JACOB SULLUM —  A rule that Attorney General Merrick Garland issued in 2021 notionally requires people to do things that are plainly impossible. If they have been convicted of a sex offense, they must register with their state, even when the state neither requires nor allows them to do so. They also must supply the state with all the information required by federal law, even when the state does not collect that information.

Under 18 USC 2250, someone who fails to meet those requirements and who travels outside his state can be charged with a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. At trial, the defendant has the burden of proving that he was unable to register “as required” by the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). That Kafkaesque situation, a federal judge in California ruled yesterday, violates the constitutional right to due process.

The Justice Department, U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal writes, “has done exactly what is forbidden by the Constitution: ‘to declare an individual guilty or presumptively guilty of a crime.’ In the Rule, the Government disavows any obligation or burden ‘to establish that a registration jurisdiction’s procedures would have allowed a sex offender to register or keep the registration current in conformity with SORNA’ before prosecuting the individual for failure to do what it acknowledges is impossible.” That policy, Bernal says, “subverts the procedural safeguards deeply rooted in our history and constitutional framework.”

The case, John Doe v. Department of Justice, illustrates the perverse consequences of the federal government’s attempt to identify and track sex offenders through detailed registration requirements that often conflict with state law. The plaintiffs, who are represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), include California residents whom the state no longer requires to register as sex offenders because it has certified their rehabilitation and expunged their records. The Justice Department said they had to register anyway. It also said they were obligated to supply and update information that California would not collect even if it allowed them to register.

“California requires registrants to provide their current address and a photocopy of an identification or driver’s license to their local sheriff,” PLF attorney Caleb Kruckenberg explained when the lawsuit was filed last year. “The new rule requires much more. A registrant must include his social security number, his ‘remote communication identifiers’ (e.g., internet usernames), his work or school information, and information concerning any international travel, passport and vehicle registration, or professional licenses.”

The lead plaintiff, identified as John Doe in court documents, enlisted in the Marines at 17. Six years later, according to the original complaint, he had “a consensual but inappropriate encounter” with a 16-year-old girl that “did not involve sexual intercourse.” Because the teenager was two years younger than California’s age of consent, that encounter resulted in criminal charges. Doe pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of sexual battery, which required him to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced to three years of probation.

“Since then,” the complaint says, “Mr. Doe has dedicated himself to making amends and becoming a model citizen. He expressed sincere remorse for his crime and voluntarily underwent psychological treatment. And equipped with a healthier perspective, he pursued higher education and has had a rewarding and productive career, became a loving husband and father, and became an active participant in his church. He has done everything one is supposed to do following a criminal conviction.”

State courts officially recognized Doe’s rehabilitation, clearing his 1996 conviction in 2002 and issuing a certificate recommending an unconditional pardon in 2012. He therefore “is no longer a convicted criminal and has not registered as a sex offender for more than a decade.”

In the meantime, however, Congress approved SORNA. That 2006 law made a sex offender’s failure to follow state registration requirements, already a crime under state law, a federal felony. Initially, that was not a problem for Doe, since by 2012 California had removed him from the state registry. But in December 2021, the Justice Department published SORNA regulations that required Doe, despite his expungement, to re-register with California, even though the state will not let him do that. The new rule said that “only pardons on the grounds of innocence terminate registration obligations under SORNA.”

In addition to Doe, the plaintiffs who challenged that perplexing edict include two other California men who received certificates of rehabilitation and a current California registrant who worried that SORNA would require him to maintain his registration even when that is no longer feasible. The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) joined the lawsuit on behalf of members who face the same dilemma as Doe because their records have been expunged or because they have successfully sought relief from California’s registration requirements. Other ACSOL members are still required to register under California law but are not able to supply all the information required by the Justice Department because the state does not collect it.

“For individuals like Plaintiffs, at least some of whom allege a remarkable record of rehabilitation and positive contributions to society following convictions in the distant past, the prospect of being returned to prison for up to 10 years due to circumstances beyond their control is a particularly disturbing one,” Bernal notes. That threat, he says, is inconsistent with due process.

“May the Government attempt to imprison California registrants like Plaintiffs for up to a decade for failing to do the impossible, unless they, not the Government, prove impossibility?” Bernal writes. “This Court holds that the answer is no.”

