Sex Offender Registry: Good Politics=Bad Policy?
On Sunday, Read All About It In the Sunday Papers featured this as its lead story:
“LEAD STORY-The (UK) Economist: Unintended Consequences of Sex Offenders’ Laws?
It is easy for politicians to push for tougher laws on sexual offenders. It is even easier to demagogue against anyone who would dare suggest that, in many cases, there is more than a little nuance that is never taken into consideration. Memo to all stupid people: There are tens of thousands of people on sex offenders registries all over the country from whom neanderthals like Saxby Chambliss does not have to ”protect my grandchildren”. Saxby’s home state of Georgia has many of the cases that illustrate the unthinking nature of a ‘one size fits all’ policy:
Georgia has more than 17,000 registered sex offenders. Some are highly dangerous. But many are not. And it is fiendishly hard for anyone browsing the registry to tell the one from the other. The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous. The board recommended that the first group be allowed to live and work wherever they liked. The second group could reasonably be barred from living or working in certain places, said the board, and the third group should be subject to tight restrictions and a lifetime of monitoring. A very small number “just over 100” are classified as “predators”, which means they have a compulsion to commit sex offences. When not in jail, predators must wear ankle bracelets that track where they are.
Despite the board’s findings, non-violent offenders remain listed and subject to a giant cobweb of controls. One rule, championed by Georgia’s House majority leader, banned them from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. This proved unworkable. Thomas Brown, the sheriff of DeKalb county near Atlanta, mapped the bus stops in his patch and realised that he would have to evict all 490 of the sex offenders living there. Other than the bottom of a lake or the middle of a forest, there was hardly anywhere in Georgia for them to live legally. In the end Georgia’s courts stepped in and suspended the bus-stop rule, along with another barring sex offenders from volunteering in churches. But most other restrictions remain.
Sex-offender registries are popular. Rape and child molestation are terrible crimes that can traumatise their victims for life. All parents want to protect their children from sexual predators, so politicians can nearly always win votes by promising curbs on them. Those who object can be called soft on child-molesters, a label most politicians would rather avoid. This creates a ratchet effect. Every lawmaker who wants to sound tough on sex offenders has to propose a law tougher than the one enacted by the last politician who wanted to sound tough on sex offenders.
This is a brilliant and thought-provoking article. It provides case studies in how the most draconian aspects of sex offenders law have destroyed people and families for no demonstrated public purpose. The article even lays out the costs of the most ill-considered aspects of these laws. Any legislator who takes their job seriously should really read this article before they do the knee-jerk thing next time. While strong laws protecting the public from sex offenders who represent a public threat are essential, draconian laws like those described in this article can empirically be shown to be counterproductive.”
Today’s News-Journal describes both the political attractiveness of pushing for tougher laws while also outlining some of the unintended (?) consequences of said policies. First, politicians are always angling to prove who’s ‘toughest on crime’:
In the first half of this legislative session alone, six bills dealing with sex offenders were introduced in the General Assembly, five of which have become law. One of those requires all offenders to register, while two increase penalties for various offenses.
As (the ACLU’s Drew) Fennell put it, “I think it’s politically difficult for anyone to try to deal rationally with the very real public safety issues” surrounding sex offenders.
These are six new bills and five new laws over and above Delaware’s already-strong laws on sex offenders. It is not as if dangerous sexual predators are running unchecked without these laws. It’s just that political demagogues (aka voter predators) run more effectively with these laws on their campaign lit and in their ‘newsletters’. And for those who know that the new laws are BS and likely to be counterproductive, the path of least resistance encourages them to vote for these bills rather than having to explain something that takes more than a simple sound bite to their constituents.
And, make no mistake, ill-considered legislation like this can do and does real harm. From the Observer article:
Georgia has more than 17,000 registered sex offenders. Some are highly dangerous. But many are not. And it is fiendishly hard for anyone browsing the registry to tell the one from the other. The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board concluded that 65% of those on the Registry posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous. The board recommended that the first group be allowed to live and work wherever they liked. The second group could reasonably be barred from living or working in certain places, said the board, and the third group should be subject to tight restrictions and a lifetime of monitoring.
