beware reformers who want to keep the registry

Florida Action Committee recently published an execrable piece on its website. The writers, identified as members of FAC, titled their piece "Both Sides Now," though they present only one side. 

The two writers say they have found "several possible points of agreement with those who advocate for a [sex offense] registry." They make the weakest case possible against a registry by pointing out that most registrants do not repeat their offenses. From there, they launch a full-throated argument in favor a registry. So much for "both sides."

They say that "children need to be protected," that "there must be laws against the sexual abuse of children," that "society must end its exploitation of children..." Anodyne statements that do nothing to mitigate their intent to keep someone else--and someone else's family--on the registry. 

"We need to particularly protect [children] from violent offenders and repeat offenders."
This implies that repeat and violent offenders need to stay on the registry. We don't define violence; Legislators do. The same legislative bodies that have defined terms so that over a million people belong on the registry today will decide who belongs there in the future. 

"If we return to the registry as it was first conceived—a private registry used only by law enforcement  to track the most dangerous offenders—the likely harm to registrants and their families would be minimized." 
What would prevent this imaginary returned-to-virginity registry from morphing once again into what we have today? Absolutely nothing. The virginal registry these writers yearn for would still put registrants at risk for arrest for crimes that aren't crimes for anyone other than registrants, and all while providing no improvement of the public safety.

"We affirm that leaders should try to be concerned about all children, including the children of people on the registry." 
Rich irony, coming from writers who argue for the existence of the registry.

"We affirm the typical person on the registry."
Again, sorting out Us from Them! Who will sort the typical from the atypical? The violent from the non-violent? No matter who sorts, they will be deciding that some families deserve whatever difficulty and torment the registry brings them. 

We must resist the temptation to make laws on the basis of rare but extreme cases. 
The whole article is built on the basis of those extreme cases. The writers try to suck up to their dreamboat--the current registry regime--by reminding the dreamboat that there are worse people out there. 

Make no mistake: the two writers are arguing to keep the registry in place. They are perfectly willing to have you on the registry as long as the people they approve of are not listed, and even though they would leave the registry in the hands of the entities that keep making registry laws harsher.

Abolish the registry, not because people convicted of sex offenses are special, but because registries violate the human right to be left alone by the state, no matter which crime--DUI, arson, sex offense, gun crime--requires them to register.

The registry is not a problem because it lists the wrong people; the registry causes problems because it lists people.

Israel: no more name-changing; public shaming remains

News about irrational laws in Israel, via Haaretz:

The Knesset on Monday passed into law a bill that prohibits people convicted of sex crimes from changing their name. 

“The law came about as a response to complaints by women who were shocked to learn they had been in a relationship with convicted sex offenders in the past,” said Meretz MK Michal Rozin, who drafted the law. 

Seems to me that if those women had discovered that their partners were committing new sex crimes, Haaretz would have mentioned it, if not put it in the headline. Dozens of women shocked to learn their romantic partners have been molesting preschoolers! No reporter would fail to mention that. No publisher would have missed the chance to use that salacious headline.

“This had been hidden from them since the men had changed their names. We’re now letting the public and the victims protect themselves from people convicted of sex crimes.” 

Protect themselves from what? From being exposed as enjoying the company of a man who has changed his ways?

It would be much more useful to talk about how to prevent sexual abuse instead of ginning up fear of those who no longer commit sex crimes.

In explanatory notes to the law it says that every citizen is allowed to change his or her name or surname, but that convicted sex offenders could abuse this right in order to continue endangering the public under another name. The notes go on to say there is no dispute that a convict can open a new page in life, but that limits need to be in place. 

It is possible a name change could aid someone in criminal endeavors. Is that what has happened in Israel? Almost certainly not.

Habayit Hayehudi MK Moti Yogev, who helped draft the law, noted, “Coming right after 1,000 criminals, including sex offenders, were released from prison (due to overcrowding), this law is even more important. Systems don’t always work".  

Systems don't always work, true, and yet legislators cling desperately to one system that has been shown again and again to be an inarguable failure: sex offender registries.

After releasing 1,000 people from overcrowded prisons, legislators--again!--find that a new registry law makes them look tough on crime.

sheriff's deputies and their sex crimes

It cannot be a surprise that law enforcement officers sometimes break the law but some stories still raise our eyebrows. The Omaha World-Herald reports, in a subscriber-only story:

A federal judge has refused to dismiss a young woman’s lawsuit against Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning and his office over a 2013 assault in which an on-duty deputy made her perform a sex act on him at Zorinsky Lake.

In doing so, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon cited 15 sexual misconduct cases involving deputies or Sheriff’s Office employees from 1998 on. Unlike former Deputy Cory Cooper’s 2013 crime against the young woman, none were prosecuted, and several did not seem to rise to the level of a crime. 

Of fifteen, only one case was prosecuted--the 2013 assault at Zorinsky Lake.

However, Bataillon ruled that the woman has the right, at this point, to have jurors decide whether the incidents indicate that Dunning was indifferent to sexual misconduct in his office — and whether such indifference and little training led to a culture where Cooper feared no consequence for boorish behavior. 

Boorish behavior? This deputy is accused of sexual assault, not boorish behavior.

He is accused of forcing a young woman to perform oral sex on him in return for letting her boyfriend go free and it seems he feared no consequences for that sexual assault.

“The court finds that the 15 instances of sexual misconduct at the (Sheriff’s Office) create genuine issues of material fact concerning the municipality’s ... failure to train or supervise its employees on sexual misconduct,” Bataillon wrote. “The DCSO was on notice of these sexual misconduct incidents through the office’s complaint and investigation process. Yet, similar sexual misconduct incidents continued to recur over a nearly twenty-year period. 