The government “presumes that Plaintiffs are guilty of a federal crime unless they prove their lack of culpability at trial,” Bernal says. “While the legislative branch may define the elements of an offense, and the Constitution requires the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt those elements, ‘[i]t is not within the province of a legislature to declare an individual guilty or presumptively guilty of a crime.'”

Bernal notes that “whether a defendant registered ‘as required,’ and accordingly whether it was possible for him to do so, is an essential element of the offense” created by SORNA. The government “violates due process when it relieves itself of the burden of proving that essential element, i.e. that it was possible to register under state law,” he writes. “Because the Rule, in conjunction with 18 U.S.C. § 2250, fails to provide the minimum procedural safeguards required by the Constitution, it violates due process.”

Bernal therefore issued a preliminary injunction that bars the Justice Department from prosecuting a California resident under 18 USC 2250 unless it has first verified that “the individual was required to register under California law” or that the state “allows the individual to furnish” information required by SORNA. “With this order,” the PLF notes, “the DOJ’s SORNA rule is now unenforceable in California and could be vacated nationwide in the judge’s final decision.”

The plaintiffs also argued that the Justice Department’s demand for “remote communication identifiers” has a chilling effect on their freedom of speech, which includes the right to anonymously express opinions online. Bernal concluded that there was not enough evidence at this stage of the case to conclude that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on that claim. But he says the plaintiffs “raise a substantial question as to whether the Rule imposes an impermissible burden under the First Amendment.”

Bernal says he is “concerned that the Rule does not provide any clear explanation of why and how the identifier disclosure provision advances a governmental interest.” Judging from SORNA’s goals, that requirement is aimed at preventing or detecting inappropriate contact with minors. But Bernal notes that the requirement on its face would apply even in contexts, such as posting or commenting on news stories, where it is “unlikely” that requiring the disclosure of usernames “would help the government protect children.”

Another claim in the lawsuit has potentially broad implications. The plaintiffs argued that SORNA violates the separation of powers by improperly delegating legislative authority to the attorney general. The law effectively allows the Justice Department to define criminal offenses by issuing regulations that impose new registration requirements. The plaintiffs say that power runs afoul of the “nondelegation” doctrine.

Bernal thinks that claim is apt to fail under current precedents, which allow the executive branch to “fill in the details” of federal statutes as long as Congress provides an “intelligible principle” to guide that process. But he is sympathetic to complaints about the resulting proliferation of federal crimes tied to regulatory violations.

“The modern rule,” Bernal notes, approves “delegations whereby the Executive or an independent agency defines by regulation what conduct will be criminal, so long as Congress makes the violation of regulations a criminal offense and fixes the punishment, and the regulations ‘confin[e] themselves within the field covered by the statute.'” Explaining the consequences of that leeway, Bernal quotes Mike Chase‘s book How to Become a Federal Criminal: “Congress has passed thousands of federal criminal statutes and has allowed federal agencies…to make thousands upon thousands more rules that carry criminal penalties.” Those rules “cover everything from how runny ketchup can be to…just how friendly you can get with a pirate.”

Bernal notes that “no one, not even the Government, knows how many federal crimes there are,” and “the federal government has stopped even trying” to count them. “This Court is sympathetic to arguments challenging such a state of affairs, which has eroded some of ‘the most vital procedural protections of individual liberty found in our Constitution,'” he writes. “But the Court is also bound to follow controlling precedent, and until the Supreme Court provides a new directive, Plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their nondelegation claim.”

There are signs that the current Court might be prepared to provide “a new directive” by reviving the long-moribund nondelegation doctrine. In the 2019 case Gundy v. United States, the justices considered 34 USC 20913, a SORNA provision that gives the attorney general broad authority to decide whether and which sex offenders convicted before the law was enacted are subject to its registration requirements. The petitioner, Herman Gundy, challenged the Justice Department’s retroactive application of SORNA, arguing that the law violated the nondelegation doctrine.

A four-justice plurality avoided that issue by reading 34 USC 20913 as requiring the attorney general to impose registration requirements on previously convicted sex offenders “as soon as feasible.” In a separate opinion, Justice Samuel Alito agreed with the result, but not because he embraced the plurality’s narrow interpretation of Section 20913. Instead, he said upholding the law was consistent with the Court’s longstanding reluctance to invoke the nondelegation doctrine. “Because I cannot say that the statute lacks a discernable standard that is adequate under the approach this Court has taken for many years,” he wrote, “I vote to affirm.”

