Registries have been examined in numerous academic studies over the past several decades and virtually all of them have found that registries do not accomplish what they were intended to do. They do not reduce recidivism. 

They do not prevent sex offenses. They do not protect children. They do not make communities safer. 

These findings certainly run counter to the beliefs of some policy makers seemingly more interested in inflicting additional punishment on past crimes or enhancing their “tough on crime” personas. New directions must be taken—employing evidence-based reforms focused on intervention and treatment methods that have been shown to reduce sexual violence. 

Sex offense registries in this country go back to the mid-20th century, when they had the limited aim of providing law enforcement (and only law enforcement) with contact information on those who had committed specific types of offenses.  

Then, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Alaska’s relatively lean registry, using the now debunked premise that people convicted of a sex offense have an exceptionally high recidivism rate. Policy makers around the country took it as an invitation to pile on new regulations and requirements, vastly expanding registries that had once focused on a narrow spectrum of serious crimes to include an ever-growing list of offenses, even including such things as public urination and sex among underage teenagers. 

Those who seek to maintain, and even expand, sex offense registries make the claim that those convicted of a sex offense cannot be rehabilitated and need to be under constant surveillance. However, study after study has shown that therapeutic interventions largely lead to success. In fact, those convicted of sex offenses have essentially the lowest recidivism rate among all classes of offenders; a study done by the U.S. Department of Justice found a reconviction rate of 3.5% among individuals in 15 states released over a three-year period.  

So, if registries do not work as intended, what can be done? 

The American Law Institute (ALI) provided recommendations on where states might go when it adopted extensive model penal code revisions regarding sex offense registries in 2021.  ALI’s model codes are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures, and in legal scholarship and education. 

ALI’s proposed changes match the recommendations of academic literature, which shows that people convicted of sexual offenses have low reoffense rates and that registration hinders rehabilitation and reintegration into society. 

Specifically, it recommends restricting the information on registries to be available to law enforcement only, limiting those registered to only the most dangerous, and shortening the length of time individuals must remain on the registry. 

The first is important because publicly listing those convicted of a sex offense on the internet exposes them to a variety of negative consequences, ranging from public shaming, physical intimidation and violence, and difficulties in finding employment and a place to live.  

The requirement of lifetime registration that many states, including Arizona, impose carries burdens for many convicted of a sex offense, often preventing them from ever being able to fully reintegrate into their communities even many years after the offense.   

In her dissent in the Alaska Supreme Court case Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that many registries, including Arizona’s, make no provision at all for the possibility of rehabilitation. “However plain it may be that a former sex offender currently poses no threat of recidivism,” she wrote, “he will remain subject to long term monitoring and inescapable humiliation.” 

At a time when the American Law Institute, virtually all available research and a growing body of public and professional opinion reflects the reality that our current sexual offense policies do not work, it is important for Arizona to take a new direction. 

John Covert is a member of the Arizonans for Rational Sex Offense Laws Executive Committee. 

During general elections, it is not uncommon for politicians to seek impactful campaign strategies. Often, this involves employing fear-based tactics and proposing sometimes unnecessary and constitutionally questionable measures. A frequent target of such a strategy is the issue of sex offenders within the system. Despite the lack of empirical evidence supporting these measures’ efficacy, instilling fear remains a prevalent political tool. One typical manifestation of this approach is the proposal of additional, yet arguably ineffective, restrictions to the sex offender registry.

The practice of political mudslinging is a well-known aspect of election campaigns, typically involving exchanges between politicians. However, the trend of using ordinary citizens, primarily registrants, as targets in these political skirmishes is drawing criticism. Such tactics are being called out not only for their poor taste but also for their disregard for the principles of decency and respect towards voters. This shift in political strategy raises questions about the ethical boundaries of election campaigning and the respect owed to the electorate.

In North Carolina, like many other states across the country, individuals listed on the public sex offender registry are prohibited from entering school premises. This policy faces a unique challenge during states of emergency, such as severe ice storms or hurricanes, when schools are often converted into temporary shelters for the general public. In these situations, those on the registry are excluded from these emergency shelters, highlighting a critical gap in the state’s emergency response plan.

