child molestation -- require treatment both while they are incarcerated and after their release.

For some years now, there has been a growing demand for programmes for sexual offenders within and without prison. The former Government began to move on these programmes and they are now being slowly put in place by the new administration.

Home Affairs Minister Paula Cox has promised that legislation making treatment mandatory for sex offenders is in the works, but will not be ready for submission to the House of Assembly by the end of the Progressive Labour Party's first 100 days in government.

At the same time, a new agreement between Bermudian and Canadian prison authorities shows that work is being done on treatment for offenders while they are in prison.

In a way, the treatment of offenders is the easy part.

A more difficult problem is the question of identifying sex offenders, and particularly paedophiles, on their release. This problem is very real in Bermuda today after the release of Chesterfield Johnson on Saturday. Mr.

Johnson, who served his sentence without parole, was imprisoned for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old schoolgirl in 1975.

It is a long established principle of the justice system that people who have served their time should be allowed to re-enter society and not be branded for life for a crime committed years earlier. This is because treating ex-inmates as pariahs and refusing them shelter and worthwhile employment will almost guarantee the likelihood that they will re-offend and return to prison.

But that principle is also predicated on the idea that prisons can successfully rehabilitate inmates and that inmates are willing and able to rejoin society on their release.

But even proper and well established treatment programmes for sex offenders cannot guarantee that they will not re-offend -- they can only reduce the risk, sometimes in 50 percent of cases.

Even then, society is being asked to take a terrible risk, especially in the case of paedophiles, if offenders re-enter the community with no warning to the future neighbours of the released inmate.

Until Bermuda has treatment programmes in place which can suitably reduce the risk, the public needs a programme similar to "Megan's Law'' in the US, whereby residents are notified that an ex-inmate is living nearby.

In Mr. Johnson's case, he is in the care of the post-release programme -- the Woodshop Plus -- where he receives a certain amount of monitoring, as promised by the Government.

Mr. Johnson has rights, but so does the public. Mr. Johnson's right to rehabilitation has to go hand-in-hand with the public's right to protection.