ACTION NEEDED: There are some discrepancies in the Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board’s comments
Derek Logue recently pointed out that Colorado’s SOMB’s changing of the term “sex offender” to “adults who commit sexual offenses” only makes it sound as though that is what people with a past sex offense do: continue to commit sex offenses. Research shows this is false. That is why it is so surprising to me that the Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board made the following statements:
- “If only it weren’t for generations of data about the likelihood of sex offenders offending again and again unless they get help for their disturbed behavior.”
- “Adults who commit sexual offenses fail to convey or represent any sort of victim-centeredness.”
- “It’s yet another assault on reason, truth and basic decency by the new criminal justice ‘reform’ movement.”
This article allows for comments to be make as a guest where you do not have to give your name. Also, there is a red box you can click on to “Submit Your Feedback” that does not require your name.
Media Committee members are sending in their comments, but we could use many other people commenting, too. This editorial board particularly needs to be corrected on their comment about the likelihood of offending again and again.
Yes, I hope that we live in a society where the needs of victims are always respected, and this needs to be shared with the editorial board; but there comes a point when law-abiding registrants and their family members become victims, too.
Here is a copy of my comment:
The United States Department of Justice has concluded that the recidivism rate of former sex offenders (persons forced to register) is lower than for any other type of crime (except murder).
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/recidivism-adult-sexual-offenders
“Research indicates that sex offenders, regardless of their type of sex offense, have higher rates of general recidivism than sexual recidivism. The magnitude of the difference suggests that sex offenders are far more likely to reoffend for a non-sexual crime than a sexual crime, so policies designed to increase public safety should also be concerned with the likelihood of sex offenders reoffending with crimes other than sexual offenses. Research that has compared the recidivism rates of sex offenders with those of non-sex offenders has consistently found that sex offenders have lower overall recidivism rates than non-sex offenders…
The researchers found a sexual recidivism rate of 5.3 percent for the entire sample of sex offenders based on an arrest during the three-year follow-up period…
Of the 9,691 sex offenders released from prison in 1994, 3.5 percent were reconvicted for a sex crime…”
JJJJ
Part of the problem is a lot of data includes arrest for registry violations that are not sex crimes, rather related to our previous arrest. But they are often included in the stats to pad the #’s. They are real arrests but do not give a true analysis of the actual arrests that were for a sex related crime.
Add to that people who were caught in stings. Although I won’t deny many of those people were thinking they were meeting a minor, they did not go through with it due to the fact it was an officer on the other end. Therefor no actual sex offense took place. Although it is on the books as an arrestable offense, including that in the stats for a sex offense again fluffs up the numbers to :
#1 Get more funding
#2 Scare the public
#3 Keep us from ever getting off the registry
#4 Justify hiring more people to keep registries a thing
#5 Create tougher and stricter laws retroactively relating to the registry
#6 The list goes on into infinity
My comment to the board
Lobanov-Rostovsky – CDPS, Chris chris.lobanov-rostovsky@state.co.us
To:
Jesse Herrera
Cc:
Jill.Trowbridge@state.co.us
Mon, Nov 29 at 2:25 PM
Jesse Herrera, Thank you for your feedback. It will be shared with the Board.
Chris
Christopher Lobanov-Rostovsky, Program Manager
(he, him, his)
Office of Domestic Violence and Sex Offender Management
Colorado Division of Criminal Justice
P 303.239.4447 | F 303.239.4491 | C 303.241.5874
700 Kipling St., Suite 3000, Denver, CO 80215
chris.lobanov-rostovsky@state.co.us | https://dcj.colorado.gov/
Hide original message
On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 10:47 AM Jesse Herrera jaherrera01@prodigy.net wrote:
Dear Sir and Ms:
My name is Jesse A Herrera, a former resident of Denver, Co. Nonetheless I still keep abreast of happenings in the great state of Colorado. My son is a person who is required to register in his home state.
I have read that the Colorado Sex Offender Management Board is seeking an alternative to the term “Sex Offender.” To that end, I understand that the Board has proposed the term “adults who commit sexual offenses.”