For almost ten years, civil rights groups have been advocating for a change in North Carolina’s legislation, urging the General Assembly to incorporate a provision that would temporarily lift the ban on individuals listed on the sex offender registry from accessing emergency shelters until a state of emergency is lifted. Despite these efforts, as the state braces for another season of freezing temperatures, the legislature has yet to address this issue. This inaction raises concerns about the potential harm to those registrants and their families who are denied access to emergency shelters, especially those not under active probation or parole. Critics argue that this situation underscores a fundamental flaw in the state’s emergency management strategy, highlighting the use of the registry as an extension of punishment rather than a means of reintegrating individuals back into society by allowing reasonable accesses to safe places during states of emergency.

As the debate continues over the exclusion of individuals on the sex offender registry from emergency shelters in North Carolina, a pressing question emerges: How many citizens must face potentially life-threatening risks or death before the legislative and executive branches of government take decisive action? After a decade of inaction by lawmakers on this issue, concerns are growing that the foundational principle of ‘all men are created equal’ is not being upheld in practice. This situation highlights a critical disparity in how those in power regard the rights and safety of all citizens.

As the election season approaches, the spotlight turns to the importance of electing lawmakers who truly represent the moral duty owed to the citizenry. With a focus on adherence to constitutional principles, particularly those prohibiting ex post facto laws and ensuring equality and rights for all persons, voters are faced with a crucial decision. This year, the challenge is to assess whether the status quo remains satisfactory or whether it is time to seek out leaders committed to treating all citizens with dignity. This includes reevaluating and potentially dialing back the sex offender registry laws, which some critics liken to Jim Crow-style policies and view as products of fear-driven, knee-jerk reactions.

The call to bring an end to the national sex offender registry, along with its associated extended punishments, complex premises restrictions, and other supplementary limitations, is gaining momentum. Critics of the system argue that the existing measures of probation and parole should suffice in addressing concerns related to sex offenses. They contend that the current registry system, often described as a ‘social experiment,’ has become overly punitive and fails to balance public safety with rehabilitation effectively.

Justice Kennedy’s statements were wrong then and they are wrong now. They were based on an article in a lay publication, Psychology Today, not a peer-reviewed journal, that was written by a sex offender counselor, not a researcher, who earned his living selling his counseling program to prisons. The author has since disavowed these numbers and said they were never meant to be used as a basis for any type of judicial ruling.

It is now clear, based on decades of data, that those who have committed sexual offenses rarely recidivate. Indeed, while the recidivism rate for drug offenses exceeds 80%, study after study finds the three-year recidivism rate for people who commit sex offenses to be 3.5%, much lower than that claimed by Justice Kennedy. This low recidivism rate is in line with the finding that the vast majority of sexual offenses — as high as 95% — are committed by people who are first-time offenders and thus are not on the registry at all.

University of Miami law professor Tamara Rice Lave found an Arizona state government analysis showing only 2.4% of the 209 individuals released in 2001 had committed a new sex offense within the next three years. ”[T]he … belief that sex offenders have a high rate of reoffending is not supported by the evidence,” she concluded.

Professor Ira Ellman, retired law professor at ASU, points out: “Many assume that most registrants committed violent rapes or molested children, but they would be wrong.” In fact, sex offense registries sweep in individuals with vastly different backgrounds who pose vastly different levels of risk. Individuals have been placed on the registry for such acts as teenagers having consensual sex, public urination, or sexting.

Ellman said “if the registry’s main purpose is to let us monitor and warn people about those who committed violent, coercive, or exploitative contact sex offenses, we dilute its potential usefulness when we fill it up with people who never did any of those things.”

Several of the Supreme Court justices in Doe wrote separately.