Despite the board’s findings, non-violent offenders remain listed and subject to a giant cobweb of controls. One rule, championed by Georgia’s House majority leader, banned them from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. This proved unworkable. Thomas Brown, the sheriff of DeKalb county near Atlanta, mapped the bus stops in his patch and realised that he would have to evict all 490 of the sex offenders living there. Other than the bottom of a lake or the middle of a forest, there was hardly anywhere in Georgia for them to live legally. In the end Georgia’s courts stepped in and suspended the bus-stop rule, along with another barring sex offenders from volunteering in churches. But most other restrictions remain.
Greater access to the Delaware Sex Offenders Registry provides little additional useful information without some context. According to the News-Journal, “Like the old online registry, Delaware’s revamped site only shows offenders designated as moderate- and high-risk.” Fair enough as long as the public understands what defines ‘moderate’ for terms of the registry.
However, the different kinds of bans apply in many cases to all ‘offenders’, many of whom have never posed any kind of public threat.
Make no mistake: Dangerous sexual predators must be tracked and kept from placing the public at risk. However, that is no excuse for the General Assembly to enact a series of ever-more draconian laws when it has no demonstrated public benefit.
The Beast Who Slumbers suspects that the ‘follow-the-demagogic-leader’ game that legislators all too often play will eventually lead to a rollback in ill-considered policy here. Much the same way that it has happened with the rolling back of minimum mandatory sentencing for non-violent drug offenders.
Like the minimum sentencing laws, it will only happen after years of unnecessary personal devastation courtesy of the ‘Honorables’ in Dover.
There is, on the Delaware sex offenders list [complete with photo and address] a young man who is now sixteen. I am not going to provide any ID data or links, but if you are determined you can find him. He was placed on the list when he was thirteen for having sex with a twelve-year-old girl who was actually two months younger than he was. According to the way Delaware law and the sex offender registry reciprocal inter-state agreements work he is now nationally listed and will remain a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. I got interested in looking at this issue in Delaware after reading a story about a seventeen-year-old girl from Georgia who was similarly placed on the sex offender registry for having oral sex with a fifteen year old boy. She is now twenty-seven and essentially lives in poverty because the sex offender registry always shows up when she applies for a job. In both cases, when I accessed these individuals they were listed as “moderate risk” by the government.
There is certainly a case to be made for tracking high-risk and potentially dangerous sex offenders.
But what we are now doing as a society is criminalizing being a teenager, and applying a life sentence to those convicted.
And I suspect that these lists don’t have any preventative function. Law enforcement folks I know say that these databases seem to have little use locally and when they do it is often by people who have suspicions of a neighbor and then use the fact that the individual is NOT on the list to beat up the cops just because a funny-looking or acting person is not in the registry.
Steve: The story about the girl in Georgia is recounted in its entirety in the Observer piece.
And that’s but one of thousands of examples nationwide of people getting caught in a web that was really never intended for them.
There is no question that the registry needs reform, but it does not need to be abandoned. People have a right to know public records. They need to know when their government refused to protect them. The real solution is not to let the dangerous people out of prison for 25 years during that time you liberals can try all of the rehabilitation that you want.
As for the young woman in GA, she deserved to have a record. She was older, yet she gave oral sex in public around younger children. How can anyone not have a problem with that? At the time she was a disgusting person and so was her partner.
The minor offenses should be in two categories. One should not be listed. The other should be dropped in 5 to 7 years if there are no further issues.
At the time she was a disgusting person and so was her partner.
Hating on the sinner I see.
don’t dis David creep have a post he needz to suppleye his source fo?
David, i noze what its like to be lazy to eyez helped u out and brought da link to ya…
http://delawareliberal.net//2009/08/12/silence-is-deafening/
I wantz to see u source brutha
David
Quit making assumptions. ‘bulo is incorrect to the extent that the GA case I am talking about is actually not Wendy Whitaker–surprise surprise it has happened more than once.
The fact that a 17 year old is immature and makes a bad decision does not make her a disgusting person. At the very worst it makes her a teenager who performed a disgusting act. And since we are finally reaching the point in society where we are challenging Victorian notions about what constitutes “normal” sex, it is really more appropriate to suggest that her major problem was that she committed an act in public that should have been done in private.
