pro-registry forces have a secret weapon

When I first started using the hashtag abolishtheregistry on Twitter, more than one person sent messages telling me to stop doing that. Asking to end the registry altogether would damage the cause, I was told. The incremental approach was the only way to go, they said.

It turns out that the pro-registry forces have a secret weapon and the registry community itself is that secret weapon. 

We know the registry is a brutal attack on the freedom of law-abiding people and yet registry reformers don't ask to abolish the registry. They hope for incremental change. They try to find changes that a legislator might be able to slide unnoticed and unchallenged past his or her colleagues. They wait for the triumph of the ideal lawsuit.

The incremental approach hasn't brought us much in the way of increments that improve the lives of registrants. Legislatures, though, continue their own incremental approach of adding new crimes to the list of registrable offenses. 

The registry has become so punitive that registrants would do just about anything to get off the list. Legislators have a lot of people who come to them with reasons why they don't belong on the registry. 

If we could keep just the dangerous people on the registry, that would be so much better.

True, it would be better...but not for the people left on the registry. For them, nothing has changed except that the registry reformers have now pointed them out as the dangerous ones. It isn't as if an evidence-based risk assessment decides who the dangerous people are; legislators decide that your crime belongs on the list of dangerous or violent offenders. If your crime isn't on the list now, stick around because it could easily be added.

It is worth looking at HR 6691, passed by the House of Representatives, though not by the Senate, in 2018. The bill would reclassify some crimes currently considered non-violent as violent. People who think their crime is obviously non-violent need to consider how easily legislators can move that crime to the "violent" column. See also the California registry changes, below. 

If you are in a state that does rely on risk assessments, how is that working? Are those assessments used to remove people from the registry...or are they used to keep people on the registry?

Secret weapon: Arguing to keep the really dangerous people on the registry is arguing for the registry. 

Look at California, where registry reform has been much ballyhooed. In California, every registrant used to be on the list for life. Now registrants are assigned to tiers...and those tier assignments cannot be understood. There is no way to look at the decision to put people convicted of child pornography crimes on the registry for life--on tier 3 with the "high risk" offenders--without seeing that the decision was completely arbitrary. The winning reform for some came at the expense of other registrants. 

Tier 1 and 2 registrants will need to petition for removal from the registry, so even the "winners" of the California reform may not win in the end. The reformers were able to move California from all-lifetime registration to a tiered system by sacrificing some registrants to tier 3. 

We saw something similar in Florida where criminal justice reformers were able to return the right to vote to 1.4 million people with felony records. How did they pull that off? They allowed people convicted of sex crimes or murder to be excluded.

Secret weapon: Arguing for a tiered registry is arguing for the registry. 

If we could make the registry law-enforcement only, that would mean I could get a job and an apartment more easily.

Yes, that is true but law enforcement would still be at the door of your home for compliance checks and still arrest you for violating laws that apply to no one except registrants. Who else gets arrested for living too near a school? Who else gets arrested for visiting a city park? Or for not notifying the registry office of a new address or a change in vehicle information? Making the registry visible only to law enforcement does nothing to ease the years, decades, or lifetime at risk of arrest faced by registrants, the risk of misunderstanding a law, of not knowing about a city ordinance or a law in another jurisdiction and paying for it with fines or prison time.

Secret weapon: Arguing for a law-enforcement-only registry is arguing for the registry.

One of these days, we will have a lawsuit that will bring the registry crashing down!

Maybe. Legal teams work long and hard to bring lasting change. Attacking the registry with lawsuits has brought some success in eliminating residence restrictions but it hasn't ended the registry anywhere. Not even in states where the registry has been found unconstitutional. Michigan still has a registry. Colorado still has a registry.

Secret weapon: Waiting for the ideal lawsuit to save us is surrendering to the registry.

Demanding to abolish the registry may not work, either!

All too true. We might end up with incremental changes. We would still cherish our hope for a magical lawsuit. The difference is that we would be asking for what is right. We would be asking for change that would improve the life of every registrant. We would make our end goal known. We would put our opponents on notice.

We would stop acting as the secret weapon for our opponents.

Saying it aloud lets others begin to consider the possibility. Saying it aloud makes it worth thinking about. Asking to abolish the registry could begin a conversation about why we have a registry at all.

Martin Luther King did not work toward incremental improvements to life under Jim Crow; he demanded an end to Jim Crow laws. We need to be just as bold and relentless.

The registrant community needs to be seen and heard in larger reform efforts. We must stop talking to each other about how bad the registry is and talk to people outside our little community. We must recognize that the sex offender registry is only one part of a terribly flawed criminal legal system. We are not the only people suffering.

We will not abolish the registry until our fight becomes part of the larger fight for criminal justice reform. To do that, we need to be clear about our goal and clear about why that is our goal.

Abolish the registry because it puts registrant families at risk of harassment and vigilante violence.
Abolish the registry because one punishment for a crime is more than enough.
Abolish the registry because it results in unemployment and homelessness.
Abolish the registry because it doesn't protect the community.
Abolish the registry because it encourages irrational fear.
Abolish the registry because it is an attack on liberty.

Abolish the registry.

If we don't say it, who will?