Justice David Souter wrote, “The fact that the [registration process] uses past crime as the touchstone, probably sweeping in a significant number of people who pose no real threat to the community, serves to feed suspicion that something more than regulation of safety is going on; when a legislature uses prior convictions to impose burdens that outpace the law’s stated civil aims, there is room for serious argument that the ulterior purpose is to revisit past crimes, not prevent future ones.”

Justice Stevens noted that registrants and their families justifiably live in fear of vigilante justice. They have experienced “profound humiliation and isolation as a result of the reaction of those notified. Employment and employment opportunities have been jeopardized or lost. Housing and housing opportunities have suffered a similar fate. Family and other personal relationships have been destroyed or severely strained. Retribution has been visited by private unlawful violence and threats.”

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg complained that the registry completely ignores the possibility of rehabilitation. “Offenders cannot shorten their registration or notification period, even on the clearest demonstration of rehabilitation or conclusive proof of physical incapacitation,” Ginsberg wrote. “However plain it may be that a former sex offender poses no threat of recidivism he will remain subject to long-term monitoring and inescapable humiliation.”

The American Law Institute, authors of the Model Penal Code, an independent organization consisting of thousands of lawyers, judges and scholars, recently concluded a nearly ten-year process to help guide states in updating their laws, making positive recommendations for reform to the sex offender registry.

The Supreme Court’s decision 20 years ago has led states to implement increasingly onerous laws that feed the public’s fear of people who commit sexual offenses while at the same time doing nothing to enhance public safety. Decades of data show unequivocally that the sex offender registry is a failed social experiment. It’s time for a new paradigm in sex offender policies, one that considers real studies by real scientists.

John Covert is with Arizonans for Rational Sex Offense Laws, ARSOL

SOURCE: Arizona Capitol Times 

It matters because a (negligently or not) sourcing error, in part, is what led us to have such sprawling, burdensome, and ineffective registries.

The research brief in that was commissioned has the eye-catching title Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act — Summary and Assessment of Research. Published by the Federal Research Division, it reads like police-state apologetics — doing its dead level best to dismiss the research casting doubt on various aspects sex offense registries. I had occasion to review it for a client, and if the title didn’t catch my eye, the abstract certainly did:The top-level conclusion in the abstract is that “as of June 2019” (emphasis added) the research is “inconclusive” regarding the effectiveness of registration. This came as something of a surprise to me, because I’m aware of quite a few studies within the last decade that have found either no effect or a negative effect (i.e., an increase) in recidivism, but none that show it leads to less recidivism (and I feel like if there were one demonstrating effectiveness, it definitely would have been included in this brief).

So I was very eager indeed to see what evidence the Federal Research Division had amassed to support this incredible claim. On page 2, note 7: they cite two sources, one published in 2008, and one published in 2009:

Perhaps it goes without saying, but those sources themselves do not prognosticate about the state of research a decade into the future. Nor does the report grapple with several major research studies over the last decade that have concluded that SORN either do not have an impact on recidivism or make recidivism slightly worse. It simply pretends they do not exist. (1)

I thought it might be a typo at first — never ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to incompetence etc etc — but the 2019 claim is repeated several times, and is a key finding in the abstract. Further, there are two sources that are offered to support the claim, but none of which are from the late 00’s. It’s hard to know what to make of it except that the government is simply lying because it can and no one cares if it’s to keep the public safe from ‘sex offenders.’

Here’s why the research brief matters: the scientific findings related to the effectiveness of registries are relevant to legal arguments about whether or not they constitute punishment, amongst other things. It’s not hard to imagine (if it hasn’t happened already) this getting dropped into an AG’s brief, and then getting regurgitated into an opinion of a court of not-insignificant note, and it becoming judicially accepted “fact” even though it has no support.

It’s happened before.

