in many ways. So it is for protection of public and it’s been a very good thing for Canada of course. It’s a great thing and as a defence lawyer I would say it’s required. It’s important. So our clients who for example, have pled guilty over the years and by the way, criminal lawyers, a lot of our work is pleading people guilty. It’s not all about trying to get people off. I get a lot of comments on our YouTube channel, you know, how can you do this? Or why do you do this? Well, a lot of our work is actually helping trying to rehabilitate and counseling with people. And part of this process is encouraging people to plead guilty who are guilty if there are facts that you know, we can’t win the case. But of course, we go to trial for people who say they didn’t do it. But that’s what happens if you’re plead guilty or found guilty. You’re going to be, to a sexual designated offence, you’re going to be required to sign up for the registry for 10, 20 years or even a lifetime and that’s a good thing for Canada. It protects our public. Thank you for watching our video, we are absolutely committed to bringing you the best possible criminal and DUI educational videos. If you found this video helpful, please like it and subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you’ve been charged with a criminal offence in Ontario and require our services, please click on the link in description below.