{"id":87,"date":"2018-11-28T20:55:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T20:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonreleasenetwork.org\/?p=87"},"modified":"2018-11-30T22:37:44","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T22:37:44","slug":"why-sex-offender-registries-keep-growing-even-as-sexual-violence-rates-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/2018\/11\/28\/why-sex-offender-registries-keep-growing-even-as-sexual-violence-rates-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Sex Offender Registries Keep Growing Even as Sexual Violence Rates Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cThese policies don\u2019t work\u2014let\u2019s focus on something that does work.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Loaded on\u00a0AUG. 17, 2018<\/span>\u00a0by\u00a0Steven Yoder<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in Criminal Legal News\u00a0September, 2018<\/a>, page 24<\/span><\/p>\n

Filed under:\u00a0Sex Offender Registration<\/a>,\u00a0Sex Offenders (Discrimination)<\/a>,\u00a0Sex Offender Residence<\/a>,\u00a0Statistics\/Trends<\/a>. Location:\u00a0United States of America<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Lists that include out-of-state visitors are inflating the numbers and keeping fear at a boil.<\/em><\/p>\n

by Steven Yoder, theappeal.org<\/p>\n

Quentin (not his real name) was convicted eight years ago of child pornography possession in Florida. He served his time and has since moved to another state. But his sentence required his photo and other personal details to appear on Florida\u2019s sex offender registry, and there they will stay for the rest of his life, even if he never sets foot in the state again.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s registry is padded with thousands of Quentins, people who don\u2019t live in Florida. Under a change to state law passed this spring, there will soon be more: Starting July 1, out-of-state registrants who visit for at least three days (down from five) must go to a sheriff\u2019s office to have their personal details added to Florida\u2019s list. If they don\u2019t, they face a third-degree felony.<\/p>\n

Rules like that aren\u2019t unique\u201422 other states keep out-of-state visitors on their registries for life, according to a study released last November. It\u2019s one reason state lists misrepresent the actual number of people with sex-crime records living in communities. As already-bloated lists keep ballooning, they feed the impression of a growing population of dangerous people who require ever-more-extreme laws to monitor and control.<\/p>\n

On May 30, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) released its latest nationwide count of names on state sex offender registries. For the first time ever, the total was more than 900,000. NCMEC spokesperson Staca Shehan told The Appeal the organization doesn\u2019t share data on growth trends because changes in state laws and other anomalies can make it difficult to accurately compare the data across years. But calculations by William Dobbs of Dobbs Wire, who tracks sex-offender registry developments nationwide, show a 3 percent jump in the nationwide number in the last six months. That\u2019s slightly faster than in the past; increases have fluctuated between about 3 and 5 percent annually since 2007. Even if the growth rate returns to that historical average, by 2021 more than a million names will be on registries.<\/p>\n

Many of those entries are duplicates like Quentin or represent people who are not actually part of a state\u2019s population for some other reason. In a 2014 study in the journal Crime & Delinquency, a research team found that in the 42 states and two territories studied, 19 percent of those on registries were still behind bars, 9 percent lived out of state, and 3 percent had been deported. Of Florida\u2019s 55,000 registrants at the time, more than 31,000 were in one of those three categories. \u201cIt\u2019s a concern of ours,\u201d Shehan said of problems with the count. She says NCMEC has no way of knowing how often an offender shows up on multiple state lists.\u00a0\u201cSo that means then there\u2019s duplicated offenders in our grand total,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we have no way of knowing how often that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobbs, an adviser to the Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center affiliated with the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, says the inaccuracies are symptoms of a malignant logic at the heart of registries: that people who have served their time should be put on public lists because of the ineffable risk of what they might do in the future. Problems with registries can\u2019t be fixed, he says, because the concept itself is a \u201cbroken\u201d one. \u201cIt turns people into suspects forever\u2014or at least as long as they\u2019re on it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe politicians have created this giant naming-and-shaming train and are fueling it with fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Quentin\u2019s cousins is getting married in October and invited him to be in the wedding in Florida, says Quentin\u2019s mother. But to participate in the various events, he would need to stay more than three days\u2014meaning a trip to the local sheriff\u2019s office to get a new photo taken and have the address where he\u2019s staying and the license plates of any cars he will drive added to Florida\u2019s public registry. So Quentin is skipping the wedding.<\/p>\n

Even if registry counts are inflated, it\u2019s likely that the real number of registrants is rising as state lists scoop up an ever-broader swath of the population. One reason: New state laws governing who must register are typically applied retroactively to cover those who offended before the laws passed.<\/p>\n