In the early 00’s, the Supreme Court considered a series of cases regarding extraordinary treatment of people convicted of sex offenses (e.g., whether registration constituted punishment). In those cases, Justice Kennedy claimed that recidivism rates of people convicted of sex offenses was “frightening and high.” The only support for this claim, as Ira and Tara Ellman discovered, was a 1986 Psychology Today article written by a clinician who was marketing his own services as a treatment provider (and who has since repudiated how his statement was used). The Ellmans discovered that the phrase “frightening and high” regarding purported recidivism rates was subsequently cited in 91 judicial opinions and briefs in 101 cases, but that was 8 years ago, and courts and government lawyers are still turning to that very phrase to ward off arguments that registries and registry-related paraphernalia (e.g., exclusion zones, regulation of travel, communication) are unconstitutional.

So a research brief that muddies the waters and concludes (falsely) that the state of research is inconclusive is going to undoubtedly be very attractive to judges looking for a way to punt to the legislature on constitutional claims over registration.

Likely very few people other than myself will care about this as it combines things that your average person would rather not think about: “sex offenders,” research briefs, footnotes, and the federal government. I also realize we are now in an era where SCOTUS openly ignores the factual record in cases to reach a desired conclusion (to say nothing of arguably abandoning stare decisis), so my concern about proper attribution in footnotes is kind of cute and anachronistic. But all the same, I still feel it’s worth spending my Saturday morning to spill some ink about it. (2)

On March 8, 2023, a 27-year-old Grand Marias vigilante, Levi Axtell, covered in his victim’s blood and gore, drove to the sheriff’s office, and with his hand on his head, he said he had just killed Lawrence Scully, 77, in Mr. Scully’s home. Mr. Scully’s body bore defensive injuries, as the Associated Press reports.

The old man reportedly fought back against a killer almost a third of his age.

Good for him.

The weapons were a shovel – wielded up to twenty times against the victim’s head according to Axtell — and a rack of moose horns, items found in the victim’s home. Axtell was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Axtell’s reason for his action is that he believed Scully intended to sexually molest his – Axtell’s – young daughter and her daycare peers and believed Scully had been stalking her.

Apparently, Axtell had held this belief for some time, having made a complaint in 2018 and asking for an order of protection against Scully. It was granted but removed after several weeks because law enforcement investigations found no evidence to support the claim.

Scully’s status as a registered sex offender was certainly known in the tiny town. He ran for mayor in 2014, and media stories then discussed his crime and conviction. It is unclear whether he was ever displayed on Minnesota’s public registry. A search of the database did not return his record nor, incidentally, any current registrant at all in Cook County, Minnesota.

One bizarre twist to this already bizarre story are the postings of a woman named Melissa Axtell, identified as the “believed-to-be” sister of Levi. She expresses gratitude to the people of Grand Marias for their “outpouring” of love and support for Levi upon his becoming a murderer. She is also sponsoring a fundraising page, a page whereon at least one donor used the comment function of the page to call Axtell “a hero.”

The inappropriateness of calling the vicious killer of a defenseless, elderly man a “hero” for committing a violent criminal act pushes the limits of “bizarre” to a new level. One of the media outlets writing about this, while not going as far as the fundraising page comment, includes a quote from a former FBI agent that implies a jury might share this view of Axtell.

“Former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer believes that the jury will be ‘very sympathetic’ to Axtell. ‘I am not excusing his actions. . . But typically, a person who commits a crime like this, for these reasons, is received [sic] a lighter sentence’ Coffindaffer said . . .” Additionally, a YouTube video that calls Axtell a hero has received well over nine thousand views.

This is, of course, not an unexpected twist nor a particularly original one. Several years ago blogger Shelly Stow and member of Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc, (now NARSOL) pointed out that those with sexual offense convictions and in general population in prison have a high expectation of being beaten or murdered, and that expectation is shared by staff and administration. National media carried reports of praise and acclaims of heroism for an Alaskan man who used the registry to hunt down and violently attack registered sexual offenders with a hammer.

James Fairbanks was hailed as a hero in some reports for the coldblooded murder of a formerly convicted sexual offender. And these are all, except for YouTube, mainstream media.

YouTube and other social media platforms are rife with praise and accolades for those who “protect children” by killing “sex offenders.”