But Alito also said that “if a majority of this Court were willing to reconsider the approach we have taken for the past 84 years, I would support that effort.” That caveat is potentially important given the current makeup of the Court. Three justices dissented in Gundy, saying it was clear that SORNA violated the separation of powers.

“The Constitution promises that only the people’s elected representatives may adopt new federal laws restricting liberty,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas. “Yet the statute before us scrambles that design. It purports to endow the nation’s chief prosecutor with the power to write his own criminal code governing the lives of a half-million citizens. Yes, those affected are some of the least popular among us. But if a single executive branch official can write laws restricting the liberty of this group of persons, what does that mean for the next?”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed in October 2018, did not participate in Gundy, and he has since been joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. If Kavanaugh or Barrett is open to the reconsideration that Alito suggested in 2019, there may well now be a majority in favor of constraining the executive branch’s authority to create crimes by administrative decree.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania remanded a case back to the trial courts for the judge in the case to analyze SORNA’s constitutionality. On August 23, 2022, the court handed down a decision. “No,” the court said. SORNA is not constitutional “as a legislative scheme,” and it is unconstitutional as applied to the defendant.

The court starts by examining SORNA’s irrebuttable presumption that all sex offenders, regardless of their personal characteristics and circumstances, have a high risk of reoffending sexually. That presumption is not consititutional, the Court concludes, because it is empirically false. The vast majority of sex offenders do not reoffend sexually.

The court also considered a separate question– whether the sex offender registry constituted criminal punishment. The court found it does. And because it constitutes criminal punishment, it’s punitive nature offends Apprendi; results in a criminal sentence in excess of the statutory maximums; violates Federal and State proscriptions against cruel and unusual punishment; and breaches the separation of powers doctrine.

I was curious about the judge, the Honorable Allison Bell Royer. A registered Republican, she has a degree in Government, used to run her own law firm, has previously practiced criminal defense and is apparently a member of the Chester County Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

If you are a registered sex offender and are hoping to avoid being accused of violating the terms of your registration, it is important that you understand how these international travel laws are going to impact you. Contacting an experienced criminal defense attorney is the first step well before making travel plans.

Leaving the U.S. for vacation?

Registered sex offenders within the United States are legally allowed to leave the U.S. and travel internationally. There is no U.S. law that prohibits sex offenders from traveling abroad. That does not mean every country will allow sex offenders to enter the country. Registrant Travel Action Group (RTAG) is a good resource to determine where people on the registry may travel.

Every country has its own laws that will determine whether the sex offender’s criminal record meets the criteria for entry into the country. A sex offender who was convicted at the felony level may be refused entry to a significant number of countries across the world.

Where is Travel Permitted?

The United States does not restrict registered sex offenders from entering any country around the globe. There are very few countries that will review a United States citizen’s criminal background before allowing them entry to the country. In fact, in many cases, countries will only require that the individual have a valid passport to be approved for entry.

Currently, registered sex offenders are prohibited from traveling to or changing flights in any of the following countries:

• China (monetary fine)
• Mexico
• The United Kingdom
• Australia
• Thailand (monetary fine)
• Canada
• Brazil
• Russia (mandatory jail time and monetary fine)
• Japan

Countries that allow sex offenders entry may require them to register with local police upon arrival. Other countries could allow entry if the criminal offense in question occurred a long time ago or was a first offense. Many countries do not have clear rules in place that deny or allow entry to registered sex offenders.

Since immigration laws across the globe can change at any point in time, if you are a registered sex offender who is hoping to travel internationally, you should be sure to reach out to a sex crime lawyer or your destination country’s consulate for additional information.

Required to Notify Law Enforcement of Their Plans to Leave the Country?

As of 2016, the International Megan’s Law (IML) amended the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), requiring registered sex offenders to report their intent to leave the country with their local sex offender registry.