(Retroactive punishment is banned by the U.S. Constitution, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that being placed on a registry doesn\u2019t count as punishment. Since then, as evidence has emerged that registration is indeed punitive, the retroactive provisions of state sex-offense laws are being struck down: Several courts have ruled since 2016 that they violate the Constitution\u2019s ban.)<\/p>\n

Under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, passed in 2006, states have been required to expand their registries to cover people convicted of a broader set of crimes. The number on Wyoming\u2019s registry in 2011, for instance, rose to 1,450 from 125 after the state passed legislation compliant with the act that required children and teens to be registered. As other states try to comply by passing new laws, additional categories of people get put on their registries, Shehan says.<\/p>\n

And sex-offense laws trigger long registration periods, making entry onto the list mostly a one-way door. In 19 states, sex offender registration lasts for life for adults; in 16 others, it\u2019s 15 to 30 years; and in another 14, it\u2019s a minimum of 10 years,\u00a0according to the Restoration of Rights Project run by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center and its partner organizations.<\/p>\n

NCMEC\u2019s steadily inflating number is catnip for those who traffic in evergreen scare stories. One website advises parents to use the map in deciding where to move. States with high per-capita sex offender populations might not be a good choice, it implies. NCMEC itself may feed those fears with its marketing: On its website, photos of missing kids are adjacent to the link to its sex offender tracking map.<\/p>\n

But research shows that sex-offender maps have almost nothing to do with protecting children. Nearly all sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone not on a registry; first-time offenders commit north of 90 percent of new sex crimes, according to studies in New York and Minnesota. Most sexual violence victims know their perpetrators\u201486 percent in a Bureau of Justice Statistics study published in 2000. And those with a sexual offense on their record have low sex-crime reoffense rates: 12 percent on average, according to a definitive 2014 meta-analysis of 21 other studies. Those same researchers found that re-offense risk declines the longer that someone lives in the community crime-free. For those who hadn\u2019t reoffended by 10 years after an initial sexual offense, their risk of committing a new sex crime was 1 to 5 percent\u2014a rate comparable to ex-offenders with no history of sex crime.<\/p>\n

Sex-offense laws trigger long registration periods, making entry onto the list mostly a one-way door.<\/p>\n

All of that might explain why the registry count and sex-crime rates are traveling in opposite directions. Multiple studies show rates of sexual violence falling significantly after the early 1990s. \u201cI care about [the inflated count] from a policy perspective because it keeps people in fear,\u201d said Alissa Ackerman, a California State University, Fullerton criminologist who was part of the 2014 Crime & Delinquency research team and has co-authored numerous studies of sexual-offense issues. \u201cIt keeps them wanting legislation\u2014you know, we have to do something. \u2026 It\u2019s maps like this and propaganda like this that keep people feeling that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ackerman says rather than expanding the list, more resources should be focused on sexual-violence prevention programs and on mental health services and treatment for people who have experienced and committed sexual abuse. \u201cThat\u2019s not where we\u2019re putting our money,\u201d she said. \u201cThese policies don\u2019t work\u2014let\u2019s focus on something that does work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shehan says NCMEC\u2019s map isn\u2019t intended to scare people. The group\u2019s prevention education materials make clear the danger of sexual abuse committed by a stranger on a registry is small, she says. But she acknowledges that message could be clearer on the map itself. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken several precautions and made adaptations to the map in the past,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s one I can definitely add to the list of considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on TheAppeal.org on July 3, 2018; reprinted with permission. Copyright, The Appeal, a project of Tides Advocacy<\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.criminallegalnews.org\/news\/2018\/aug\/17\/why-sex-offender-registries-keep-growing-even-sexual-violence-rates-fall\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cThese policies don\u2019t work\u2014let\u2019s focus on something that does work.\u201d Loaded on\u00a0AUG. 17, 2018\u00a0by\u00a0Steven Yoder\u00a0published in Criminal Legal News\u00a0September, 2018, page 24 Filed under:\u00a0Sex Offender Registration,\u00a0Sex Offenders (Discrimination),\u00a0Sex Offender Residence,\u00a0Statistics\/Trends. Location:\u00a0United States of America. Lists that include out-of-state visitors are inflating the numbers and keeping fear at a boil. by Steven Yoder, theappeal.org Quentin (not … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baystatereentrynetwork.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}