The subtext is clear: Those who are on a sexual offender registry – regardless of the offense – or who have a sexual offense conviction are worth less than everyone else; they deserve to be attacked, maimed, or killed; they should be killed; killing someone like that is a noble act, an act of bravery.

This is what the sex offender registry says about every man, woman, and child listed on it.

Would Lawrence Scully have molested a child? We don’t know. We will never know. But among the things we do know are these:

We do not, in this country, take the law into our own hands, in vigilante fashion, and kill someone.

We do not, in this country, kill someone for something we believe they might do, something for which they have not been arrested, let alone convicted.

We do not, in this country, bludgeon and massacre someone to death with shovels and moose horns.

And when we do, it is, literally, murder; it is an unconscionable criminal act. It is not the act of a hero. Heroes die on battlefields saving their comrades in arms. They rush into burning buildings to rescue children. They sacrifice their own lives to stop others from being killed. They spend years of their lives caring for the aged, the maimed and the vulnerable.

They do not wantonly, cruelly, or viciously commit murder.

Levi Axtell is currently in Cook County jail and is scheduled to appear in court on April 10.

SOURCE: thecrimereport.org

Sandy Rozek is a contributor for The Crime Report’s Viewpoints series and the communications director for the National Assc. for Rational Sexual Offense Laws — NARSOL — an organization that advocates for laws based on facts and evidence and for policies that support the successful rehabilitation, restoration, and reintegration of law-abiding, registered persons into society as the path to a safer society. We are a national organization with an interest in both federal, state, and local issues, policies, and legislation related to our interests. Her articles have appeared in a variety of publications.

Many citizens know the Miranda v. Arizona case, where police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning. An appearance at a local sheriff’s office that is supposed to be a verification check turns into a line of police questioning. There are no Miranda rights presented to the registry community. Instead, it is quite the opposite effect. Police use an open-warrant tactic to investigate a group of citizens that continually lose rights at every in-person visit.

The right to remain silent doesn’t appear to be an option for people on the registry in North Carolina. Registrants often complain to NCRSOL about deputies who pepper them with questions unrelated to an in-person appearance requirement. Instead, the in-person condition quickly escalates, becoming an investigatory moment for police to ask anything they want, where civil rights are completely ignored. Those that do attempt to challenge deputies are promptly threatened with a non-compliance arrest. Registrants are often dominated or mentally and emotionally drained to comply, only to have the same police tactics repeated in another six months or ninety days.

Perhaps the state’s culprit of registry conditions is how the registry is managed. There are one hundred counties in the state, with an elected sheriff in each county. However, one hundred county law enforcement chiefs of the registry equate to one hundred different opinions on managing a statewide regulatory scheme. Additionally, the registry has no formalized intake or duplicative measures on paper. Each county creates its version of unofficial forms, making them appear official without any disclaimers of consequences.

Another culprit of spending waste is the certified letter standard on how registrants are informed. In-person registry letters are delivered by certified mail to every active registrant in the state. Registrants sign a postal release and then take the same document to the sheriff’s office to sign again. Is this practical? COVID and postal deliveries were met with many registrants complaining to NCRSOL of certified mail not being delivered or constructively placed back in the postal system as undeliverable without question, which triggered an investigation where Miranda was entirely ignored.

Lastly, another issue is where deputies perform home checks of registrants. Deputies have been known to appear at registrants’ homes knocking on doors in the early hours of the morning or dark hours of the night to verify a registrant. However, police begin questioning the validity of the person that answers the door or will wait until a person appears to make an unnecessary verification and a waste of valuable police resources.

The state registry isn’t a true statewide managed program. It is an outsourced multitudinous policing experiment supervised by political, social, and personal leadership influences inflicting more harm to civil rights than its intended purpose of protecting the general public. The time has come for the state’s registry to end unnecessary in-person appearances that primarily are used as a tool for unconstitutional police questioning and snap investigations.

