Sex offender registry: good or bad? Constitutional?

Great Debates
1

Apologies if this has been discussed before…I did a search and didn’t find anything.

An official statement from the Michigan state police says that a U.S. District judge has ruled that Michigan’s sex offender registry program is unconstitutional.

Now, I have no idea as to the premise behind declaring a sex offender registry program constitutional or not…and that’s okay, since they’re not paying me the big bucks to sit on the bench. However, I am opposed to the reality of sex offender registries, because:

  1. They are sloppily kept and already woefully outdated after just a few years. Some states place the responsibility of updating current addresses on the offender. I have my doubts as to how conscientious the majority are about keeping a current address on file. This in turn leads to:

  2. Cases of harassment, property damage, and even death of innocent (read: non-child-molesting) people due to mistaken identity. Sex Offender registers at House A, moves to House B, never notifies the authorities, Someone New moves into House A, and Someone New is mobbed and beaten by vigilante neighbors who happened to spot House A on the address list, and never thought to verify identity. Or, even worse, Tired and Bored Clerk means to enter House A, where Sex Offender lives, into the system - and instead enters House B, where Average Law Abiding Citizen lives. House B is burned down in the dead of the night by neighbors who think they’re doing “justice”.

I also think they provide a somewhat false sense of security. Okay, you checked the list and Sex Offender lives 2 doors down. So, what now? Sure, you can tell your kid to stay the hell away from Sex Offender. But, shouldn’t you be doing that anyway, unless you know all of your neighbors really, really well (and maybe not even then)? While the parents are keeping a sharp eye out on the Devil They Know living 2 doors down, the Devil They Don’t Know (who lives three doors down and molests children but hasn’t been caught yet), IMO stands a better chance of molesting their child.

Those are just my gut thoughts on the matter. Anyone willing to offer some lawyerly opinions on the constitutionality of registries, or arguments for/against the current practice of registries in general?

2

Just wondering…

Have you got cites, or actual instances, of any of this, or is it just an “everybody knows” thing?

Has any of this ever actually happened? Just wondering.

3

This site lists a firebombing, a beating, and two arsons.

http://www.aclu.org/news/n082897a.html

4

My own thought is that if a sex offender is still considered enough of a threat that his/her name needs to be made public in this fashion, then they should not yet be released. The object of a jail/treatment term (surely) is to reform/rehabilitate the offender - if this has not occured, then they should not be released.

The flipside of the coin is that once they have been released, they should be considered to be reformed and allowed to get on with their lives - to spend the rest of your life hiding from an offence committed in the past seems unjust.

Grim

5

I agree with your first paragraph in its entirety, grim. Public listing of names is a terrible, shameful thing. Someone must really love Hawthorne.

6

anyone with interest in the idea of public listings of sex offenders should take a look at the case in the UK and the Sun newspaper. they published names and photos of released child sex offenders resulting in much mistaken hassement and violence.

in theory the police knowing where potential reoffenders are could be a good thing. but frankly the general public as a mass doesnt have the collective brains to deal with it and should never been told.

7

Responding to Grimpixie’s post, I think the problem is that the US criminal justice system seldom, if ever, imposes a life sentence for the rape or molestation of children. Yet no one thinks that a few years in jail is going to cure or rehabilitate a pedophile. The asumption is, that’s his orientation, and nothing is going to change it.

So, after 3, or 5, or whatever number of years in jail, the guy is presumed to be just as much of a threat to children as ever. Yet the law requires that he be released. What to do? These sex offender registries were the solution someone dreamed up. Not that good a solution, IMO. It just means that when a child is raped or molested, the cops have a list of possible suspects to investigate. The lists may help cops investigate crimes, but do they have any preventive effect? Seems unlikely.

For some reason, it never seems to occur to anyone that perhaps a life sentence would be the appropriate penalty for the rape or molestation of an actual (that is, pre-pubescent) child.

I think I remember that sex offender registries were originally actually child molester registries? Are they now being used for other sorts of sex offenders? That is, those who target adult victims? If so, would that make the registries a lot bigger, and therefore that much more difficult to maintain properly? I would guess that child molesters are significantly outnumbered by rapists whose victims are adult?

8

C’mon, DDG, you’re the Google master! Er, mistress.

