Member Submission: How Much Do Registries Cost?
THE FOLLOWING IS THE OPINION OF ONE OF OUR MEMBERS AND NOT NECESSARILY THAT OF FLORIDA ACTION COMMITTEE
Congress has begun its ritual of budget battles and threatened government shutdowns. Despite the political posturing there are real issues at stake.
The national debt is now at an all-time high of $33 trillion. The federal deficit is estimated to hit $2 trillion. This is serious money and suggests the United States is headed for a major fiscal reckoning. The American people are demanding that politicians stop wasting tax dollars.
If members of Congress and state legislatures want to save money, one obvious step would be to eliminate the expensive sex offender registries they have created. That process should start with a simple audit.
For example, International Megan’s Law, is up for reauthorization, until 2027. Among other things, the IML requires government agents to examine the manifests of every single flight leaving the United States for the name of someone with a 40- or even a 50-year-old criminal conviction and to notify every country where that person intends to travel. Is the benefit of all this paper pushing worth the cost?
The IML forms part of the Adam Walsh Act, budgeted at $20 million in the most recent omnibus spending bill. That number does not include many other costs:
- the dollars spent by federal and other law enforcement agencies in conducting compliance checks;
- the dollars spent by each of the states in maintaining their own registries;
- the dollars spent by prosecutors, defenders, and courts to try failure to register cases;
- the dollars spent by jails and prisons for incarcerating those convicted of failure to register;
- the dollars lost to family separation, employment termination, homelessness, etc.
A conservative estimate for the total cost of registries, going back almost 30 years, would be in the billions of dollars.
Has a registry saved one child?
I wish some how every news station would publish how much government spending is taken away from public funding. This goes along with government spending in Ukraine. The amount spent there along with millions to pay for prisoners to be incarcerated. I wish I could give some insight into how much they are spending on on one inmate being incarcerated in Floriduh.There were more than 1.2 million people in prison in 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Spending per prisoner varies widely across states, from about $18,000 per prisoner in Mississippi to $135,978 per prisoner in Wyoming in 2020. States spent an average of $45,771 per prisoner for the year.Sep 15, 2022 You can do the math. I pent 11 mos. in prison. Way less than most. So say $40,000 for the time to keep me in prison. Im guessing most of you are are saying you hardly didnt do any time. Well I might not have but the cost the imprison me for this time is riddiculus.
The IML has to be deauthorized in 2027
Is there any way to rally to sunset that?
The United States can afford anything it wants. The “debt” is simply a political tool to make people think our government is broke. As the printer and controller of the US Dollar it is never broke. I mean really, how else do you think the government pays for all these wars and everything else it wants year after year after year? Our taxes? Hardly.
The problem is the Registry like the Ukraine spending is for the exact same purpose..It is mostly shadow money laundering for political pockets and to reward the friends of politician’s.. aka election fraud funds… No politician will cut pork spending that is going right into their pockets and a large amount of the registry money is going right back into politician’s and their friends pockets….