We should be able to live in a state where we trust those that protect and serve our communities. But equally, citizens without probationary requirements should be able to live in peace without superfluous police knock searches and in-person examinations.

‘The slick fella, too handsome for his own good, whose shifty eyes furtively appraised the family silver,’ or, ‘the well-dressed, good-looking young man whose frank curiosity about the family heirlooms showed an appreciation for life’s finer things.’

Why?

Word choice makes all the difference. Some words are so emotionally laden with either positive or negative connotations that just using them automatically produces the corresponding emotion in the reader or hearer. Producers of media know this and often choose emotionally loaded language to sway the readers to their way of thinking. This is fine for editorials and opinion pieces, but the purveyors of news pieces bear the responsibility of using neutral language, of presenting the facts, the “plain, unvarnished truth,” and allowing readers to form their own conclusions.

These are the facts about the term pedophilia. It is a medical term, not a legal one. There are no laws or statutes criminalizing pedophilia. Depression might cause a person to shoplift, but the criminal act is shoplifting, not having depression. Not everyone who shoplifts has depression, and not all with depression shoplift.

The same is true with pedophilia. Not everyone who molests a child has pedophilia – in fact, research suggests the percentage is low – and not everyone with pedophilia has engaged in any criminal conduct, including molesting a child. And certainly, not all registrants are pedophiles. Sexual convictions run the gamut from public exposure to violent rape.

Recently a series of news stories were published in Joliet, Illinois, by Joliet’s local Patch homepage.  The situation is one where the mayor is doing his best – or worst — to close down an apartment building designed as reentry housing for men with sexual crime convictions. After losing round one by way of a federal ruling, Mayor Bob O’Dekirk launched round two: the city bought a lot with a vacant house a block away from NewDay Apartments, the home of the registrants and for full disclosure, one of NARSOL’s many partners in implementing fact-driven policies that advance meaningful criminal justice reform.

The mayor’s plan, unanimously approved by city council without a grandfather clause, is to demolish the home and create a park/playground there. Projected to be functional by June 2023, the park would place the residents of the apartment building out of compliance with state law and effectually, the mayor hopes, put the apartments out of business. Called a “pocket park,” Joliet is not the first city to resort to this strategy in order to make areas uninhabitable for registered individuals.

Joliet Patch, the local news homepage for the town on Patch.com has published four articles about the situation in Joliet, three since city hall got involved. Those three all scream, in huge headers, about the “Pedophile Palace” that the mayor has sworn to shut down.

Of all words in our language designed to evoke a strong, visceral, negative reaction, that one ranks right at the top. Seldom fully understood, almost always misused, and often misspelled, pedophilia requires a qualified physician’s diagnosis before one can accurately be labeled a pedophile.

Patch is not the only media outlet to choose and misuse that word to steer readers and listeners toward a specific reaction. Some weeks prior to the most recent article in Joliet, in a recent broadcast of Tucker Carlson, Fox News, in bold headlines, announced, “TUCKER CARLSON: No healthy society can tolerate pedophilia,” with a sub-heading of “Tucker speaks out against child sexual abuse.” The connection is made: Pedophilia and child sexual abuse are interchangeable terms.

In another video, Carlson bemoans the fact that California is “Putting thousands of pedophiles back on the street.” He is speaking of individuals who have been convicted of a sexual crime, have completed the court-ordered incarceration period, and are released under community supervision for the remainder of the sentence.

Once again, the connection between the word and the crime is inescapable, and now not only is child sexual abuse the same as pedophilia, but also everyone on the registry for any sexual crime is a pedophile.

But it is a false connection.

Carlson and Fox News ignore the facts and do everything possible to cement the false connection and establish a belief in the viewers’ minds that precludes any reasonable and factual discussion about sexual offending.

Throughout the Joliet pieces, other pejorative language is used. The apartment dwellers are “sexual predators” at every possible occasion, not “men,” not “tenants,” but “sexual predators.”

Tucker continues to use “pedophile/pedophilia” as often as possible, but at least his rhetoric is labeled “opinion.”

