My soup

In an internet argument, I recently posted this response, built mostly from facts culled from Human Rights Watch’s report, “No Easy Answer“, on sex offender registration. It’s got lots of fun facts in it that might be handy, so I thought I’d post it here.

You can speculate and reason all you like (”once a pedophile, always a pedophile”, “most of the list is good, and properly utilised”), but have you checked the facts?

States such as Vermont and Minnesota have responsible public sex offender databases, in which a very small minority of registered sex offenders are actually placed on the website, which are those deemed to pose a real risk in communities in which they live.

There are good ways to maintain responsible disclosure of sex offender registration, requiring pro-active notification by law enforcement and restricting public register access to a need-to-know basis would prevent public humiliation of nonviolent sex offenders while informing people in a community when a member of the community poses a real threat.

30% of convictions for sexual assault resulting in a person being required to register as a sex offender are non-violent acts, not against children. 76% of people convicted for sexual offences do not commit any further offence. 5.6% of violent sexual assaults are committed by people who had never previously been required to register as a sex offender. People children know and trust are responsible for 90% of all sexual violence against children.

4% of youth required to register as a sex offender committed another sexual offence, and 90% of all sex offenders did not commit a sex offence while under 18. This isn’t a minority of sex offenders, 25% of those required to register as sex offenders are required to do so because of a crime they committed while under 18. 47% of offences against children under 6, and 39% of offences against children between 6 and 12 were committed by children who were themselves under 18. In terms of predictive power, the number of contacts with police for all reasons was twice as good a predictor as a single sexual offence of committing a further sexual offence.

There is significant evidence that the hardship imposed on those required to register as sex offenders increases recidivism in some cases, and makes tracking difficult (there are very few places in some states that registered sex offenders can live, so what do they put as their address?). Sex offenders are least likely to re-offend if they live with their families, have a stable job, and a place to live. Sex offender registration takes away all of these, by causing frequent public vilification causing employment dismissal, by imposing residency restrictions that prevent sex offenders from living with their families, preventing them from attending church services or receiving treatment and help for their condition.

Sex offender registration has, in several cases resulted in vigilante murders of people whose offences causing their registration as sex offenders were neither violent nor predatory, in many cases being streaking and public urination. This isn’t isolated, one third to one half of registered sex offenders lose their home, job or family. 16% of registered sex offenders are physically assaulted as a result of registration. Typical assault and harassment includes physical threats, ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night and leaving, leaving feces and garbage on the offender’s doorstep, up to being beaten or stabbed. In some cases, shots have been fired into registered sex offenders’ homes, injuring their family members.

Requiring sex offender registration for large classes of nonviolent misdemeanours has caused states such as California to literally lose track of 44% of its registered sex offenders.

Life registration is unnecessary and overly onerous, as recidivism rates decrease to 12%, 9% and 4% after five, ten and fifteen years of remaining offence-free respectively.

Contrary to what you might think, treatment is a solid method of reducing recidivism, reducing recidivism by 41% when modern methods are applied properly.

Community notification and online databases, according to a report by the Washington Department of State, have little to no impact on either the rate or location of recidivism, indicating that the online databases neither prevent recidivism, nor force it to go elsewhere.

So while I don’t oppose sex offender registration entirely (it can be done responsibly and with an evidence-based approach), its implementation in the United States is nothing but the product of a moral panic, which does not achieve its stated aims, and is based on received wisdom rather than empirical evidence.