Maybe you could make a case for publicly naming powerful people, because their crimes concern society at large. This is, however, an extremely small minority of criminals. Irresponsibly throwing out the names of every alleged, or even convicted, criminal, only serves to making it very difficult for these people to move on with their lives, unless you are of the opinion that they should constantly be judged by everyone even after their penalty has been served.
And I think that's a fair perspective. I don't believe in judging someone forever by it, and I think one of the most heinous things in our country is our prison complex. It's absolutely wrong that people go to prison in the first place for drug violations, and it's worse that because they're convicted they can't get jobs. Your smoking weed has no bearing on your ability to do a job, and then the system repeats because these people are forced back into illegal jobs because there's no way for them to get a regular one. We view criminals as 'other', not citizens. Put them away and assume the crime problem is fixed, and wonder why there is more crime when we do these things. But if you look at my reply to steve above, I think the right to the information is important in many cases. I don't think there's really a good solution here, to be honest. Many people are rightfully accused because the suspicion honestly seems to be pointing in their direction, but they are innocent, and then their life can be more difficult. I think that's a bigger problem than malicious false accusations, so maybe the best answer truly is public figure vs. private citizen (where I personally believe those serving the public should always have complete transparency to those they serve). Doing that does take away a level of potential security for the people interacting with possible criminals, but it does provide deserved privacy for the truly innocent. So the debate comes to what should be more important in our society: an individual's privacy or ability to gain security through information about those around us? I honestly don't know how to answer that for private citizens.
For me the question is not that difficult. I think the sex offender registry is straight up wrong. I didn't think this was done in any other country than the US, but after checking Wikipedia, it turns out that it's done only in English-speaking countries. A curious fact, but I'm guessing that this is strictly a result of influence from the States (seeing as all of the other countries got theirs long after the US). Maybe people got used to the thought from watching TV shows. The thought actively repulses me. What is this, the middle ages? Should we go back to the pillory, perhaps? Can you imagine being convicted of a sex crime, and no matter what you do, or where you go, you can never get past it. For the rest of your life, people will know. Again, this completely goes against the idea that criminals should be reformed. It assumes that once a sex crime has been commited by an individual, they will continue to do so. MAYBE you could make a case for repeat offenders, but people get put on that list for all sorts of ridiculous crap. The justice system should not be crowdsourced.