The most massive Ponzi scheme that America has been selling for decades is the sex offender registry. It too has a pyramid scheme that allows investment in public policy and administrative oversight. Individuals such as John Walsh have raked in over $42M for his charities and amassed a net worth of $20M. States receive over $200M annually from the Edward R. Byrne grant program that helps fund offender registries nationwide. All while Walsh increases his rhetoric and scare tactics to increase funding and additional non-compliance penalties, states are struggling to keep up the pace where jails are beginning to fill up because of Ponzi styled policies backed by law enforcement agencies seeking to cash in on the opportunity.

All while sex offenses appeared to decrease overall, the recent #metoo and #timesup movement helped contribute the Ponzi effects by rescinding statute of limitation policies to dig some thirty plus years in the past adding to what appeared to be a stabilized registry. High profile additions have created the registry as a method to keep registry legislation, and pyramid schemes are breathing another sigh of relief that funding will indeed increase. While others are warning of the critical effects and possible backlash, the registry grows wildly into a mishmash of anyone easily or conveniently targeted.

But will the sex offender Ponzi scheme find itself on the brink of collapse? Many states are seeking registered offender to pay an annual fee to keep the registry requirements relevant all while continuing to acquire millions in government grants intended to pay for those that cannot contribute. It is usually Ponzi schemes that begin asking for investors to invest more or seeking undisclosed payments similar to what states are introducing to registrants. Citizens are starting to ask questions about the overall effectiveness of the registry and if it has gotten out of hand. The same similarities were asked by those wary of Bernie Madoff but went ignored for over a decade. Eventually, the world came crashing down around those that invested or supported Ponzi or pyramid schemes. It was ordinary folk and families that were ultimately destroyed by the cause and effects.

In general, the sex offender registry is nothing more than an elaborate and complicated Ponzi scheme. It promises an immediate return on investment by providing a secure community and added protections to educating those that choose to access it. In the past decades, it has produced no such reliability nor has an outlook that provides security at all. States continually add to the already convoluted and confusing laws or policies introduced, struck down, or amended on a quarterly basis leaving those affected by the registry entirely in the dark and vulnerable. This not a sign of an adequate return on investment. It is a sign that Americans have been duped out of billions of dollars at a failed experiment. It sounds more like a FEMA recovery plan for Puerto Rico with similarities of homelessness, hunger, no work, and a bleak outlook for the future.

Decades after Dennis Hastert’s alleged sexual abuse of high school wrestlers he coached, the then-Speaker of the House helped pass a tough-on-sex-crimes law known as the Adam Walsh Act.

Now a Florida group that calls that 2006 law “ineffective and unduly harsh,” is asking U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin to consider “hundreds of thousands” of victims it says the law left in its wake while sentencing Hastert for a related hush-money case.

In a sentencing brief filed last week, federal prosecutors for the first time said Hastert molested at least four boys while he was a high school wrestling coach in the 1970s in a southwest suburb of Chicago. With the statute of limitations long expired for those alleged abuses, prosecutors said six months is the maximum prison sentence facing Hastert for a banking crime at his scheduled April 27 hearing.

Hastert’s work on the Adam Walsh Act was “hypocritical and self-serving,” wrote Gail Colletta, the president of the Florida Action Committee, an organization seeking sex registry reform, in a letter filed by the court Tuesday. She asked the judge to impose a sentence longer than the six-month maximum advised by federal guidelines.

“Hundreds of thousands of individuals and their millions of family members and friends have to live with the draconian punishments he fostered,” Colletta wrote. “These individuals are also the victims of Mr. Hastert’s actions.”

Colletta said there are more than 800,000 people in the United States today on sex offender registries, which the 2006 act bolstered. Many of those registered committed “non-violent, one-time” offenses, she said. Her organization seeks sex offender registry and sentencing reform, particularly for juveniles convicted for consensual acts.

“The Florida Action Committee has members who have or are serving decades in prison for consensual teenage relationships and acts that involved no direct victim contact,” Colletta wrote.

Hastert pleaded guilty in October to a structuring violation related to $1.7 million he withdrew from bank accounts prosecutors say was used to pay off a sex abuse victim.

When the Adam Walsh Act was passed in 2006, Hastert, then the Speaker of the House, released a statement celebrating the passage on the 25th anniversary of the abduction of Adam Walsh, a Florida boy taken at a mall and later found dead. His father, John Walsh, went on to host “America’s Most Wanted.”

“At home, we put the security of our children first and Republicans are doing just that in our nation’s House,” Hastert said at the time. “We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist.”

In 2003, Hastert advocated for another child sex crimes law known as the Protect Act, which mandated life sentences in prison for repeat child molesters and created the Amber Alert system for missing children.

“It is equally important to stop those predators before they strike, to put repeat child molesters into jail for the rest of their lives and to help law enforcement with the tools they need to get the job done,” Hastert said in a statement in 2003. In a sentencing brief filed last week, Hastert’s Sidley Austin lawyers asked Durkin to forego prison time and impose a probation sentence. The brief said Hastert nearly died from a rare blood stream infection in November, and that he was remorseful, apologizing for “misconduct that occurred many decades ago.”

“By any measure, appearing before this Court to receive its sentence will be the most difficult day in Mr. Hastert’s life,” his lawyer, Sidley partner Thomas Green, wrote.

Source: National Law Journal

What sounds like a good law in a twenty-second sound bite sometimes turns out to be less clear when one digs below the surface. Such is the case with International Megan’s Law, which President Obama recently signed into law. International Megan’s Law requires those who committed a sex offense against a child to have a permanent stamp placed on their passport. While this may sound like a no-brainer if we consider the media’s portrayal of the sexual predator, reality is far more complicated.

International Megan’s Law means a teenager who was convicted of distributing child pornography for sexting with her boyfriend may not be allowed to do a semester abroad in college. A budding architect who plead no contest to child molestation for having sex with his freshman girlfriend when he was a high school senior may never be able to marvel at the Grand Pyramids. A father may not be permitted to cheer on his daughter as she competes for her country in the Olympics because he touched a 12-year-old boy over the clothes some thirty years ago and has remained law abiding ever since.

The stated rationale for International Megan’s Law is two fold: (1) Individuals who have offended against a child pose an extremely high risk of reoffending, and (2) Megan’s Law will stop them from doing so.

The first premise (dangerousness) is demonstrably false. Study after study has shown that sex offenders actually have a low recidivism rate. A 2003 Department of Justice study followed 9,691 sex offenders released from prison in 15 states across the country. It found just 5.3% were rearrested for a new sex crime within 3 years, and only 3.3% of child molesters were rearrested for a new sex crime against a child.(Source.) Juveniles pose even less of a risk. A 2009 study of 1,275 juvenile male sex offenders in South Carolina found just 7% were rearrested for a new sex crime within nine years of original offense.(Source.) Women pose the lowest threat. A 2010 meta-analysis of ten studies found only 1% to 3% of women recidivated sexually.(Source.) This premise also ignores that what counts as a sex offense against a child can include a high school senior having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend, behavior that should be discouraged but which does not deserve the designation of international pariah.

The second premise (effectiveness) is wrong as well. Studies show that Megan’s Law has had little to no impact on the incidence of sex offending. Indeed a 2008 analysis by the Department of Corrections in New Jersey concluded, “Given the lack of demonstrated effect of Megan’s Law, the researchers are hard-pressed to determine that the escalating costs are justifiable.” (Source.)

Read the rest of the article at the Huffington Post.