CT: Sex offender registry should be based on risk
Whether known to us or not, the intention of the registry was to let us know if a person presents a risk to our families and communities and to enable law enforcement agencies to track, supervise and monitor these registrants. Unfortunately, Connecticut’s registry is not performing these functions.
Unlike New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and 13 other states, Connecticut’s sex offender registry is an “offense-based” rather than a “risk-based” registry. This means that someone convicted of a crime with a sexual component can arrange a plea deal to avoid being placed on the registry or plea bargain to an offense that carries less registration time. Certain offenses, such as sex trafficking, do not require placement on the registry. The public is not safer if the individuals most at risk of reoffending are not even on the registry.
There are multiple instances in recent years to illustrate how the lack of a risk-based registry allows dangerous offenders to go unsupervised and to reoffend, committing rape, murder, and sexual assault. At the other end of the spectrum are individuals who are least likely to reoffend. While their crimes and the harm they perpetrated should never be minimized, sex offender treatment experts argue that being listed on the registry can negatively impact a person’s chances for long-term success. Evidence and logic suggest that in many ways registries contradict best practices in criminal justice re-entry reforms and actually hurt public safety.
Risk-based is not AWA-compliant. Yet all registries should be risk-based, not offense-based. And high-risk offenders should have outlets for reducing their risk level over time.
The argument AGAINST risk-based registries that you will hear is, that they are more subjective than offense-based, because they are based on a risk assessment, rather than an offense, which is purely factual. To which you should respond, it’s the other way around— an offense-based registry is based on a single variable of risk— the severity of original offense— even though there are at least half a dozen well known risk factors. And an offense-based system denies the high-tier offender the incentive to rehabilitate themselves, presuming that they cannot change. Which has been demonstrated false.
Florida would benefit from switching to a risk-based system, except that under AWA, it would lose its Federal Byrne JAG funds were it to do so.
Of course, Florida’s registry should be abolished altogether, but that’s an issue more for the courts. When talking to your legislators, you might bring up risk-based systems.
There should be no registry, in any way, shape or form. And if there was, it should be for all criminals alike. In the name of public safety. How could it not?
This is Florida, it’s never going to happen, they will always group criminals as 1 size fits all.