“The court agrees with the plaintiff that there is sufficient evidence as a matter of law that would enable a jury to find deliberate indifference on the part of Sheriff Dunning.”

In an interview late this month, Dunning denied being callous toward the misconduct, saying that suspensions or terminations followed any case that could be corroborated. 

Suspensions or terminations but only one prosecution. The article does not include details of any suspensions and terminations.

He also noted that none of those prior cases involved Cooper. And he said he had no warning signs that Cooper — a former military member — would act out.  

“Cooper did what he did because he’s a sex offender and a criminal,” Dunning said.

Because he's a sex offender and a criminal or because the sheriff's office doesn't pay much attention to deputies who use their authority to commit sex crimes?

“Before we hired him, he had a psychological screen. He was polygraphed. As far as we could tell, he was going to be a sterling employee.” 

C'mon, Dunning. We all know that polygraphs are junk science, akin to phrenology. You know it, too. You made a bad hire...or you failed to train your deputies on how not to commit sex offenses, how to keep one's hands to oneself and how to keep one's pants zipped, the way the most people manage to do without special training.

Dunning's deputies need training on how not to abuse one's authority.

Cooper was convicted of misdemeanor assault in a plea deal and served six months in jail. Prosecutors reduced the charges from first-degree sexual assault after consulting with the woman, who wasn’t eager to relive the ordeal at trial. 

Under the plea bargain, Cooper did not have to register as a sex offender and is not a convicted felon.

That's a heck of a plea bargain. Crazy that a law enforcement officer was able to get such a good deal, isn't it?

While it is infuriating to read a story that sounds as if a deputy was able to avoid being listed on the sex offender registry because he is a law enforcement officer, there is a piece of the story that deserves even more attention.

Sheriff Dunning's office administers the sex offender registry for Douglas County. 

This is the office where people listed on the registry report two or four times each year, to report an address change, to report that they have a new vehicle, to be photographed when they have grown a beard or shaved one off, to notify the sheriff that they are leaving town for more than three business days.

They report to deputies who are not held accountable for their own sex offenses.

This is the office where people who have lived law-abiding lives for years have to report that they have nothing to report. If they do not report that they have nothing to report, they will be charged with a felony.

If they fail to report again, even after more law-abiding years, they can be charged with a more serious felony.

Sheriff's deputies, on the other hand, can seemingly commit more than one sex crime and not be prosecuted at all.

A sidebar story in the Omaha World Herald details each of the fifteen cases in which a deputy or staff member was accused of sex offenses. More than one deputy was accused more than once. An example:

2002: A deputy repeatedly licked his juvenile's stepdaughter's nipple while horse playing. He also admitted to getting in the shower with her while she was naked.  

2002: Same deputy (as the previous 2002 case) took a juvenile detainee to his apartment, repeatedly told her how pretty she was and touched her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. He threatened to shoot her if she told anyone. (Dunning said he did not recall that a threat was made.)

Another:

2011: Someone complained about a Douglas County sheriff's lieutenant's romantic relationships, including texting pictures of his genitals to women and sending sexually explicit emails to women. He also was accused of having sex at the office and abusing his work hours to conduct personal business.

The registry protects no one and it certainly protects no one from law enforcement officers who have little worry about being prosecuted for a sex offense.


Update: This is a link to an AP article derived from the OW-H story. No paywall, no subscription required.

what happens when a state loses track of registrants?

Missouri has lost track of 1,259 people listed on its sex offender registry. Poor Missouri. 

Nicole Galloway, state Auditor discovered the problem. 

Galloway said the findings are “disturbing and alarming.” 

Well, I'd say so! Think of all the additional sex crimes that must be happening in Missouri.

“As it stands the sex offender registry really provides a false sense of security,” Galloway said at a news conference in St. Louis. 

Definitely a false sense of security. Who can depend on a list that isn't even accurate?

Galloway said the audit did not compare compliance rates in Missouri with other states, nor did it examine if non-compliant sex offenders committed additional crimes. [My emphasis.]

Hold on, here. They didn't check to see if the missing registrants were committing crimes? If they are worried about public safety, that would have been the first question to answer.

It is almost as if the purpose of the registry has nothing to do with keeping people safe from sex crimes.

Galloway said almost 800 of the missing people are registered under Tier III, the most dangerous category.

Tiers are determined by the crime for which someone was convicted, an automatic "you committed this crime so you belong on this tier." Individual risk assessments are not part of the process at all.

Over time, there is no way for a registrant to show that they pose less risk now that they are employed or now that they have completed therapy or now that they are older or now that they have been law-abiding citizens for decades--none of the factors that can help determine risk are considered. Not when someone is initially placed on the registry and not years later.

Missouri is not the only state losing track of registrants. Wisconsin lost 2,735; Massachusetts lost about 1800.

South Dakota has a list that is almost completely accurate because they lost only 45. You might expect happy news articles about sex offenses being a thing of the past in South Dakota because they know where 98.8 of their registrants are but no, sex offenses still happen there.

Sex offenses still happen, no matter if the people on the registry are compliant or not--and 95% of them are committed by someone not on the registry.

...Galloway said law enforcement officials often cite a lack of resources. She acknowledged that understaffed police agencies face an uphill battle in maintaining the registry.

Taxpayers ought to consider if it is worth throwing more money at sex offender registries that have no effect on the incidence of  sex offenses. Surely there are better ways to spend tax dollars.

