OPPAGA – Sex Offender Registration and Monitoring Triennial Review – 2021 is out!
The Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) studied the effectiveness of Florida’s sex offender registration process and public notification provisions and prepared their triennial report for 2021. Below is a link to the complete report, which we encourage you to read. We will update this post shortly with bullets from their findings.
I received the weekly FAC update this morning and I too was upset with the apparent lack of work the OPPAGA did in studying the effectiveness of Florida’s SORNA. I started to write a scathing email starting with a summary of the requirements of Florida Statute 943.04353. Right away, I found our problem.
Nowhere in 943.04353 is there language regarding the “effectiveness” of SORNA in its entirety but rather the Statute is written to study the “effectiveness” of “registration process” and “community and public notification provisions”.
Seen in this light, the reports lack of studying the “effectiveness” of the entirety or SORNA makes perfect sense and OPPAGA has indeed done their job and met the requirements of 943.04353, no matter how much it pisses me off. Writing to them is not going to change a damn thing.
What needs to be done is finding Florida lawmakers sympathetic to our cause, preferably ones sitting on the correct committee or subcommittee, to expand 943.04353 to study the “effectiveness” of the entirety of Florida SORNA with specific guidelines on what should be studied, such as residency restrictions, lifetime registration, the effectiveness of the program in its entirety, etc. Until then, OPPAGA is just going to turn out this fluff piece everything three years because that is all the law requires.
I’d like to see a marked up version of this report and sent back to the department that spent money to create the report. Then sent to all the lawmakers.
I can’t wait for the next report!!!!!
It would be interesting to know how many previous offenders are now on non sex offender probation for violating ordnance’s or registration laws and be even more interesting to see how many were sentenced on their original qualifying offense before the new laws were even implemented that now 20 years later are now making good reformed family men criminals again for absent mindedness, lack of intelligence, lack of keeping of with the yearly laws that change like the tax codes. Oh but the arrest reports, intake reports, court recordings can all contain those same absent minded type mistakes and theirs can be amended but yours cannot without jail time, wearing a gps monitor, probation, loosing jobs and carriers, homes, family’s, reputation, humiliation, all for something that isnt harming anyone other than the personal feelings of those that created the laws. It is personal feelings when the evidence, scientific evidence, statistical evidence is being ignored. A lot of you say the report doesn’t say much but it does. Look at the homeless map. It’s clear from the map that where there are excess law and ordinances there is excess deprived people. County’s where people just register and go on about there day have a better chance at life and happiness and aren’t deprived of liberty. What would be interesting is if excess homelessness raises the actual sexual reoffending rate (not registration violations or other non sexual related crimes). It must because I see that’s missing. And if it was I suspect some county’s may ignore it like the whole state does.
Doing injustice for justice purposes. Now that is an accountability and also misconception/misrepresentation . So Cain killed Able for accountability or for public safety or to protect his reputation. So where is Florida’s Accountability. Setting one up for a fall?
Seems someone in high places in Florida is missing a few issues in this Government type of justice error. So to error is human or what is unjust today in this registry issue.
Comments.
I don’t see anywhere in this report where “the effectiveness of Florida’s sex offender registration process” is discussed. It is rather an overview of what is being currently being done. Effectiveness would require using actual data to determine if the law and programs enacted are having the effect they claimed the would and if not, recommendations to retract them.
” The registry also includes 1,358 deceased persons: 1,162 sex offenders and 196 sexual predators, whose names remain on the registry for one year following their death so that victims can see that they have been reported as deceased.”
A victim who is worried to the point of wanting to know whether or not a registrant is alive and/or where they are currently located is going to be looking at the FDLE website often, like weekly or monthly. Three months is the most that is needed and not even that.
“The number of sex offenders in Florida communities has increased over time.” Well duh. If you never let any of them off the damn registry until they have been dead a year, don’t you expect for the number to climb every year.
After spending a few pages talking about federal law on how long one is on the registry, and that there are differences between Fed and State guidelines, the following sentence is basically all that is said about Florida’s, “Other sex offenders who meet certain criteria can petition the court to remove the requirement for registration as a sex offender after 25 years from release from confinement, supervision or sanction, whichever is later”. No talk or recommendations about establishing something that might provide an avenue for first time offenders to get off of it.
Overall, this is nothing but a worthless bureaucratic report that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than satisfying the requirement of Florida Statute 943.04353.
Is the registry effective at promoting public safety?
The OPPAGA does not even ask this question.
They do evaluate whether agencies are effectively engaging in monitoring, surveillance, intelligence gathering, public notification, and Federal compliance.
But nowhere do they question whether any of these measures are effective at promoting public safety. They do not ask, for example, whether the monitoring measures that are undertaken, monitor the right people. Instead, they PRESUME that these measures promote safety. And I feel it’s not OPPAGA’s job to make such sweeping assumptions without acknowledging them. Their job should be to evaluate, not assume. Especially when studies regarding the public-safety effectiveness of such measures are so voluminous, OPPAGA should not be ignoring them.
I do appreciate the table showing the history of Florida’s registry statutes. That table feels like it almost has FAC’s fingerprints on it.
But other than that, Jacob (the author of this post) is headed into the weekend hopping mad about this apparent waste of taxpayer dollars and hoping to calm down.
One other small quibble, why is the probation officer dressed like a policeman, with uniform, cap, and badge?
Most PO’s that I know are far more discrete. Perhaps the OPPAGA never met one.