I wish to express my opposition to the latter expression. My reason for doing so is that this term implies that adults are still committing [present tense] sexual offenses [plural].
I admire the search for an alternative term, however this most recent label is misleading since it implies a degree of recidivism that does not stand up to scrutiny.
Scholarly Research by government [DOD] and private agencies has shown that the percentage of recidivist behaviors among persons required to to register on state registries is about 3%-5%. Among people who have been convicted of serious crimes, only individuals who have committed homicides have a lower rate of recidivism.
My son is a case in point, since his arrest for a questionable crime [forgive my digression] of on-line solicitation of a minor, he has not even gotten a parking ticket. He is not atypical, he verifies what scholarly research indicates.
I ask that your board reconsider the term you have recently chosen.
Regards
Jesse A Herrera
210.508.0040
jaherrera01@prodigy.net
Low Recidivism for Sexual Crimes-The Facts
People convicted of a sexual crime seldom repeat the offense. Government reports and empirical studies consistently show the rate of repeated sex crime to be much lower than the general public believes. The most widely cited report was published by the US Department of Justice in 2003. 1 It compared recidivism rates among prisoners released in 1994 over a three-year follow-up period. Sex offenders (SO’s) were rearrested for another sex crime at a rate of 5.3% — 1.8% per year. Non-SO’s were rearrested for ordinary crimes (burglary, robbery, drug dealing, etc.) at a rate of 68% — 22.6% per year. SO’s repeat their crime at a lower rate than any type of crime other than homicide. It is in that context that SO’s are understood to be at low risk to re-offend.
Several other studies can be cited to illustrate the widespread understanding about the low recidivism rate among former sex offenders.
A) The pivotal meta-analysis by Hanson & Bussière (1998), from which the Static-99 actuarial scale was developed, found 13.4% of their 23, 393 sample re-offended sexually within 5 years of release (approximately 3% per year). 2
B) The Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council (1997) tracked SO’s released from prison and found, after 3 years, 4% (1.3% per year) had returned to prison for another sex crime.3
C) The Washington State Institute for Public Policy found a 4-year recidivism rate of 2.7% (0.68% per year). 4
D) The California Prison System, (Marques, et al, 2005) found, among 649 released SO’s, a sexual recidivism rate of 23.1% over an average of 8.5 years (2.7% per year). 5
E) A US. Department of Justice Report (Zgoba, et al, 2012) surveyed 4 states (FL, SC, NJ, MN) and found an average 10-year sex offense recidivism rate of 9.9% (0.99% per year).6
F) The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (2012) reported that, during a 3-year period, 1.9% of sex offenders on the public registry (including both those who had been to prison and those who had not) were arrested for another sex crime – 0.63% per year. 7
G) A Bureau of Justice report surveying 9 states (AK, AZ, DE, IL, IA, NM, SC, TN, & UT) found an average 3-year sex offense recidivism rate of 3.4% — 1.1% per year. 8
These statistics describe a broad, general category – sex offenders. There are important distinctions to be made between types of offenders that would show large segments at extremely low risk of recidivism. The reports cited here are representative of a large body of literature. These descriptive studies make it clear that the great majority of SO’s have a very low likelihood of repeating their crime. Legislation and policy making that assumes otherwise is misguided and counterproductive
REFERENCES:
DOJ, 2003. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf
Hanson, R. K. & Bussière, M. T. 1998. “Predicting Relapse: A Meta-Analysis of Sexual Offender Recidivism Studies,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66 (2) 348-362
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9583338/
Eisenberg, M. 1997. “Recidivism of Sex Offenders: Factors to Consider in Release Decisions,” Criminal Justice Policy Council.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/recidivism-sex-offenders-factors-consider-release-decisions-0
Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2005. “Sex Offender Sentencing in Washington State: Recidivism Rates,” http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/908/Wsipp_Recidivism-Rates_RecidivismRates.pdf
Marques, J. Wiederanders, M., Day, D., Nelson, C. & van Ommeren, A. 2005. “Effects of a Relapse Prevention Program on Sexual Recidivism:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757007/
Final Results From California’s Sex Offender Treatment and Evaluation Project (SOTEP),” Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 17 (1).
