There's a fine line between providing information that the public needs about the criminal justice system and vigilantism. Regardless of its intentions and its origins because of concern about violent crime ex-convicts who reoffend upon their release, the latest proposal to create a registry of convicted murderers pushes too far over that line.

Finding the balance between released convicts' rights and those of the community in which they live has been debated over the state's sex-offender registry, which went back online two years ago and now serves as a model for the murderers database.

Legislators decided that because of the high rate of recidivism among sex offenders, the greatest public good was served by posting the names of offenders living in the community. The need to protect children and others from a potential crime of opportunity was given more weight than the desire of offenders who have served their time to reclaim full rights to privacy.

The murderers registry cannot be evaluated on the same basis. To begin with, the risk of repeat offenses is lower. Longer sentences mean convicted murderers tend to be released when they're older, and their parole requirements are often the most stringent.

The current initiative to create a murderers registry, headed by state Sen. Will Espero, D-20th ('Ewa Beach, Waipahu), was driven in part by the rearrests of two murder parolees, Peter Bailey and Darnell Griffin, both charged with violent crimes.

The conditions of their parole had changed so that they were no longer under direct supervision. If anything, the reasons for that status should be reviewed; most likely, it's a product of a parole system that's overburdened.

A more effective use of public money than the creation of a new registry would be to shore up the state's capacity to supervise parolees.

The registry also could force unjustifiable decisions. Would it be limited to murder? Or would an attempted-murder or aggravated-assault parolee represent an equivalent risk to public safety?

Hawai'i should not set off casually down that slippery slope, which could lead to the unjust treatment of people who have served their time, without significantly increasing public safety.