People mistakenly identified as sex offenders and/or being targeted for vigilantism:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_857000/857725.stm
*On Friday night a group of around 60 people waving banners and shouting abuse attacked a house in Plymouth, throwing paint at a house they had mistaken for the home of a paedophile. *

Last week, an innocent Manchester man was confronted in his home by neighbours who thought he was one of the 49 individuals named in the newspaper.

www.appa-net.org/revisitingmegan.pdf
Among the most notorious cases of violence and vigilantism resulting from Megan’s Law was the burning down of a sex offender’s house in the State of Washington.
Another that occurred in New Jersey involved the mistaken identity of a man who was thought to be a sex offender. His house was broken into, and he was severely beaten, resulting in the need for hospitalization.

http://www.mdn.org/1999/STORIES/MONDAY.HTM
*But Rep Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, had serious concerns about cases of mistaken identity. Graham said a friend of his learned his address was in the Missourian - mistakenly listed as a sex offender’s residence. *

*he IRA thought they had beaten and shot an elderly paedophile.

They battered down the door of John Brown’s flat in the nationalist New Lodge area of north Belfast. The 79-year-old was held down, kicked and then shot in both knees and an ankle.

The attack, less than a fortnight after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was signed, seemed to make a mockery of politicians’ claims that Northern Ireland was entering a new phase of peace. Brown was the victim of whispering games and inaccurate intelligence. Within days the RUC announced that Brown was the victim of mistaken identity. A convicted sex offender had lived on the same landing as Brown, but had moved out a few months earlier. *

9

…and not while directly related to a discussion on registers, this is demonstrative of public stupidity when confronted with the bogeyman of ‘paedophiles’ or ‘sex offenders’, real or not:

BBC: Paediatrician attacks ‘ignorant’ vandals

10

Duck Duck Goose, it looks like pldennison and others have provided many examples, but I can offer a few more cites:

quote:

They are sloppily kept and already woefully outdated after just a few years.

http://www.appa-net.org/revisitingmegan.pdf

*In St. Louis, Missouri, more than 700 registered sex offenders, or approximately 46 percent, do not live at the addresses posted on the sex offender registry, and many sex offenders (approximately 285 sex offenders released from prison as of May
1999) never get put on the list (Dunklin, 1999). *

and

Recently, it was discovered that as many as 25 percent of registry addresses were incorrect, which has resulted in
citizens having their addresses improperly included on the registry (Webster, 1999).
quote:

Some states place the responsibility of updating current addresses on the offender.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/99/feb/020899/local_ar/155251.htm

*To a certain degree, convicted sex offenders are themselves responsible for the accuracy of the Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry posted on the World Wide Web last week.

Offenders have 10 days to notify local police agencies of their current address when they move or when they are paroled or released from the jurisdiction of the Michigan Department of Corrections.*

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ren_productions/feb1998.htm

*Ms. Griffin fell victim to Maryland’s version of Megan’s Law when her sister-in-law, serving time for statutory rape of a 13-year-old boy, gave Ms. Griffin’s address to authorities as her own.

According to the story, the authorities did not verify the address given to them before sending letters to Griffin’s neighbors and various groups in the community. *
quote:

…how conscientious the majority are about keeping a current address on file.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/99/feb/020899/local_ar/155251.htm

“If they do what they’re supposed to do, the accuracy of the list should be maintained,” Michigan State Police spokesman David Verhougstraete said.

(bolding mine)

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/11/04/ky_megan.htm

*Typically, the address of about 8-10 percent of the state’s 2,366 registered sex offenders is listed as “unknown” – including 12 percent of the 400 in Jefferson County.

Some offenders have been missing for more than a year, and Draud said police haven’t made finding them a priority.
Louisville and Jefferson County police only recently began investigating sex offenders with questionable addresses. *

quote:

Cases of harassment, property damage, and even death of innocent (read: non-child-molesting) people due to mistaken identity.

http://www.appa-net.org/revisitingmegan.pdf

In Lansing, Michigan, a 26-year-old man was branded as a child molester incorrectly. His name was immediately placed on a Family Independence Agency’s “undesirables” list. The court ordered his name removed, but the damage had been done. The man lost jobs, friends, and family respect, and ultimately, his health was affected (Miner, 1998).
quote:

…mobbed and beaten by vigilante neighbors who happened to spot House A on the address list, and never thought to verify identity.

http://www.reporternews.com/1999/texas/offend1104.html

*The 27-year-old Vietnamese refugee was attacked by four men who thought he was a sex offender because his address was listed on the state’s Internet registry. But the address was that of a sex-offender who hadn’t lived at the home for months.