Sex offenders are required to comply with local sex offender registry rules and regulations. Registered sex offenders may be required to report their travel plans with a minimum of 21 days’ notice. Some of the different types of information you should expect to provide to your local sex offender registry include:

• The names of the countries you plan to enter
• What are you expect to do within the country
• When and where you plan to leave the United States
• When and where you plan to arrive in the United States when you return
• A way to contact you while you are abroad
• Your reasons for traveling internationally
• Your airline name and flight numbers

There are criminal consequences associated with failure to notify authorities of your intent to travel internationally. If convicted, a registrant could spend up to 10 years in prison.

When human trafficking, child sex trafficking, and other sex crimes are prevalent in tourist areas across the world, It should come as no surprise that there would be strict travel restrictions in place for registered sex offenders.

While on Probation Travel Internationally?

Sex offenders who are currently on probation may be allowed to travel internationally if granted approval by their probation officer. There may be additional restrictions and requirements in place before a registered sex offender on probation may be granted approval to travel abroad.

Generally, registered sex offenders who are on probation will be denied approval for international travel unless they have a substantial reason for needing to leave the country. A good example could be a registered sex offender who needed to leave the country to care for their terminally ill parent.

Returning Back in the U.S.?

One of the biggest risks registered sex offenders takes after they have left the US is being denied entry when they attempt to come back. Although they might have reported your travel plans to the local authorities, it is not uncommon for registered sex offenders to face further scrutiny and screening when they attempt to enter the US after traveling abroad.

You may not necessarily be denied entry. You should expect delays in your attempt to cross the border. You could also face further scrutiny from airline officials and law enforcement, which could make your travel experience shameful, embarrassing, and anxiety-ridden. For those thinking that travel insurance would be a good backup plan. There are reports that claims were denied because of criminal investigation clauses. Read the fine print before committing to travel insurance.

If you have concerns that you may have been treated unfairly in your attempt to re-enter the US after international travel, an experienced attorney may help you file a complaint with the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

If you are having difficulty re-entering the United States as a registered sex offender after having been granted approval to do so by your local authorities, you should reach out to a criminal defense attorney as soon as possible for legal guidance and support.

Be Proactive. Not Reactive.

People on the registry have the right to travel internationally. Do not ask the sheriffs questions about international travel because they simply do not have the correct answers. But making international travel plans and its navigation is perhaps worth taking a moment to ask an attorney about options well before purchasing air travel. Otherwise, a registrant could be facing severe criminal charges upon return to the United States. Unfortunately, it is the United States that has created this “if this then that” travel scheme for the registry population. It is better to be prepared.

The decision, covered in an opinion by Justice Kevin M. Dougherty, clears the way for county judges to resume imposing the SVP label on sex offenders who are determined to be perpetual dangers to society.

The SVP designation is a step above even the requirement imposed on some sex offenders to register with state police for life or 25 or 15 years, depending on the nature of their convictions. SVP offenders have a lifetime registration mandate as well and police additionally inform their future neighbors and local schools and daycare centers in their neighborhoods about their crimes. They also must attend monthly sex offender counseling programs until they die.

Click here for the entire story

The association said in a statement, “Butler overturns the Superior Court’s finding that our state’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) lifetime registration, notification, and counseling requirements (RNC requirements) were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court found that these requirements are not punitive in nature but instead are a collateral consequence of one’s actions and mental fitness and advance public safety.”

The statement continued saying, “The Court seriously erred by finding that public notification of SVPs is constitutional, and this decision will affect over 2,000 PA registrants as well as their families and friends. Being listed on a public registry as an SVP is an unjust and dehumanizing experience. Justice Wecht said at the hearings of Commonwealth v. Thomas Reed, Commonwealth v. Claude Lacombe, and Commonwealth v. Michael Witmayer that being listed on a public sex offender registry is “the mark of Cain.” The ruling in Butler has left intact the mark of Cain for those labeled SVP.”

Click here for the entire story

It’s a remarkable argument. Safety and accountability have been the ostensible watchwords in our ongoing collective discussion of sexual violence, but strong (and understandable) emotion has tended to override those concerns and diverted discourse into negative-feedback loops of ever more brutal consequences for anyone who would even be perceived to stand in the way of that punitive impulse. Just ask Aaron Perksy.