“But this is critically important,” [Galloway] said.

Is it, Ms. Galloway? Show me. 

dangers of easy community notifications

Computer technology has improved much of our lives. Who wants to return to days of encyclopedias and the library card catalog? As much as we appreciate the easy access to a wealth of information, let's not lose track of the dangers of easy access to data.

Offender Watch is a company that provides a service for law enforcement agencies, contracting with governments to manage sex offender registries. Seventeen states use the Offender Watch network.

Every sheriff's office and registering police department, as well as state corrections and public safety officials, will use the technology to share records on sex offenders and communicate with agencies in Maryland and other states. 

"We transfer those records across the network so that all the information collected on that person in Baltimore, Maryland is now transferred to Prince George's County when he moves," OffenderWatch President Mike Cormaci told Stacy Lyn.

Without Offender Watch, maybe the data transfer is manual. Perhaps the new state enters all information from scratch and the originating state deletes the data when they get around to it. To be honest, I am not certain how all of that happens.

What I do know is that when something becomes easy, it is easy to treat the data carelessly.

"My agency saw the need very early to adopt a program that not only allowed our Sex Offender Registry Unit to communicate with our neighboring counties and police departments, but also can communicate in real time with agencies outside of Maryland when potentially dangerous offenders moved into Wicomico County," Lewis said in a statement. "My citizens deserve the most accurate and timely notifications to protect their families." 

But do citizens deserve to spend money on accurate and timely notifications that do not protect their families?

Because over 95% of people on the registry do not commit another sex offense, it is clear that most new offenses are committed by those not on the registry. Lists of people convicted of specific crimes protect no one.

Offender Watch either knows that and chooses to make money by generating fear or they don't know that and should not be in this line of business.

Agencies can share as much or as little information about offenders as they like, so proprietary investigative notes can be kept close to the vest, Cormaci said.

When it is easy to share data across jurisdictions, it is more likely that the data will be shared.

One purpose of their program is to let citizens know with alerts and updates when an offender registers or moves within a specified radius of their address, be it the citizen's home, school, work or anywhere else they or their children spend time.

Not all states require community notification, the practice of sending notices to anyone who lives within a certain distance of a registrant new to the neighborhood.

When it is easy to send out notifications, it is more likely that legislators will think notifications are needed. Companies like Offender Watch benefit from a change that would require those notifications and may actually lobby for that change.

Watch your state legislature so that you can be ready to testify against the need for notifications. 

Iowa legislator wants to move the goal posts

Iowa state representative Dean Fisher wants to solve an imaginary problem.

Tier IV Sex Offender Registry – House File 163. This is a bill that I introduced during the 2017 session which I am continuing to work on. This bill addresses the problem of sex offenders that “time out” of the registry after a set number of years (usually 10 years) and then move to a new area of the state or move into Iowa from another state.

Is it a problem when someone successfully serves the sentence handed down by the court? Is it a problem when legislated timelines run out with no further sex offenses?

If a sex offender has timed out, law enforcement has no way of knowing this person is in their community.

What does law enforcement need to know about any law-abiding person?

This bill establishes a new requirement for any person that has ever had to register as a sex offender in Iowa or any other jurisdiction to register with the county sheriff when they move into or around the state. This classification of sex offenders would not be required to re-register quarterly or annually like other classes of sex offenders. [My emphasis.]

New requirement! The bill makes no provision for educating people of the new requirement when their previously-mandated registry time expires. How would a new resident of the state know about the requirement that he or she must register again, after celebrating the end of previous registry time, perhaps years ago?

Laws like this set up citizens for failure.

This bill is nothing more than an attempt to punish those on the registry for ten more years.

Previous Iowa Supreme Court cases (such as Iowa vs. Pickens, 1997) have determined that such registry requirements are constitutional because they do not constitute ex post facto punishment, they are merely regulation. This requirement will give law enforcement greater insight into who is living in our communities. This bill passed subcommittee on Thursday of this week and now goes to the full committee.

As anyone listed on the registry can attest, legislators like Fisher can pretend the registry is not punishment only because they are not listed there.

Fisher has no evidence showing that people on the registry need to be watched by law enforcement. The number of cases where law enforcement used the registry to solve a sex crime must be exceedingly small because the vast majority of sex offenses are committed by first-time offenders.

Fisher especially has no evidence that the registry would help law enforcement after a registrant has completed 10, 15, or 25 years on the registry. Study after study show that criminals in general age out of crime and more studies show that those convicted of sex offenses are unlikely to reoffend at any stage after conviction.

Fisher's bill piles additional requirements on the registrants who are most unlikely to commit further crimes.

State representative Fisher is not alone in this. HF 163 passed out of subcommittee, which means other state reps voted to do that.

The people that Fisher and his colleagues would punish further with no reason, those people are tax-paying citizens of Iowa. Fisher and his colleagues are doing this to their friends and neighbors, their fellow Iowans. Instead of protecting their constituents, instead of encouraging those who left criminal activities behind, they are making life more difficult for those families.

These are not legislators to trust or to vote for. These are legislators who need to be defeated at the earliest opportunity.

Raptor Systems boasts about protecting students from school visitors

Ah. Another school district wasting money to protect students from people on the sex offender registry.

When a visitor tries to gain access to a school, they are now prompted to utilize the computer check-in system, which requires you to scan your photo ID. Within seconds, that scan searches sex offender databases to ensure the person isn’t on there. 

“This system allows us to have those identities identified and therefore we know when those people are on our campuses,” said Jeff Hudson, Pitt County School’s security specialist.

These people. 