Pham, who has the mental capacity of a sixth-grader, was attacked after playing ball with some neighborhood children on Sept. 22.*

http://www.appa-net.org/revisitingmegan.pdf

Another that occurred in New Jersey involved the mistaken identity of a man who was thought to be a sex offender. His house was broken into, and he was severely beaten, resulting in the need for hospitalization.

quote:

House B is burned down in the dead of the night by neighbors who think they’re doing “justice”.

http://www.appa-net.org/revisitingmegan.pdf

Among the most notorious cases of violence and vigilantism resulting from Megan’s
Law was the burning down of a sex offender’s house in the State of Washington.

Actually, this one WAS a sex offender, so that’s not exactly what I was saying, but…

quote:

While the parents are keeping a sharp eye out on the Devil They Know living 2 doors down, the Devil They Don’t Know (who lives three doors down and molests children but hasn’t been caught yet), [molests their child].

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,40183,00.html

*“This is a political feel-good (solution) to a serious problem,” said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. “It creates a false sense of security.”

These registries focus on strangers. But the real danger lies within the family, where most sex crimes take place, Jacobs said. *

http://www.aclu.org/news/2002/n042202a.html
*Finally, as the website candidly and correctly notes, the presence or absence of an individual’s name or address on the website is not an absolute indicator of public safety; in fact, many sex offenders, particularly child sex offenders, are not apprehended, and thus may continue to offend without intervention or rehabilitation. These unknown persons may pose a far greater risk to the public and to children than those offenders who have been caught, punished, and, in many cases, rehabilitated. *

(bolding mine)

Constitutionality or morality aside, the risk of harm that can be done to innocent people, IMO, outweight the questionable benefits of having a list - especially if that list is not kept absolutely up-to-date with verifiable addresses. The stigma attached to sexual predators is massive - I see no justifiable reason to have it ever attached to an innocent person.

11

If I was planning on molesting a child, I think I would look at the registry and move into a neighborhood with a higher percentage of people already “identified”. Seems that with the hysteria that people displayed at the very mention of “child abuse” I’m fairly sure that the identified parties would be receiving all of the police and community attention.

12

this is just wonderful - I’m so happy to read this with folks thinking it through. Yes, my position (aside from constitutionality issues, etc) is that these things don’t work.

and to give additional weight to the stuff already posted - there was a case some years back (even before the registry) locally, where a man had gone to prison and was going to be paroled. A parole agent was going to the house to do a pre realese home check, couldn’t find the address, asked a neighbor, the neighbor figured out that the guy was coming home (it was a rural environment, 99% roughly white, the agent was black, before they’d help him find the place he had to identify himself as a Parole Agent), and the place was burned down w/in a week.

It gives a false sense of security to people that somehow, if they have this list, they’ll be able to better protect their kids. For those people, I ask them, out of each day, tell me how many people you interact with that you know their address? When you’re in your home, how do you know that no one is visiting any of your neighbors? Driving through the neighborhood but not living there?

And as far as knowing that Mr. Smith over there has a record, registries don’t give details (like if Smith was 17 and had a 15 year old girlfriend - specifically in Michigan, the violation will look the same as teh 40 year old w/the 3 year old); plus kids process information differently (IME). You tell a kid ‘don’t go w/that man there, he’s a bad man’ and part of the lesson is “everybody else is ok”.

My preference is to teach the kids certain things that will help improve their safety. reality is that stranger molestation is relatively rare (thankfully) and impossible to predict or protect. Unless you personaly escort your child absolutely everywhere, there will be some moment when they’re alone. It is more frequently the case that the molester has taken time w/your child, is a trusted family member, friend of the family, whatever.

So, warnings about strangers etc. are not the best tool.

IMHO, teaching your child to “never go anywhere w/anyone unless mom knows where you are” is a better way to go. That takes it out of the rhelm of 'don’t go into strangers houses/cars (a garage, a shed, a park, an office, etc. aren’t a house or car), that if ever anyone tells you to keep a secret from mom, tell her, if some one wants to give you presents or take your picture tell her and if anyone touches you anywhere and you feel icky about it, tell her (I’m not a fan of the ‘good touch/bad touch’ speach).