Safety of the vulnerable, protection of the innocent, security of the community. These are supposed to be the principles that underscore the Registry of Sexual Offenders.

As the Cambrian News reports this week, those are principles that are disposable in a broken system that is undermined by criminal deception. And that is wrong.

In the areas policed by officers in North Wales and Dyfed-Powys, some 1,600 persons live as registered sex offenders. A further 300 or so are registered as violent criminals or otherwise — but all are convicted criminals who remain under monitoring for a reason: Our safety.

These individuals were placed on registers because the judges and magistrates that convicted them, based on the best legal advice and professional social and psychological assessments, believe they pose a risk to us all — and our vulnerable and innocent.

There is no public sex offenders register that you can search. That would be a breach of privacy.

The system we have is that those who are required to register as a result of their convictions, are supposed to keep authorities informed of their personal details.

That clearly isn’t happening — and our hard-pressed police forces haven’t the manpower nor resources to follow up those who choose to slip past this broken system.

What’s more, there is nothing to prevent any registered sex offender from changing their name — legally, as we all have the right to do — to try and hide their past.

That’s a loophole that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

To highlight the scale of the issue, some 1,500 registered offenders have given notice to authorities that they have changed their identity. But how would you ever know?

This loophole makes a mockery of the very notion of a register of offenders. And it rides a coach and horses over concerns our protecting our community, our children and our vulnerable. As long as it exists, it is a coach and horses that will be ridden all day long by those seeking to cover their dirty secrets and criminal convictions.

Yes, offenders can change. They did the crime, they did the time. But that time needs to include the period for which they are registered. Under the same name.