How many school employees have committed sex offenses against students? These people might come from within the school.

How many people on the registry have committed sex crimes against students while visiting the school? If it has happened, let's stack up those few stories against the multitude of stories about school staff members who offend against students.

Stopping registrants at the school door protects no one. What it does do is humiliate parents and students, and for no reason.

As I wrote in an October 2015 post:

What does the hysteria about registered sex offenders teach children?  

It teaches children that people on a list are the ones to fear. When over ninety percent of sex offense arrests are of people not on the list, we are directing children to be wary of the wrong people. 

It teaches children that they are wrong to love and admire a grandparent who has come through a difficult time and has lived a law-abiding life since. 

It teaches the community that it is acceptable to single out and embarrass children who love sex offenders. 

Raptor stopped a man from having lunch with his grandson and the principal crows about the great success, without a single thought about the effect on the grandson. 

Not a single thought that the boy might be hurt or confused by this turn of events. Not a single thought that exposing the grandfather as a registered sex offender may also expose the child to details of a crime he is too young to understand. 

Instead of encouraging pointless hysteria, we ought to be upset about school boards deciding to throw away taxpayer funds on wrongheaded nonsense. 

We ought to be upset about thoughtless principals who think it is acceptable to treat the children and grandchildren of registered citizens as if they do not matter.

Raptor Systems claims 18,000 campuses use its services. It boasts that it has screened 11.4 million visitors, had 41,754 alerts, and protected 57 million children.

How much money has Raptor pulled in from this game?

When Raptor can predict which school employee will be the next addition to the sex offender registry, they might be worth a look.

neighborly behavior, NextDoor

NextDoor, a private social network for neighborhoods, is a popular means of letting neighbors know if you have a washer and dryer to sell or if you want to buy a camper. NextDoor lets people ask for plumber recommendations and post information about crime in the area.

A handy app for the neighborly...unless your address is on the sex offender registry.

No one who lives at a registered address is allowed to join NextDoor. Not the registrant, not the spouse. No one at that address.

The NextDoor member agreement says,

Nextdoor is the private social network for neighborhoods; we hope that neighbors everywhere will use the Nextdoor platform to build stronger and safer neighborhoods around the world....

Stronger, safer neighborhoods are especially important to those whose address is on the registry. After all, registrants and their families are the ones at risk for vandalism (1, 2, 3) attacks (1, 2), and even murder (1, 2, 3).

Convicted sex offenders, including registered sex offenders, and their households are not eligible for Nextdoor accounts; and we may also deny other account registrations we think would harm a Nextdoor neighborhood. [My emphasis.]

Others that would harm a neighborhood? As if the mere presence of people on the registry harm the neighborhood! Law abiding citizens do not harm the neighborhood.

 At Nextdoor, we believe that neighborly behavior is the foundation of healthy communities.

Neighborly behavior would mean recognizing the danger the registry presents to those whose address is on the registry and protecting the neighborhood from vandalism, from physical attacks, and from murder. 

The registry protects no one and it puts registrants and their families at risk. It is hypcritical--and downright unneighborly--for NextDoor to pretend that it is building healthy communities while setting the example of shunning some people in the neighborhood.

It isn't difficult to find the studies that show how little danger registrants pose. Almost as easy as finding names on the registry.

It also is not difficult to understand how wrong it is to exclude neighbors from your efforts to build stronger and safer neighborhoods, how cruel it is to label a home in a way that encourages neighbors to avoid the family in that home.

While NextDoor worries about people who live at a registered address, the next arrest in the community for a sex offense will most likely be of someone not on the registry.

how to make the registry more meaningful

Vincent Carroll argues in The Denver Post that Colorado ought to make its sex offender registry more meaningful to the public by assessing actual risk and removing some names. 

Assessing actual risk and removing some names would be steps in the right direction, of course. So would removing names of juveniles. So would removing all who have been crime-free for 20 years or those who are elderly. So would... oh, let's listen to Carroll:

These thoughts arise because of an ongoing court case that is under appeal by the state. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch ruled in August that Colorado’s sex-offender registry violated the due-process rights of three plaintiffs and amounted to punishment after completion of a sentence. Matsch didn’t actually strike down the law, but he clearly sees it as affront to justice. 

Prosecutors naturally disagree. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann, for example, told me she considers the registry an important law enforcement tool, reassuring victims who wish to keep tabs on their assailant once he is free. Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman meanwhile has cited “several legal errors which we will now address on appeal.” 

But even if Matsch’s ruling is overturned, his critique should be taken seriously. The law corrals too many people onto the registry, particularly those whose offenses occurred when they were juveniles, and often keeps them on longer than necessary while failing to provide the public with any way to determine actual risk. 

And as Matsch emphasized, the real-world consequences of being on the registry reduce someone’s chances of successful reintegration into society. 

This is a beginner's explanation of why the registry needs to change but he misses opportunities to examine the registry more closely.

When he says that the Denver District Attorney considers the registry an important law enforcement tool, reassuring victims who wish to keep tabs on their assailant once he is free, he doesn't question that statement although there are many interesting questions to ask.

Does the registry aid law enforcement? How many times has the registry been key to solving a sex crime? As far as I know, never.

When people have served the sentences handed down by the courts, it it right to further restrict their ability to rejoin society in order to reassure victims? What good is it to sacrifice people to the registry for mere reassurance when it offers no protection and study after study shows that those on the registry pose little threat to anyone?

Carroll says,

And as Matsch emphasized, the real-world consequences of being on the registry reduce someone’s chances of successful reintegration into society. That’s a worthwhile tradeoff for those who pose a genuine threat, but it’s punitive and counterproductive for the rest.

