What to Know About Sex Offenders and Community Notification
Do community notification laws keep children safe from sex offenders?
Ample research suggests that unfortunately, no, they do not, says Sandy Rozek, board member and the communications director for the National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws (NARSOL). Part of NARSOL’s mission is to bring attention to the ways in which community notification laws, and other laws that restrict registered sex offenders, do not meaningfully address community safety. “A huge amount of resources are expended every year in most states at Halloween enforcing sex offender restrictions, all without a single shred of evidence showing that there is any issue at all involving registrants and Halloween but much evidence showing there is none,” Rozek tells Romper. In fact, the registry may actually increase the likelihood of that a sex offender would commit another crime “by reducing the relative attractiveness of a crime-free life” writes J.J. Prescott, Henry King Ransom Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School.
What does it take to get some of these ‘do gooder’ politicians to wake up to facts?
A voter base that understands the uselessness and detriments of their proposals.
I can stand next to you and your kids in the grocery store…and you ( average citizen) and you are not worried or afraid. I help you change your cars tire when you and your kids are stranded on the side of the road…and you are not worried or afraid. At my job you ask me for advice…you are not worried or afraid…But, when I live near you, you do everything you can to keep me away from you and your kids.. because now you have decided that you are worried and afraid of me…I’m no one to be worried or afraid of…it’s those who are closest to you and your kids that are the ones you should be worried and afraid of…just a thought!
I don’t believe the Prescott article is study is at all helpful. What caught my eye in the abstract is:
“We present evidence that registration reduces the frequency of reported sex offenses against local victims (for example, neighbors) by keeping police informed about local sex offenders. Notification also appears to reduce crime, not by disrupting the criminal conduct of convicted sex offenders, but by deterring nonregistered offenders.”
Most people will simply latch onto that statement to prove that registries work, and simply ignore the recidivism quote pointed out by Sandy. Even though the conclusion points to increased costs to SOs and their families, nobody cares about that. If the public can find comfort in even a tiny positive effect from registries, they will continue.
So we’re basically being made an example out of in order to send a message as a deterrent?
Good luck with that fantasy.