Sex offender registration

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Sex offender. (Discuss)

This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since May 2006. (help, talk)

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Sex offender registration is a system in place in a number of juridisdictions designed to allow government authorities to keep track of the residence and activities of sex offenders, including those who have completed their criminal sentences. In some jurisdictions (especially in the United States), information in the registry is made available to the general public via a website or other means.

1 History and Analysis
2 Registration and homelessness
3 Civil/Constitutional rights argument
4 References

[edit] History and Analysis

In 1990, Washington in the United States became the first state to require the registration and community notification of the release of sex offenders from incarceration. Later, in 1994, a federal statute called the Jacob Wetterling Act required all states to pass legislation requiring sex offenders to register with state sex offender registries. Then again in 1996, based on a set of New Jersey Laws called "Megan's Laws," the federal government required states to pass legislation mandating public notification of personal information for certain sex offenders. All fifty states have passed laws requiring sex offenders, especially child sex offenders, to register with police authorities. They report where they live when they leave prison or are convicted of a crime. This requirement is often in addition to the offender's legal sentence (punishment) and other restrictions, such as not allowing contact with children and not living within certain distances from schools, parks, stores, and stadiums. In most places sex offenders are subjected to an exit ban meaning they can't travel or leave a certain place at a certain time, most often the offender can't leave his/her hometown without permission from a probation officer. The exact provisions vary with each locality. The purpose of such registration and restrictions are to encourage the protection of children and society by increasing the awareness of the community about the recidivism risk that some offenders may present on release. Policy makers and the public who support this intervention also hope that community awareness will assist in preventing future sex offenses. Child molesters are often thought to be highly susceptible for recidivism, although broad recidivism rates for sex offenders are lower than most other types of crimes.^{[citation needed]} In some localities, the lists of sex offenders are made available to the public: for example, through the internet. However, in other localities, the lists are not available to the general public but are known to the police. In the United States offenders are often classified in three categories, Level I offenders which are at low risk to reoffend. Level II offenders which are at moderate risk to reoffend, and Level III offenders which are at high risk to reoffend. Information is usually accessible related to that risk (more information for more risky offenders). There are penalties for failure to register as required.

Although female sex offenders are often sensationalised in news media, the vast majority of sex offenders registered are male. The vast majority of offenders also victimize individuals who are known, related or intimate to the victim -- contrary to media depictions of stranger assaults or child molesters who kidnap children unknown to them.

While sex offender registries are designed to protect and alert the public about the dangers of sex offenders, in at least one instance two convicted sex offenders were murdered after their information was made available over the internet.^[1]

Recently, (November 3rd, 2006) the state of California has put out a piece of legislation which would enforce "lifetime monitoring of convicted sexual predators and the creation of predator free zones". This legislation will be voted on in the upcoming national elections.

Dr. Henry Rogan of the University of Santa Barabara has this to say about convicted sex offenders: "[The ‘predator-free’ zone] doesn’t solve anything." He remarked in a recent interview, “It’s just punishment. Sex offenders don’t pick up people they don’t know—that’s what kidnappers are for.”

[edit] Registration and homelessness

Persons who are registered in offender databases are usually required to notify the government when they move their residence. This notification requirement is problematic in cases where the registered offender is homeless. The state of Washington is among those that have special provisions in their registration code covering homeless offenders, but this forethought has not been shown by all states in the United States. A November 2006 Maryland Court of Appeals ruling exempts homeless persons from that state's registration requirements, which has prompted a drive to compose new laws covering this contingency.^[2]

[edit] Civil/Constitutional rights argument

Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable.
Please check for any inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.

This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article.
Please improve it or discuss changes on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.

The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

It is sometimes argued that posting a person's crimes for all the public to see is a violation of one's Constitutional or civil right to privacy and confidentiality. Someday, the requirement to register as a sex offender may reach the Supreme Court, and that law could be overturned. This can be compared to the proposition to publicize information or a list on people who are infected with AIDS, since this is also rooted in the interest of protecting public safety, yet clashes with individual rights. Because the topic of sex offender registration is emotionally charged, it is often difficult to get any meaningful changes or redress of sex offender issues before the legislatures and courts. Poltics and fear-mongering play heavily into the sex offender argument and the result is bad laws being passed though the intentions were noble. Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted or abused by a family member, rather than a total stranger. Although sex offender registration laws were passed amidst the mass hysteria of a few sensational crimes and was furthered by outright lies and fallicies foisted by members of Congress to dupe the common citizenry, there is absolutely no evidence or single case where a credible molestation attempt has been prevented by the public having knowledge of a sexual offenders identity or whereabouts. In fact, law enforcement's unwarranted focus on area sexual offenders may have jeopardized the lives of victims who would have otherwise been found were it not for the wasted effort of interviewing local sex offenders for no real reason of suspicion other than the fact they were a registered sex offender. A particularly dangerous trend has been the effort of a few States to pass legislation that mandates the death penalty for certain child sexual offenses. This law may proove to be the ultimate form of political child abuse, where legislators in an effort to be tough on sex offenders have greatly diminished the moral worth of sexual abuse victims' lives in the eyes of a would-be child molester. By mandating the death penalty for certain cases of sexual abuse, there will be no difference between the act and execution, thus for the criminal, killing the victim, often times the only witness to the attack, leaves no witness, and killing the victim makes it no more or less a crime in the courtroom.

The subject of registered sex offenders' banishment from living in certain areas, and being excluded from living in entire towns or communities, can also be interpreted as an affront to equal opportunity for housing. The many restrictions on sex offenders in many places that require police approval for movement between towns, cities, or states, can be interpreted as an attack upon the natural right of freedom of movement and freedom to leave one's country, and parallels in some ways house arrest.