Zgoba, K., Miner, M., Knight, R., Letourneau, E., Levenson, J. & Thornton, D. 2012. “A Multi-State Recidivism Study Using Static-99R and Static-2002 Risk Scores and Tier Guidelines from the Adam Walsh Act,” National Institute of Justice, DOJ, Document # 240099.
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/240099.pdf
“2012 Outcome Evaluation Report,” California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/adult_research_branch/Research_Documents/ARB_FY_0708_R ecidivism_Report_10.23.12.pdf
Orchowsky, S. & Iwama, J. 2009. “Improving State Criminal History Records: Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released in 2001,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, US. Department of Justice
https://www.qualitativecriminology.com/pub/v2i1p6/release/1
The articles below; while not all research based, are interesting newspaper articles on the subject
The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings (floridaactioncommittee.org)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/03/09/the-big-lie-about-sex-offenders/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/opinion/when-junk-science-about-sex-offenders-infects-the-supreme-court.html
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000005415081/a-frightening-myth-about-sex-offenders.html
https://www.statesman.com/article/20110902/NEWS/309029727
Follow evidence, not gut feeling, on sex offenders
Good letter to the board.
Another contact to add to Phase 3 of the Media Blitz!!
Looks like I am the only one as of yet to leave a comment on that article , that is unless they are being held for review or just rejected and trashed.
I tried to leave a reply. I hit submit and that was the last I saw of my work
I just went to the article and it shows 0 comments now. Can’t let the readership be confused by the facts that’s not convenient to the emotional charge they are trying to insight.
TS
Ahhhhh, censorship at its’ finest. Got to love fairness. I have gone on a lot of sites that only post comments they agree with. I mean I understand censoring hate speech, curse words etc. but filtering out our side of the story gives a one sided view of the World.
God forbid people hear the truth because then maybe the registry reform would happen. We can’t have that now can we?
I think we now need to turn to the advertisers of that publication and send our thoughts to them….
A few months ago, I had a backend forth with CO Politics over another article they wrote. I wrote an OpEd, and they rejected it, claiming someone already wrote an OpEd with the same points I made. I waited over a month to see it, and when it did pop up, the OpEd had nothing to do with the talking points I made.
CO Politics and their management is full of crap.
Very similar to the news agencies that claim “Truth and fairness” in reporting, yet twist our words when anyone on the registry gives an interview. I have seen several ex offenders give interviews where you could tell the segment was edited so heavily that the person was made to look like a dangerous idiot who just escaped from a mental hospital.
The news showed up at my house way back in the 1990s wanting my side of the story. My 5’5 Mother chased them off with a shotgun. She told them that if they ever stepped on our property again, there would be a lot of job openings at their station. And she meant every word of it.
Cherokee, that conjures up an image of Granny Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies. I would love to have seen that. God love your mom!
Ed C
She is a good hearted women, until you mess with family.
0 comments posted.
I am unfamiliar with Colorado Politics or its readership. What are we looking to accomplish with this action item?
Have we considered coordinating with our Colorado affiliate, Advocates for Change?
https://www.advocates4change.org/
I don’t believe they’re actually posting any comments from anybody in general. Not that they’re required to. And it’s not even their editorial, but someone else’s.
That’s why I’m mystified by this Action Alert.
But, again, our Colorado affiliate can probably shed more light on these publications if we ask them.
When this Action Alert was created, we were not aware that this editorial board would refuse to print the truth. Plenty of comments have been sent to them, but they refuse to print the “truth”.
The Gazette owns the Washington Examiner.
Only subscribers can see the comments in the gazette unless you use the DisQus platform then a user can view and interact with comments.
i’m glad to see some people have sent in their comments. I’m hoping that we outpace comments from victim advocates or others who financially benefit from the existence of the registry.