I reached out to Joliet Patch and to Tucker Carlson’s team while working on this piece, but have not heard back.

Words shape our beliefs, opinions, and actions. They also shape the beliefs, opinions and actions of our lawmakers, and inaccurate words and words whose meanings have been twisted will lead to laws and policies that are inaccurate and twisted. Laws that are based on falsehoods and incorrect beliefs do not advance public safety.

Legislation grounded in empirical evidence and arrived at in the cold, impassionate light of accurate and connotation-free verbiage has the very best chance of providing society with laws that are fair, just, and work as they should.

Source: thecrimereport.org

Sandy, a NARSOL board member, is communications director for NARSOL, editor-in-chief of the Digest, and a writer for the Digest and the NARSOL website. Additionally, she participates in updating and managing the website and assisting with a variety of organizational tasks.

In any news reporting, there should always be the standards of truthfulness, accuracy and fact-based communications, independence, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, respect for others, and public accountability. Yet news organizations seem to gravitate towards HomeFacts as if it were the gold standard in data reporting. However, that isn’t the case. HomeFacts mentions in its terms of service that its information is gathered through other parties via data porting. However, according to the business intelligence company PitchBook, there are only ten employees with HomeFacts. Moreover, there are no known departments to contact or researchers to enable corrective measures. It begs to question why journalists, policing agencies, and the general public are enamored with HomeFacts.

A recent North Carolina news article published by the Macon County News said, “There are 85 registered sex offenders in Franklin, N.C., a ratio of 218.90 sex offenders per 10,000 residents...” The data provided was wildly inaccurate. In fact, according to N.C. State Bureau of Investigation website lists 125 registrants in Franklin, North Carolina. As for the ratio values, they are different from the 10.5 million residents and the eighteen-plus thousand registrants that actively reside in the state. Overinflated and misleading reporting other than a citation reference to HomeFacts is where people are sewn seeds to facilitate lies and inaccuracies. Just because a person has a degree in journalism doesn’t mean they are a good journalist, especially when using sources that are lower than Wiki standards. It may be because there is not much left in the integrity department. Yet journalists, and yes, the general public, continues to subscribe to lazy and baseless reporting.

But HomeFacts, with its ten employees, have persuaded millions of journalists and organizations to lower its standards. Rather than utilizing up-to-date data from a reputable state agency or calling the head of a state-led agency, we have come to a period where privatized online data farming has somehow become reliable and without challenge. Continued subscriptions or citing to services such as HomeFacts make it appear that it is indeed credible when it is far from it.

It is bad enough that most published sex offender data are riddled with errors and inaccuracies. Yet, HomeFacts and companies that operate in the same mannerisms are adding to that misinformation. But worse is when journalists and news organizations appear joined at the hip rather than doing the one job they are trained to do – to be objective, impartial, and fact-based. If HomeFacts is the new standard because it has “facts” in its name, I guess BestBuy and Forever 21 must be the gold standard in purchasing and mortality.

Sexual crime against children, women, and men is not new. Research supports the fact that all sexual crime, and especially that targeting children, is most often committed by persons known to the victims. Child-targeted sexual crime is most likely to occur at the victim’s home or the home of the perpetrator. On a larger scale, this behavior is passed down through generations of families.

Anyone who knows a victim or perpetrator of a sexual crime knows that it is not easy to come forward. Whether victim or perpetrator, the consequences, even before involvement in the legal system, are staggering: shock and disbelief of friends, loss of reputation, shame, disgrace to the family name, and, in some cultures, family honor.  All of these foster the perpetuation of sexual crime behind closed doors.

Media attention and headlines focus on sexual violence that is far less common – that against strangers. This is what law enforcement proactive entrapment stings play to, but they do not make us safer.

In recent times, easy access to pornography through the internet has fueled misunderstanding and media rhetoric about sexuality and sexual crimes. Young people are the most easily influenced by internet porn.  Children and adolescents today have quick access to exploitative images and misinformation, far more than in previous generations. There is a generation of young people who are now adults who grew up as the internet has evolved.