[Insert opportunity to quote a Biblical passage that makes any sexual activity not between husband and wife in the missionary position for purposes of pro-creation an offensive suitable for Levitical punishment by stoning.]
Your self-righteous standard that because she violated your personal definition of disgusting that she rates a permanent, public, legal categorization as a sex offender–or even a record for 5-7 years–is ridiculous.
I have now told you how someone–including me, the father of boy-girl twin teenagers and an older unmarried daughter with a son–can think your position is way out in the boonies.
I would certainly support a law that would allow people to get off the sex offender list after a certain number of years. I also think juvenile offenders should have their records sealed, aren’t they sealed for other crimes as well?
Now I don’t know, but I’m guessing, that David doesn’t have teenagers yet – or he’d be a bit more humble. Buckle up, David.
I’ll second that, Pandora. The fact that I can visualize conditions under which one of my own children–no matter how bright or well-raised they are–could in a moment end up in a situation just as embarrassingly bad is what most parents call “realism.”
Joe Bageant describes the innumerable and horrifying mis-carriages of justice from the “‘sex offender’ registries”.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/most-americans.html
These sex offender registries have got to go. It’s the only crime that I know of that after you are punished (served your time and successfully completed parole) that the state continues to punish you.
Side question: Is it possible to be caught urinating outside, be found guilty of public lewdness and be put on this registry?
UI
Is it possible to be caught urinating outside, be found guilty of public lewdness and be put on this registry?
Short answer: ask Peewee Hermann
Longer answer: yes, when I was researching this I found one or two states and a couple of localities that would have counted this under certain conditions. Which brings up the point: the behavior involved my be legal in State A but constitute a sex crime in State B, and yet get you placed on an offenders’ registry in both states.
I think there’s a lot of agreement that some of these laws are leading to real miscarriages of justice. The question for me is whether there are any politicians willing to do something about it? What politician wants to be seen as a champion of sex offenders?
What politician wants to be seen as a champion of sex offenders?
None. Which is why I remain a believer in initiative and referendum.
Some issues cannot be left to our legislators.
The fact that you guys would defend such behavior as oral sex in a classroom is beyond belief. Pandora, what does not having sex in the classroom have to do with humility. You are incorrect in your assumption. I have had the pleasure of having long care of three teens. None of them grew up to have sex in public, Thank GOD. They are good people.
If you can’t say “that is a disgusting human being who would do that in a public place with children present”, then you have no standards sufficient to have a civilized society. Such unseemly behavior should be punished and can be in every state under law.
Steve: Initiative & referendum will not help roll back the sex registry laws. While, on paper, it’s a more directly democratic means of legislation, in reality, it’s a perfect tool for demagogues to use. Thanks to initiative and referendum and the Grover Norquists of this world, California is a totally disfunctional state.
No, until it’s recognized that casting a large net to isolate a select few is bad and counterproductive public policy, things will only get worse.
And, Rethuglican David, who the bleep is defending oral sex in the classroom? The point, which admittedly is too sophisticated for those of you who sound out the words to understand, is that a stupid act like this shouldn’t ruin someone’s life.
David, no one is defending public oral sex, quit pretending to misunderstand. I think that people should have an opportunity to get off the list – if they are not re-offending and are low risk. The acts of a teenager sometimes are due to very poor judgment and not because they are dangerous pedophiles. Remember those girls in Pennsylvania who took pictures of themselves in their underwear and sent them to boys who sent them to everyone else? The prosecutors were threatening them with child pornography and they would have been on the sexual predators list.
hey David? I have a post up asking you to provide your link and source. I know you saw it? why are you dodging? I would hate to have to call you a liar.
cough it up bigot
The case everyone down here in Sussex talks about is this one:
~~The first time the boys were so embarrassed, that the parents dropped the charges to keep the boys from having to go to trial . The second time he got caught his victims were boys age 13 to 15. The boys told police they were molested over 60 times. At the time he was the manager of a video store and a skating rink.~~
Now, I haven’t checked this story out, and that’s not a link, it was from an e-mail sent to me recently, but apparently this person is now on Delaware’s registry, he owns or runs a candy store on Rehoboth Avenue.
no one is defending public oral sex
Really? Well then, let me be the first. 🙂 Everybody needs to lighten up. How come the “tongue sticking out” emoticon doesn’t work?