Again he says it and--again--without thinking:

If being on the registry makes rehabilitation more difficult — and it does — then it ought to be reserved for those most likely to re-offend.

Why is it a worthwhile tradeoff to make rehabilitation more difficult for someone deemed more likely to reoffend? Are not those the ones Colorado ought to be working most diligently to rehabilitate? Instead, Carroll promotes the idea of identifying someone as dangerous, and then making it hard for that person--especially that dangerous person--to reintegrate into society.

Carroll seems to believe that risk assessment tools can correctly predict which registrant will commit new sex offenses. Can they? No, they cannot, so why the push to trust risk assessment tools?

Back to Carroll:

The committee recommended a number of sensible reforms for juveniles, including expanding the list of crimes for which a judge could waive registration. 

But lawmakers shouldn’t stop there. They should mandate risk-based assessments, perhaps by the Sex Offender Management Board, to establish duration of time on the registry. They should narrow the scope of lifetime registration and provide for additional judicial discretion. And getting off the registry after 20 years with a clean record shouldn’t be the ordeal it is today.

Has he not been paying attention? The Colorado Sex Offender Management Board included a member who owned a polygraph firm, a member whose company benefited from all of his recommendations for polygraph exams. The other board members were aware of the conflict of interest, and yet Carroll still wants the SOMB to be responsible for risk assessments.

Carroll presents suggestions that would surely remove people from the registry and that is fine. However, he cannot be considered a serious thinker about the registry if he refuses to see that the registry is wrong for all sex offenders, not just the easy cases.

The registry is not about safety and it never has been. It makes no one safer because the next sex offense is almost certainly going to be committed by someone not on the registry.

Abolishing the registry makes it easier for all registrants to find jobs and housing, two elements necessary for a successful reintegration into society but Carroll makes it clear that he is not looking for successful reintegration for the registrants he thinks are dangerous.

Take down the registry entirely. Stop pretending it has anything to do with safety.

advice about how a church should treat registered citizens

This piece is from 2014 but still worth reading and thinking about whether you want to belong to a church like the one Boz Tchividjian wants you to have. He tells the story about a church who hired a senior pastor knowing the man's status as a registered sex offender, and the pastor's eventual arrest for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy. He says, "This church just doesn't get it."

He gives us four pieces of advice.

1. “The allegations were false”: At the time he was hired, the pastor informed the church of his past conviction and claimed the allegations were false. Despite the fact that a court of law found sufficient evidence to convict this man of a sexual offense against a child, the church preferred to believe his words. I have seldom encountered child sexual abusers who did not claim that the allegations made against them were false. I even prosecuted cases where the defendant gave a full confession to law enforcement as he maintained his innocence to friends and family.

It is true that some people lie about their charges. This is true of drug offenders, wire fraud offenders, bank robbers, murderers as well as sex offenders. It can be true of people who are deeply ashamed of what they did, as well.

It is also true that innocent people sometimes give full confessions and true that some innocent people have been convicted in a court of law. A court of law is not a holy temple to infallibility so reminding us that someone was convicted there carries less moral heft than it ought.

It is worth noting that Boz Tchividjian is a former child abuse chief prosecutor, someone who certainly understands how easy it is to convict someone--anyone--charged with a sex offense. Since the majority of defendants accept a plea agreement instead of going to trial, a former prosecutor certainly knows that there is no need even to prove a case in order to convict.

He offers suggestions for ferreting out the truth about the offense:

• Review the court file....

• Speak with the investigator....

• Meet with the probation officer....

Does he offer the same advice for people who encounter other former criminals?

2. “Everybody has a past”: All too often scripture is distorted in order to justify the blind embracing of those who have sexually victimized children. Though the interim pastor proudly states, “We are firm believers in the Bible”, he provides no scriptural basis for his “belief” that past offenses of a sex offender should be forgotten.... 

Don’t be fooled, offenders love a distorted theology that gives them immediate access to the little ones in the church. Whether or not the offender is a “changed” person before God, he/she is the same person who was convicted of sexually abusing a child. That is a past that should never be forgotten by those around him.

All too often churches embrace sex offenders? This will be news to registrants who have a difficult time getting comfortable in churches that will not let them use the restroom.

Tchividjian refuses to believe that someone who is changed before God will improve his behavior to match his changed beliefs. This is interesting because for a guy who quotes the Bible frequently, Tchividjian doesn't seem to believe that Jesus--who set what is generally acknowledged to be a fine example of behavior--wants us to spend time with the scorned.

3. “Don’t judge the worshippers”: In one of the few public statements made about the pastor’s arrest, the interim pastor stated that he hopes people don’t “judge” the worshippers. A church hires a known sex offender who then sexually abuses a child in the church, and its primary concern is the reputation of the church? Perhaps its primary concern should how best to serve a 14-year-old boy who trusted his pastor and was repeatedly violated. Perhaps its primary concern should be cooperating with the police to identify other children who may also have been victimized by this offender. Perhaps its primary concern should be ways the church could serve other abuse survivors in their congregation who are likely being re-traumatized by this scandal. Perhaps its primary concern should be for the church to publically acknowledge that it was complicit in the abuse of this child due to its inexcusable decision to hire a known convicted sex offender. Perhaps its primary concern should be to reach out to experts for help in becoming educated on this issue so that this horror is never repeated. There is no lack of primary concerns for this church – its reputation certainly isn’t one of them. This church doesn’t get it.