This wealth of material, however, does not translate to knowledge about how to deal with it. These young adults, raised on what was often internet fantasy and role-playing games, are a generation of people who are easily susceptible to the false situations created by law enforcement stings.

Arresting, imprisoning, and then registering these individuals as sexual criminals does not provide any safety to the public. No real child was at risk, indeed, no real child existed to be at risk. No harm was done – except to the “prey” who were snared in the traps of law enforcement dishonesty.

Establishing laws and prosecuting real crime are essential to maintaining civility and peace in a society. Entrapment stings are superficial, misdirected, and ineffective. They do not make us safer. Prevention of real sex crime begins at home. We need programs that are aimed at prevention and laws that are focused on real crime, not electronic stings manned by law enforcement officers much more zealous to add to their arrest record than they are to actually protect real children.

So it’s no surprise that people search the sex offender registration website to make sure that no one convicted of a sexual offense lives near them or more worrisome, their children’s school, day care or neighborhood park. The premise is simple: to make people feel safer in their community. But are they truly safer? Have we been relying on the wrong system?

Long before the world was introduced to the predatory behavior of people like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, lawmakers across the nation worked to deter victimization and protect citizens from sexual assault. They enacted policies governing individuals convicted of sexual offenses — known as sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws. These policies allow for law enforcement to maintain a list to track and monitor sex offenders, and registry websites provide the public with registrants’ addresses and identifying information.

But do registration and notification policies actually deter individuals inclined to commit sexual offenses and protect citizens?

A new study of ours shows that these policies are not effective in deterring crime or protecting citizens. We summarized 25 years of research and 474,640 formerly incarcerated sex offenders. We found that such policies do not reduce sexual or non-sexual recidivism.

No reduction. At all.

If the policies are ineffective, then why do we have them?

These policies exist as a governmental response to community fear and outrage. There is political pressure to increase public safety. The problem is that these laws were enacted very quickly after child murder cases and became wide-reaching governmental mandates without research to back their existence and effectiveness. Fast forward 25 years, and the public and politicians are relying on window-dressing to feel safe.

This false sense of safety comes with real consequences.

First, sex offender registration and notification policies have had a net-widening effect, making more registrants eligible and for considerably longer periods of time even though individuals convicted of sexual offenses age out of crime, as do others.

Second, these policies use a “one size fits all” approach and misallocate resources and supervision to offenders with lower risk levels. The ever-growing registry has become a fiscal burden for states.

Finally, sex offender registration and notification policies continue to label and stigmatize individuals after they have served their time. Subsequent dehumanization disrupts any meager attempts to reintegrate the person back into society. Despite what seems like common sense, these policies create obstacles to the factors that promote law-abiding behavior: jobs, secure housing and social support.

There are better ways. We need to educate the public, law enforcement and policy makers that governmental oversight of registrants is not a feasible solution to protecting potential sexual abuse victims. This is not a call to “go soft” on crime, it is an encouragement to “go smart” on crime and use data to make informed decisions. This reimagining requires us as a society to confront the uncomfortable truth that those who commit sexual offenses are usually not strangers — they are more likely to be the most trusted figures around us — our loved ones, our babysitters, coaches, teachers and close family friends.

In the end, parents, community members, and potential home buyers and renters will continue to frequent the sex offender registration website, gathering a false sense of safety — potentially at their own peril — until we as a society are willing to address who the perpetrators of sexual violence are and accept the fact that sex offender registration and notification policies demonstrate little value in making a meaningful impact. Tough-on-crime policies are not always smart policies. It is time to do better.

Meghan M. Mitchell (mmitchell@ucf.edu; @MeghanMMitchell) is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. Kristen M. Zgoba (kzgoba@fiu.edu) is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida International University. Alex R. Piquero (axp1954@miami.edu; @DrAlexPiquero) is chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminology and Arts & Sciences Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami.

Source: Tampa Bay Times