For politicians, then, few bets have been as safe as wanting to punish sex criminals harsher than the last person who spoke. Statehouse legislation proposing new and harsher restrictions for the nearly million people now on America’s sex offense registries have been as perennial as the grass in a nationwide race-to-the-bottom, regardless of whether or not those proposals were grounded in any sort of evidence. Court decisions have favored a brand of results-oriented intellectual dishonesty to conclude that registration is non-punitive and designed to enhance public safety (though with some notable exceptions), even as they turn people into permanent nomadic pariahs wholly incapable of redemption.

And so, it is indeed remarkable that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel made the argument that sex offender registries are exquisite punishments that undermine safety in important ways. The cases the briefs filed in People v. Betts, and People v. Snyder involve state constitutional challenges to Michigan’s sex offense registry in the context of a pair of people who were convicted of sex offenses in the mid-90’s, well before modern registration schemes were born.

The AG’s briefs make the case that Michigan’s SORA scheme is punishment, and therefore can’t be applied retroactively. That alone, that an AG would be making the argument that these laws are punishment, is remarkable enough. But these arguments go much, much further than that.

Nessel’s arguments forcefully and passionately highlight how modern registries are objectively bad public safety policy.

Modern social science research has shown that SORA’s extensive burdens are excessive in relation to SORA’s purported public safety goals. There are two salient points: 1) research refutes common assumptions about recidivism rates that supposedly justify SORA’s extreme burdens; and 2) regardless of what one believes about recidivism rates, registries are not good tools to protect the public.

Read Guy’s complete piece here at Simple Justice.

Maine does not have statewide mandated residency restrictions, and a report published by another legislative committee ten years ago in Maine raises major concerns and questions about this current proposed legislation.

In 2008, that committee produced a report titled, “Maine’s Criminal Justice & Public Safety Committee Study of Sex Offender Registration Laws.” It is a 37-page report representing hundreds of man-hours of research and meetings examining the effects of SORNA in their state and the alterations that were needed. SORNA, incidentally, does not require residency or proximity restrictions.

On the bottom of page 19 and continuing onto 20 of the report is a brief section dealing with residency restrictions. It acknowledges that some communities in the state have adopted these restrictions for their individual jurisdictions. And then it goes on to say:

Hearing testimony on these bills and educating ourselves about other states’ experiences with residency restrictions, the committee finds, and the research supports, that such restrictions do not increase public safety. Residency restrictions make it more difficult for sex offenders to reenter society and find stability (living and working arrangements) and make it more challenging for law enforcement to find and monitor offenders. Based on these findings, the committee recommends that the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee of the 124^th Legislature considers introducing legislation that would preempt the field of sex offender management and prohibit municipalities and other entities from adopting their own restrictions on sex offenders.”

One little paragraph that says it all. What a shame it is that they did not proceed with the proposed legislation or, if they did, that it was not successful.

The question is, why is this current committee so determined to compound something that already has been condemned as not only ineffective but detrimental to overall public safety?

Of course, they are not the only state to do so. California, one of the harshest states historically in its erections of residency and proximity restrictions, goes directly against its own Sexual Offense Management Board, which said, “There is no research which supports the use of these strategies [residency and proximity restrictions], there is substantial research showing that such policies have no effect on preventing recidivism, and there is a growing body of research which indicates that residence restrictions actually increase sex offender recidivism and decrease community safety” (p.2).

Other states as well have jurisdictional or statewide restrictions that are in total opposition to the recommendations of the sex offender management boards that they have commissioned to give advice and oversee sexual offense laws and ordinances.

While Texas has no statewide restrictions, certain Texas cities have restrictions so stringent that registrants have been forced to give up desperately needed jobs that they were offered. There was literally no way they could navigate, by car or by bus, the route between where they lived and the location of the job without going into or through a restricted area around a school or daycare facility, and there was no place they could live closer to the job.

The report rendered by that Maine legislative committee ten years ago, that statement by the California board, and every single study or report examining the efficacy of residency and/or proximity restrictions for those on the registry are uniform in their conclusions. These restrictions are ineffective and actually harmful to public safety.

Any legislator who is advocating for such restrictions, including Rep. Danny Martin, should be made to answer directly this question: Why are you asking your constituents to spend tax dollars implementing laws that are shown by every available source to be not only useless but actually harmful to your state?