At first, I thought the writer was on to something good here, but he never quite gets around to talking about how to create an environment where proper boundaries are encouraged. Instead, he is all about action after the abuse has happened. Laying blame is a popular pasttime, and easier than figuring out how to prevent sexual abuse.

I do agree with him that the church reputation should not be a primary concern...unless the church thinks there is value in a reputation as a church that practices what it preaches about redemption.

4. “We did no wrong”: Tragically, instead of acknowledging the grievous consequence of hiring a convicted sex offender, this church has spent the last week defending and excusing its inexcusable actions. All too often, I encounter church leaders whose immediate response to disclosures of abuse within the church is to be defensive instead of wanting to learn where they (or the church) may have failed and what can be learned.

Some day, Tchividjian's church will be rocked with a sex abuse scandal caused by someone other than a registered sex offender and he will be baffled as to how that could have happened in a church that doesn't hire sex offenders--a church that keeps a watchful eye on registrants who attend services.

Let's look at the people he seems to trust: prosecutors, investigators, parole and probation officers--people not on the registry.

Where does he think sex offenders come from? They come from people not on the registry.

Tchividjian misses the irony when he says,

It is time that more faith communities recognize the dark reality that there are predators in our midst and become more vigilant in making sure that they are never in positions to access and hurt little ones.

The dark reality is that there are predators in our midst and they almost certainly are not listed on the registry. Another dark reality is that not all sex offenses are against children. While he worries about protecting little ones (I'd like to know if a 14-year-old likes being described as a "little one") from predators, he pays no attention to sexual assaults on adults.

The registry has provided a focus for fools who refuse to recognize facts. That is all the reason we need to abolish the registry.

Tchividjian doesn't get it.

scared and in danger of bad legislation

A state representative in Missouri wants a new law, one that will bar registered sex offenders from zoos and museums.

Registered sex offenders would be prohibited from being within 500 feet of any museum, zoo or “other location with the primary purpose of entertaining or educating children” younger than 18 years of age under legislation introduced by [state representative] Swan. 

The Cape Girardeau Republican’s bill would expand restrictions in existing state law that bars any convicted sex offender from entering or being within 500 feet of any public park that has playground equipment or a swimming pool, or within 1,000 feet of a school or child-care facility. 

Violators could face prison sentences.

Note that the prison sentence could be imposed on people who did nothing wrong except to be present in an area restricted by arbitrary laws, laws devoid of evidence that they make any one safer.

Swan said she also wants to bar sex offenders from hanging out near children’s sections of public libraries and children’s play areas in shopping malls.

What prompted this hysteria?

...a “known, registered sexual offender came to the Discovery Playhouse unattended. Museum employees called the Cape Girardeau Police Department as the offender “roamed the facility,” [Isaac Venable, president of the museum’s board of directors] wrote.

Roamed the facility.

But police could not remove the person because “children’s museums are not protected” under state law, Venable said. 

“We felt confused and vulnerable,” he wrote. 

Oh, that poor, poor man. Imagine his confusion and vulnerability at the grocery store, a place that welcomes everyone.

“The safety of children visiting our facility is our greatest priority. A child can’t learn and explore the exhibits we provide if they are scared and/or in danger,” Venable said in backing the legislation.

Scared and in danger.

This man leads a museum meant to educate children and he has no idea what children can do when they are scared and/or in real danger. In some areas of the world, communities fight to keep schools open in the midst of war. In those areas, the education of their children is their greatest priority, not their safety.

This man seems to think much less of Missouri children and their abilities to deal with fear.

What fear is he talking about, though? The fear he himself generates by not knowing facts about the sex offender registry. That fear.

The registrant roaming the museum did nothing frightening. There are no reports of frightened children, only the report from a man frightened by his own ignorance.

assessment of danger may depend on level of outrage

Researchers looked at this fact...

In the United States today, leaving children unsupervised is grounds for moral outrage and can lead to criminal charges.

...and decided to learn why people blame parents for putting their children in danger even when the risk of danger is objectively very low.

Why are people outraged when they see--or read about--a parent who leaves a child unattended even when the child is in no danger?

The odds that a child will be abducted by a stranger — one of the fears that motivates constant supervision — are tiny in comparison with the odds that a child will be injured in a car accident. Yet parents aren't under investigation for choosing to drive their kids to school. 

So here's another possibility. It's not that risks to children have increased, provoking an increase in moral outrage when children are left unattended. Instead, it could be that moral attitudes toward parenting have changed, such that leaving children unsupervised is now judged morally wrong. And because it's judged morally wrong, people overestimate the risk. 

This may seem to get things the wrong way around, but it's supported by new research available Monday in the open access journal Collabra. In a series of clever experiments, authors Ashley Thomas, Kyle Stanford and Barbara Sarnecka find evidence that shifting people's moral attitudes toward a parent influences the perceived risk to that parent's unattended child.

In essence, the more immoral people think the parent was in leaving the child alone, the greater the perception of risk for the child.

...would you feel differently about this risk if the circumstances were otherwise the same, but the parents had left the child unattended by accident, or to go to work? In other words, would decreasing the moral outrage one feels toward the parents decrease the perception of risk to the child? 

To get at this question experimentally, Thomas and her collaborators created a series of vignettes in which a parent left a child unattended for some period of time, and participants indicated the risk of harm to the child during that period. For example, in one vignette, a 10-month-old was left alone for 15 minutes, asleep in the car in a cool, underground parking garage. In another vignette, an 8-year-old was left for an hour at a Starbucks, one block away from her parent's location 

To experimentally manipulate participants' moral attitude toward the parent, the experimenters varied the reason the child was left unattended across a set of six experiments with over 1,300 online participants. In some cases, the child was left alone unintentionally (for example, in one case, a mother is hit by a car and knocked unconscious after buckling her child into her car seat, thereby leaving the child unattended in the car seat). In other cases, the child was left unattended so the parent could go to work, do some volunteering, relax or meet a lover. 