The website is deleting comments. I submitted a comment and mine was the only one listed (at the moment).
Victims were never supposed to piggyback off the registry to give them aid and comfort – it was never meant to be their safety net. It was never meant to be part of their healing, recovery and coping process. They have actually hijacked and co-opted the registry to promote their unfounded fears and emotional hysteria which they perpetuate in concert with the media and lawmakers.
They KNOW the media coddles them and subsequently use that to their advantage to easily sell their misguided blanket vengeance. Yes, you CAN discredit and de-legitimize a victim’s claims, requests and statements when their arguments are founded only in emotional hysteria and not fact-based reality.
Amen! The same can be said for District Attorneys who advocate for counterfactual registry laws.
Did anyone else have a hard time responding to the article? A message popped up saying due to profanity it could not accept my comment. There was no profanity in it!! Thinking maybe it didn’t like the word porn, sex or rapist, I tried to edit but it would not let me.
Your Reality Is Not Reality
please share the generations of generations of” don’t exist” information your referring to. Cause reality says different. Empirical evidence says the opposite of your irresponsible. misinformed ,article. Speake truth not fear.
That was the comment I left…
This is precisely why what the Colorado Board is doing is ineffective. Their desire to change the term is laudable but their solution isn’t,
The problem isn’t the label. The problem is the system which insists on LABELLING for life. Changing the sound of the label isn’t just going to piss a lot of people off as we are seeing with these articles but it still doesn’t change the fact that a person is still being labelled with a title that causes shame, etc…
rpsabq
You are 100% correct. Although labels do make it worse, for example Sexual violent predator. Having said that, they could call us “People who just made a mistake” and that still wouldn’t justify us being on a registry and having to go in for our 4 times a year “Probation” check in.
I see no difference at all between probation and the registry other than two things. I do not have to pay a monthly fee (Yet) and I do not have to check in once a week (Yet).
Oh, even if you got lifetime probation, you can go before a judge and get early termination. Very few have actually gotten off the registry (compared to those who haven’t) and most are for life with no “ifs and or buts”.
It is like God casting someone into Hell for all eternity, there just “ain’t no coming back from it”.
If you want to blast the idea, then read this Nov 28 Op Ed from the Gazette and send in your thoughts. The CO Politics page is not worth your time. Letters to the board one way or the other, e.g. electronically or in the mail, are worth the time.
EDITORIAL: Colorado sex crimes board wants more respect for rapists
https://gazette.com/premium/editorial-colorado-sex-crimes-board-wants-more-respect-for-rapists/article_320fccee-4fd9-11ec-be82-b32073f698b9.html
And BTW, CO Springs is a very red and conservative city in CO so views like this from the Gazette are not unexpected.
If you are interested in the original Gazette Op Ed which CO Politics used for their article, here it is:
EDITORIAL: When ‘person-first’ means victim last
https://gazette.com/premium/editorial-when-person-first-means-victim-last/article_d58f0766-4cd9-11ec-9d42-436f13d5eb15.html
You can send in comments to the Gazette Op Ed instead of CO Politics
I have always had respect for editorial boards, always thought they were well informed. The Gazette Editorial Board refuses to post my comments that include research. Their comments included no research — just their personal opinions. That is scary.
Fac
Might I remind you that FAC does the same thing. Routinely denying comments by us, yet allowing comments by outsiders with threats of violence towards us.
Thank you to all of our members who have been sending this editorial board the “truth” which they do not seem to want to hear.
While changing the name designation from sex offender in Colorado has done us no service. It still sounds like this is what we do – sex offend. I would much rather the designation be “past sex offender” as to more aptly describe the situation.
We can sarcastically submit this to really confuse everyone
We formally want to be known as :
“Former Sex offenders who are no longer sex offenders(Well I can only speak for myself). However, we are still being treated like we are actively offending, offenders”.
So going forward, I will legally change my name to – The Artist formally known as a Sex offender.
Oh wait, we are no longer by law allowed to change our name.