What this all comes down to is common sense. If a guy is 18, and his g/f is 17 and 10 months, he shouldn’t go on the list. The problem is that we are a nation who loves to stick to black and white. People forget that most everyone lives in the gray.
I have had the pleasure of having long care of three teens. None of them grew up to have sex in public, Thank GOD. They are good people.
I’ll take this as a “no” you don’t have teenagers. And how do you know these long care teens (whatever that means)never had sex in public, or in a car, or at a party. And if your answer is: They told me they hadn’t, or no one else told me they had, don’t be so cocksure that’s the truth.
And in case you miss the point again I’m not justifying sex in public. I’m saying teenagers do stupid things.
I’m saying adults do stupid things, too. Is Jaime Pressly a sex offender now?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/did-jaime-pressly-really-pee-in-public
If you can’t say “that is a disgusting human being who would do that in a public place with children present”, then you have no standards sufficient to have a civilized society. Such unseemly behavior should be punished and can be in every state under law.
Just checking, Dave…. Who died and left you the arbiter of civilized standards?
The “children present” line is little short of idiotic. In the Wendy Whittaker case all of the students in the room were 16-17 years old. So if there were “children present” by your definition, then the two people involved were also children.
Nor is your misogyny too appealing. “She gave oral sex” implies that the entire episode is completely on her–that the young man has no complicity in what happened just because he was a few months older.
What utter crap.
Thank you A1. I don’t know about that particular case but the young woman in question may have been a victim of peer pressure. I know these sort of things happen with the “Girls Gone Wild” video type situations.
I have seen several women with children (infants, no less!) sucking on their br**sts in public. Even in front of other children and even in a restaurant while other people were eating! It was simply shocking, I tell you. They should all be registered.
Like all decent Americans, I hate those evil private parts. I have even learned how to pee in the dark so I don’t have to look at my own sinfulness. It isn’t that hard once you get the hang of it. You just move your sinfulness from side-to-side until you hear it hitting water and then you stop. It helps if you make sure the t**let seat cover is up before you start.
anonone–why do you wait until dark, to not see yourself? Just close your eyes.
Joanne – I think that you should be placed in the registry for such unclean imaginings.
I, being on the Delaware Registry have the following comments, It is my opinion that a registry of all violent offenders should be made. This registry should have persons convicted of assault, robbery, burglary, murder, theft felony, to name a few, if for no other reason than to keep the sex offender from being placed under the law that protects againts discrimination. Which could very well happen if pushed. I have been denied housing and jobs for no other reason than my crimes (which occured in 1991, released 2000). I feel that if a law to protect the public is to be applied it should be applied to all who commit violent crimes.
I took the opportunity to check out the above commenter. Let’s just say that his offenses are such that the public ought to be notified that he is in their community.
::facepalm:: Hey, I have a problem with it too! Those kids oughta be suspended! But come on, they were minors. She doesn’t deserve to be labelled a sex offender for life.
Let me ask you a question or three.
A former student of mine, age 16, and her twin sister decided to “initiate” their 5 year old sister into the joys of sex (I’ll spare you the details). Should they be labeled as sex offenders? For how long? Or, as minors, should the twins get a freebie?
Just to let you all know, I pulled the name off of the post at 8:02 pm since we are unsure of the poster’s validity. If the poster was really who he said he was, I hope he understands why we masked his name.
although my name was masked. I was placed on the registry in it’s early stages. Now the state of Delaware is going to set up some kind of Board that will determine what “Tier” an offender will have. Some people feel that all sex offenders should be lumped as one. Most people do not understand that most sex offences are committed within the family. Most of those offenders were victims themselves. Should there be one registry for those offenders, and one for all the others? As I pointed out before. There should be a national criminal registry for all violent criminal offenders. In the past few years there have been more laws about sex offenders than any other subject. Let us not be led down a path that will end up getting someone killed because the wrong information was given on some registry. All it takes is one person that has the mentality to kill a person. Who do we blame then?