Guy Hamilton-Smith: How Can You Tell When the Government Is Lying?
SMART (Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking) commissioned a research brief based on fallacies, doing its best to dismiss the research that casts doubt on various aspects of the sex offense registries.
This research brief has ignored some of the most compelling research that has come out in the past decade, with one being the 2021 meta-analysis of 25 years of findings in “The Effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification”, by Kristen M. Zgoba and Meghan M. Mitchell.
This 2021 study looked at 25 years of Sex Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) evaluations and their effects on recidivism. Results were looked at from 18 research articles which included 474,640 formerly incarcerated individuals. This is the first study to ever use a meta-analysis of SORN’s effectiveness on recidivism, combining statistical results of numerous studies into one comprehensive study of SORN.
Some of the conclusions from this 2021 study:
- SORN policies demonstrate NO effect on recidivism.
- This finding holds important policy implications given the widespread adoption and growing list of penalties related to SORN.
- SORN policies may prove to be more harmful than helpful.
- Resources need to be allocated to focusing only on the high-risk individuals.
- It is time to make empirically informed decisions, not ones based on emotions.
There are other possibly egregious statements made in the research brief commissioned by SMART. Is our government deliberately lying to its citizens, or are these simply oversights? You be the judge.
Thank you, Guy Hamilton-Smith, for keeping the public informed on what our government is doing.
Of course they will lie and stall this for as long as possible. Everyone were fighting is benefiting from it. Cops more increase budget, politicians job security, and the uneducated masses seem to believe they get safety. And it seems the judges are stalling for who knows what reason.
My fear is they will now just scream fake news when reported with the facts. Kinda of like how they all just copy each other preamble when passing new laws against us year after year each time starting off with the frightening and high myth.
As always, the lie goes half-way around the world before the truth can get 10 feet.
To answer the question, if one assumes the government is always lying without exception, one would be correct more often than not.
Separately, I’d like to say if I couldn’t keep my own brain, I’d want Guy Hamilton-Smith’s.
(Resources need to be allocated to focusing only on the high-risk individuals.)
What exactly is a high risk individual???
What crimes would be considered to deem someone a high risk individual?
An individual at high risk of re-offending. We’ve all known one.
How do you determine a high risk person? Is the crime related specifically to the person and their perceived risk? Are they actually correlated? Should there not be more scientific investigation individually than overall broad strokes of characterization based on emotion and fear?
GH-S has hit again on points worthy of their serious consideration.
There are evidence-based methodologies for risk assessment. I’m no expert in them. It’s really a question for a researcher or treatment provider. There is always room for more scientific investigation, but we can’t pretend that it’s never been scientifically investigated. We know that one variable, for example, is, how long has someone been back in the community without sexually re-offending.
What risk assessment often is NOT based on is emotion and fear, because the emotionally fearful tend to paint all registrants with the same broad brush and don’t even think as far as risk assessment.
@Jacob
I am familiar with them and call for all to get them. Risk is not based on emotion and fear at all. Having had two of them seven years apart, they are a multitude of questions from various assessments to provide a score in the end using the basic sub-scores of the assessments. The high-risk individual is one who has the scores to prove it and are the ones the state needs to take a serious look at before deciding their next moves. The problem is the broad brush strokes used to paint everyone the same without looking at each person on their own.
Would our esteemed USG ever use INFO OPS to their advantage to spread misinformation?! NO! Say it ain’t so! Maybe perhaps before our nation was but colonies have they used such operations to get their way and continue to this day. GH-S nails it again to the public square for all to read and see for consideration of what really happens in the halls of injustice.
With something like this, can this be challenged in that by sending letters to the DOJ stating just what Guy has said here? Would it be sent to SMART? Do any of the advocacy groups respond to this? Does Guy send them what he wrote here?
I would guess part of the answer may be that I am free to send something and not to rely on others. Which would make sense as well. But I am wondering if this is something to even do? Or is done?
It can be used in court by our expert witnesses, who can prevent the state’s attempts to rely on DOJ’s characterization here.
TS is right just read the history about government lying with their shifty eye rollings and covering up like a code of silence. Even government gets frigidity.
The entire premise for the Online registry is a bad faith argument. The reason it’s still around is because of weaponized ignorance and bandwagon hate