It has been a while since I last blogged about this topic, so let’s start with some background.

Sex offenders who aren’t required to register for life can petition for removal from the registry 10 years from the date of initial county registration. G.S. 14-208.12A. The superior court judge hearing that petition may grant relief only if, among other things, doing so would “compl[y] with the provisions of the federal Jacob Wetterling Act, as amended, and any other federal standards applicable to the termination of a registration requirement or required to be met as a condition for the receipt of federal funds by the State.” G.S. 14-208.12A(a1)(2).

As noted on this blog since 2009, that finding, which I’ll call the Wetterling finding, effectively incorporates an important bit of federal law into our state sex offender registration regime. As a matter of state statute, a judge can’t let someone off the registry if doing so would violate relevant federal laws and regulations—even though North Carolina hasn’t enacted other state laws incorporating those federal standards explicitly. (Even now, only 17 states are substantially compliant with SORNA, and North Carolina isn’t one of them.)

Easily the most important federal law that a judge must consider when hearing a petition to terminate registration is the length of registration period that would be required for the offense under federal law. Federal law groups crimes into three tiers—Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III—that require registration for 15 years, 25 years, and life, respectively. So, even though G.S. 14-208.12A allows for a petition to terminate after 10 years, the upshot of the Wetterling finding is that many offenders will not be able to petition successfully at that point, because the judge would not be able to find that removal would comply with the lengthier minimum federal registration period. Only for Tier I offenders with a defined “clean record” (discussed here) could a judge make the finding necessary to allow removal in as few as 10 years.

The federal tiers are defined in SORNA, largely by reference to a set of benchmark federal crimes. For example, a state offense should be considered Tier III (the most serious tier) if it is comparable to or more severe than aggravated sexual abuse under 18 U.S.C. § 2241. In this prior post I summarized the tier definitions. As I noted there, however, rehashing the federal definitions is the easy part. The hard part is actually sorting North Carolina’s sex crimes into the tiers. How do you do it—especially when our crimes don’t all have elements that align neatly with the benchmark federal offenses?

That brings us to Moir.

In Moir, the defendant was convicted of indecent liberties with a child in 2001. He inappropriately touched a four-year-old’s genital area and masturbated in front of the child. He registered as a sex offender in 2002. Ten years later, in 2012, he petitioned for removal from the registry.

The presiding judge found only one obstacle to removal: that it would run afoul of federal law to let the petitioner off the registry after only 10 years. The court found that touching of a victim’s genital area was “sexual contact” as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2246, and thus comparable to or more serious than “abusive sexual contact” under 18 U.S.C. §2244—a benchmark offense for Tier II sex crimes under SORNA. (Arguably the trial court’s reasoning should have led it to conclude that this was a Tier III offense by virtue of the victim’s young age; abusive sexual contact against a minor under 13 would be Tier III. The wrinkle turns out not to matter for now, although I think the supreme court was subtly flagging it in footnote 5.) Because Tier II offenses require a minimum registration period of 25 years, the court concluded that removal would not comply with the Wetterling Act, as amended, and denied the petition.

The defendant appealed.

(Please continue reading on the North Carolina Criminal Law blog).

Seven-year-old Megan Kanka left her New Jersey home on July 29, 1994, for a summer afternoon bike ride around her neighborhood, but she never returned.

Instead, neighbor Jesse Timmendequas lured her into his home by promising her a puppy. He then raped and murdered her, dumping her body in a nearby park.

The murder sparked national outrage, not least because Kanka’s parents had never been told their neighbor had two previous convictions for sexual offences against small children. It also sparked a New Jersey law and then a 1996 federal law – Megan’s Law – requiring states to notify the public about sex offenders living in their neighborhoods.

Twenty years later, the names, pictures and addresses of registered sex offenders – including 218 who live, work or attend school in Lebanon County – can be found at the Pennsylvania State Police Megan’s Law Website. Such databases remain popular: a 2013 YouGov poll found that 71 percent of women and 52 percent of men believe it is “very important” to log all sex offender’s homes in the U.S.

However, advocates for offenders say registries continue to punish them even after they have served their sentence and even advocates for victims are lukewarm in their support.