Not surprisingly, the parent's reason for leaving a child unattended affected participants' judgments of whether the parent had done something immoral: Ratings were over 3 on a 10-point scale even when the child was left unattended unintentionally, but they skyrocketed to nearly 8 when the parent left to meet a lover. [My emphasis.]

If people let their moral disapproval raise perceived risk beyond the actual risk--the child could be kidnapped!, even when kidnappings-by-stranger are exceptionally rare--imagine how unrealistic their risk assessments of sex offenders must be.

By far, registered citizens are non-violent offenders and--again--by far, will not commit another sex offense. Yet, a list of those offenders is maintained at great expense and communities are warned about sex offenders among them as if their presence puts everyone at risk of sexual assault.

The very existence of the registry encourages outrage toward all who are listed there.

The danger is very low and yet the moral disapproval of registrants leads people to exaggerate the danger. No matter the variation in crimes and levels of seriousness, all sex offenders are seen as dangerous.

Outrageously dangerous.

The registry has increased the opportunity to be outraged about sex offenders as the number of registrable offenses has grown. In some states, labeling public urination as a sex offense has taken what used to be risible and turned it into something deserving of public shame. Instead of telling funny stories (or singing a song!) about a young man streaking across a football field, a young man committed suicide because he faced a life of public shaming on the registry after his arrest for streaking.

Think of that. We are seeing moral outrage aimed at people who committed "crimes" that used to be hijinks. Those hijinks landed them on a list--a list that is used to gin up outrage. Labeling someone as a sex offender opens them up to out-sized moral outrage by people who see only the label.

The moral outrage is greater than some of the crimes deserve and the perception of danger grows right along with the outrage.

Just as moral outrage towards parents has increased, so has the moral outrage toward sex offenders. Just as the danger of leaving a child out of sight has been exaggerated, so has the danger of being near a registered sex offender.

The only way to cool down the unwarranted outrage--and the accompanying exaggeration of danger-- is to abolish the registry altogether.

legislators cause crime

My heading is only slightly tongue-in-cheek because the sex offender registry does lead directly to crimes like this.

A man charged with using a hammer to attack a registered sex offender in Anchorage last month now faces additional charges for assaulting two other men listed on the public sex-offender registry.

According to a recent bail memorandum, Jason Vukovich, a self-styled "avenging angel" according to one of the victims, carried a notebook with a list of names, including Charles Albee, Andres Barbosa and Wesley Demarest. Over five days in June, he entered the homes of the three men, uninvited, and hit them, sometimes with his fists and sometimes with a hammer. He also stole from them, said the bail memorandum signed by assistant district attorney Patrick McKay. 

Vukovich told police that he targeted his victims based on their listings on Alaska's sex-offender registry, the memo says. The online registry includes their home addresses, employer addresses and convictions. 

A question for legislators who worked to put the registry in place: How do you feel about assaults aided by your handiwork?

NCMEC: now 851,870 registered sex offenders in U.S.

We now have 851,870 registered sex offenders in the United States and its territories, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC. See this map for state-by-state information.

California has the largest number of registrants at 103,534. That's what happens when all sex offenders in the state must register for life: only the dead drop off the list. That is, if we can believe that the list is up to date and names are cleared near the time of death.

Texas has the next-highest number of registrants at 87,189 and Florida follows at 68,845.

Those three states are the most populous, so maybe those large numbers make sense. However, if those numbers make sense, how can New York, only half a million short of Florida's total population, have less than a third of Florida's registrants?

What's wrong with Florida? Why does the Sunshine State convict its citizens of sex crimes at the rate of 340 per 100,000 Floridians but New York maintains decorum with only 150 per 100,000?

Even California--the land of nuts and flakes and Hollywood where we all expect crazy stuff to happen--convicts at the rate of only 240 per 100,000.

Does it make sense that Arkansas (515/100,000) or Delaware (503/100,000) has that many more people committing sex crimes? Is there something that makes sex crimes much less likely in Connecticut (149/100,000) or in Oklahoma (160/100,000)?

Oregon is shocking. Quiet Oregon--where tree-huggers occur naturally, like rain--convicts for sex offenses at the rate of 713 per 100,000. What the heck are those lumberjacks and fishermen up to out there on the west coast?

People are people. The laws, though, differ far more than human nature does.

If Americans are supposed to be able to use the registry to decide who the dangerous people are, this map may help them understand that they have been sold snake oil. Cures all ailments! Protects children! Except, no, it does not. Sex crimes still happen though they are committed by people not on the registry.

If the registry were necessary because sex offenders reoffend so frequently, at some point its growth would slow down because the new crimes would be committed by someone already on the list. That is not happening.

New first-time offenders all the time but the laws do not recognize this reality.

Watching the registrant across the street means missing the sex offenses committed by someone not on the registry.

Preventing registrants from living near a school does nothing to prevent first-time offenders from committing sexual assaults inside the school.

If we could advertise how many people are on state registries, who would visit Oregon, knowing that the state has the highest rate of sex offense arrests? Perhaps then, state legislatures would begin to look at the kinds of crimes and the number of crimes that require someone to register.

851,870 registrants, unlikely to commit another sex crime, yet likely to be looked at with suspicion.

