Are sex offender registries reinforcing inequality?
The following are excerpts from this article.
Offenders convicted of sex crimes are now singled out for surveillance and restrictions far more punitive than those who commit other types of crime. More than 800,000 Americans are now registered sex offenders. Tracking them has created a booming surveillance industry.
Studies have found that rates in sex offender registration have ballooned more than 24 percent between 2005 and 2013. I wondered, is this in line with other trends in American corrections? Data show it is not.
Although the U.S. still incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, correctional supervision rates in the U.S. (including people in jail or prison as well as those on parole or probation) peaked in 2007 and have been declining since, albeit at a molasses pace. That means sex offender registries have grown while the prison population has shrunk.
Imagine being punished for something you did three decades ago. You served your time and thought it was in the past. Under American sex offender laws, moving on is nearly impossible: Most state policies are retroactive, meaning they apply to offenders who committed offenses before these laws were put in place. While these laws are the subject of several ongoing court battles, most remain in effect.
Offenders are subject to extensive public notification requirements, which include state-run search engine listings that feature their address, mugshot, criminal history and demographic information. In some cases, offenders are also required to publicly post flyers with their pictures or run newspaper notices advertising their residency. Some states, such as Louisiana, stamp “SEX OFFENDER” in large red script on driver’s licenses.
Having a mugshot disseminated across internet search engines is only the tip of the iceberg; once registered, offenders are subject to a wide array of housing and employment restrictions.
In many places in the U.S., sex offenders are effectively zoned out of cities and towns because there are no residential areas that satisfy all of the numerous regulations. For example, offenders may be prohibited from living within a certain number of feet from a playground.
They are often left with no choice but to live under highways or in improvised communities, such as the one in Pahokee, Florida depicted in the New York Times 2013 short film, “Sex Offender Village.”
From a public safety perspective, scholars note that registries provide the public with a false sense of security: While the existence of sex offender registries reinforces a myth of “stranger danger,” most offenders in reality are acquaintances or family members. Balancing the thin support of the registries’ effectiveness against the more robust evidence of their negative effects, one scholar recently concluded these policies do more harm than good.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-sex-registries-inequality.html#jCp
How can these legislators go home at night with a clear conscience knowing that they are breaking the law and violating common decency in doing what they think is their jobs?
It’s very easy for those who don’t have a soul or conscience. As long as they can convince (lie to) people that their streets are safer and get paid for making people believe it is all that matter’s to them. Opportunists like this practice lying to the public to make themselves look good and pass so called ” feel good laws” so the do-gooder citizens feel safer and they can keep their jobs. Because as everyone should know Politics is all they know and if they had to do any REAL work… they would starve to death.
You are very correct in those observations. I would like to add that I have observed that the majority of those who work in law enforcement also have a lower sense of self and need to be a part of a group of thugs to have any self worth at all.
The are generally gullible and often very religious, feeling that they are saving the world from evil doers. Sadly they themselves are the evil doers but most are too stupid to understand that.
So were bullied as children and now spend their lives trying to compensate for that humiliation by bullying others – “legally” and feel they are whole. Sex offenders are the easiest target so they bully us with relish as they treat us as the scum they think we are.
I also concur that the law enforcement in Florida is one pathetic bunch of losers so clearly Florida is scraping the bottom of the barrel. What can you expect from individuals like this? Sympathy, Compassion, Fairness? Never gonna happen.
I live in Florida, but I work seven months in a different state. Everytime I have to go to the Florida Sheriff’s office to report any kind of a change I feel like I’m lucky to leave. The difference in the other State is like night and day. The Officers in this other State make my experience uneventful, quick and non judgmental…. I’ll made to feel human…a person who is not viewed as a sex offenders, but as a person of value. I do not feel shamed when I’m there or when I leave. We all know the negatives, but there are those who have a bit of empathy….God Bless them who don’t continue to judge a bad choice that brought me to have to register as a past sex offenders.
Well said. I found the same type of reception in Virginia Beach.
How many articles like this must be written or published before it is realized by the ones who can repeal these ridiculous laws……If the judges continually quote the “high” rate of recidivism for sex offenders, which is 6.5%, then what do they call the drug re-offenders at 30%???? Almost 5 times more likely to re-offend with the same category of offense, and yet…where’s their registry? How are they NOT considered a danger to society? Why don’t they have living restrictions? Why aren’t drug laws applied retroactively?
NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE!!!!!!
This is a good read….old though. Can’t seem to find a newer one.
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/rsorp94pr.cfm