“The intent of the Megan’s Law registry is commendable,” said Jenny Murphy-Shifflet, executive director of the Sexual Assault Recourse and Counseling Center of Lebanon County (SARCC). “I understand that its goal was to reduce sexual violence. The reality is that we haven’t seen any outcomes indicating that these goals have been reached.”

False sense of security

One out of every 728 Lebanon County residents is a registered Megan’s Law offender, and most have committed violent sexual crimes like rape, indecent assault or sexual abuse of children. Those offenders are required to have their address and place of work listed on the registry for 15 years to life depending on the crime and amount of offenses.

If that seems like a scarily high number, Murphy-Shifflet said it’s probably far lower than the actual number of sexual offenders, many of whom have never been caught. In fact, that’s one of the shortcomings of Megan’s Law, she said – it can create a false sense of security to residents who don’t live near offenders.

“Megan’s Law is almost like the Scarlet letter. They think it’s going to be easy to identify (sexual offenders),” agreed Kristen Houser, chief public affairs officer for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. “The reality is, most offenders hide in plain sight.” (Read the rest of the article in the Lebanon Daily News)

This was written as a rebuttal to an editorial in the Longview, WA Daily News:

In response to your March 13 editorial, “Laws help keep children safe,” I would first like to thank you for your condemnation of vigilante activity. Fully agreeing with the title of your op-ed, I too want laws that help keep children safe, and there is nothing about vengeance-motivated activity that works toward that goal.

The organization you criticize, WAR, or Women Against Registry, is one of several organizations that advocate for laws that do just that — keep children safe. Another is SOSEN, Sex Offender Solutions and Education Network. And yet another is RSOL, Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc. These organizations agree with what research studies show: laws that keep children — and indeed everyone — safe must, in order to do that, be based on facts and empirical evidence.

The public registry system is not based on empirical evidence, and, in your defense of it, you say that the murder of Adam Walsh is “not uncommon.” Actually, it is very rare. Whether or not Adam’s kidnapping and subsequent murder were sexually motivated will never be known, but it was a heinous crime as was the murder of Megan Kanka and another handful of horrific child murders at the hands of murderers.

Your statement that WAR grew out of murders such as these is untrue. WAR, SOSEN, and RSOL grew out of a realization, based on research, that public registration of those who had previously committed a sexual offense — not murdered, not decapitated, but committed an offense ranging from the trivial to the serious — actually was not deterring sexual crimes against children at all. It was in some cases increasing the risk for re-offense, and it was and is creating conditions that seriously interfere with mandated rehabilitative efforts.

It was and does negatively impact the lives of family members, especially the children of registrants. This is well documented through research studies.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, “[t]hese policies have led to multiple collateral consequences, creating an ominous environment that inhibits successful reintegration and may contribute to an increasing risk for recidivism. In fact, evidence on the effectiveness of these laws suggests that they may not prevent recidivism or sexual violence and result in more harm than good.”

Reform organizations do not defend the actions that have triggered registration, and we recognize appropriate punishment as desirable and necessary, but it is difficult to claim that, in all cases, the children suffer through the actions of the registrant family member rather than the effects of public registration. Many situations exist where the offense was committed when the registrant was a child or juvenile himself. A number of cases involve premarital sex where the offender and “victim” later married and had a family, yet the offender remains on a public registry, often for life, and his children suffer greatly due to it. This continuation of punishment long after a sentence has been completed is but another form of vengeance and amounts to legalized, governmental vigilante action, exacting punishment far beyond what the courts assessed.

The impotency of the public registry to deter re-offense and to protect children is well documented also. Dr. Bill O’Leary is a forensic psychologist and longtime critic of public notification and tracking. He notes, “95 percent of sexual abuse occurs between a victim and a known acquaintance, not a stranger living down the street. One of the most unethical pieces of the situation has been saying that we need to do this to prevent sexual abuse when we know statistically that this has nothing to do with preventing sexual abuse.”

According to the United States Department of Justice, from 1992 to 2010 there was a steep decline in all major crime. There is no evidence that a decrease in sexual crime is due to our current policies, and that theory is actually negated by research.

Many people and organizations advocate every day for policies that will keep children safe, but we know that until the focus is put on the victims and the actual facts about child sexual abuse, that is highly unlikely to occur.

Source at Daily News, Longview, Washington.