It is past time to abolish the registry.

legislating can be easy; legislating wisely requires more thought

Rachel Marshall, a public defender in Oakland CA, talks about how awful sex offender laws are. 

... many of my clients would choose to take on more jail time, more fees — anything to avoid being labeled a sex offender for life. That's because our current sex offender registration laws apply an unbending and inhumane one-size-fits-all approach that does not prevent future sex crimes and in fact makes us all less safe.

Imagine. Anything to avoid registration. We have so much evidence to show the registry does not prevent sex crimes or increase community safety that it is next to impossible to understand why registration is still required of anyone.

Registration sounds simple enough. All you have to do is to make sure the registry lists your current address. Marshall explains:

Registering itself is a cumbersome process. Oakland Police Department's current voicemail message for sex registration-related inquiries states that in order to register, one must make an appointment at least a month in advance. It is hard to understand how one can be expected to register within five days of changing addresses if an appointment takes a month to set up. 

And even if one secures an appointment, he must often wait many hours at the police station — jeopardizing any job he was lucky enough to find — to be seen for the appointment. And when the appointment begins, there are rarely interpreters around or people to assist with reading the technical language. So even if you are, like many of my clients — homeless, mentally ill, and too poor to own a phone — you are nonetheless expected to either call a police station or show up in person, make an appointment over 30 days in advance, wait for hours at the police station on your appointment day (hardly a comfortable place for most of us, let alone someone with a criminal record), read and understand legal jargon on lengthy documents, and continue to do so every few weeks for the rest of your life. 

The rest of your life can include getting old, which presents added difficulties that the law does not accommodate.

...I've had clients who continue to get arrested regularly for failing to register simply because they cannot remember to do it as frequently as they are required to and end up back in prison, where their health continues to deteriorate.

Our prisons are already overcrowded and overburdened by sick and elderly inmates, yet sex offender laws are set up to increase the number of sick and elderly inmates.

But public safety! Surely keeping an eye on convicted sex offenders makes our neighborhoods safer! Sadly, no. Emphatically, no.

Supporters of sex registration laws claim they promote public safety by ensuring that police can track offenders' whereabouts and keep them away from children. But no evidence supports the premise that public safety is thereby enhanced in any way; to the contrary, registration laws frequently lead to homelessness, instability, and more time in prison, all of which lead to a greater risk of future crimes. [My emphasis.]

If tracking these particular offenders is important, why write laws that lead so many to homelessness, a circumstance that makes tracking even more difficult?

Some jurisdictions have additional laws in place to prevent RSOs from living too near places that lawmakers imagine would lead them to re-offend. Such fevered imaginings crowd out any logic.

In Miami, Florida, local residency restrictions are so harsh — prohibiting sex offenders from living with 2,500 feet of any place children are likely to gather — they have rendered sex offenders homeless; because of the requirements, offenders have nowhere to live, other than remote, isolated places, like under a bridge or on train tracks. This doesn't exactly provide the support and stability research shows they need to avoid future sex offenses.

Again and again, we see that the registry gets in the way of employment, of housing, of a decent recovery from breaking the law.

Being deemed a sex offender for life carries with it other unwritten penalties. Not only is it infinitely more difficult to get a job or a place to live once one has been labeled a sex offender, but many mental health programs and drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs have policies banning sex offenders. Again, this lack of support and services only furthers the chances that these individuals will end up committing future crimes.

'Future crimes' rarely means sex crimes. Even faced with the difficulties caused by registration, registered sex offenders are still unlikely to commit another sex crime. When the registry shows a registrant who has more than one offense, remember that 'failure to register' can be categorized as a sex crime.

A registrant listed as having been convicted of three offenses on three different dates will certainly look like a dangerous neighbor (he just won't stop!) unless you know that the first offense was actually consensual sex with his younger girlfriend and the second and third offenses were failure to register.

Reading the whole thing will help you see why Marshall's clients would rather be incarcerated than to be on the registry.

To tempt you to read it all, I will tell you that Marshall discusses the Brock Turner case. You know the one. She says:

... the fury over the Brock Turner case has created a risk that we shift toward harsher penalties for sex offenses, without looking closely at what kinds of crimes are included in that category. We must avoid "one-size-fits-all" labels for those convicted of a broad range of offenses.

At a time when we are seeing the beginnings of bipartisan progress toward sentence reform that will reduce our incarceration rate and break up fewer families, do not let your legislators glom onto the emotional appeal of community safety or protecting the children in order to pass sex offender laws. Demand that they use evidence or data to back up proposed legislation.

As complicated and difficult as the registry is now, there is always the possibility that legislators can make it worse.

Do you know how to contact your state legislator?

Nevada about to blunder forward with a wrong-headed law

To comply with the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, Nevada will be adding hundreds of names to the sex offender registry, starting July 1.

Not only will hundreds of names be added but the method of categorizing offenders will change. Currently, each offender is assessed to determine the risk of reoffense and categorized accordingly. Those in Tier 1 have been assessed as low risk and do not appear on the online registry.

Now, all sex offenders will be on the website.

Under the new law, tier levels are based on a conviction and age of the victim.

There will be no attempt to look at each offender to determine how likely it is that he will reoffend.

Because the law is retroactive to 1956, many offenders already deemed by a judge to be no threat to the community will have to register and have their names, photos and addresses available for public scrutiny.

Retroactive to 1956! Sixty years ago. Long enough to prove risk of reoffense by not reoffending. How much clearer can it be?

People who have lived law-abiding lives for decades will now be exposed on the registry. Families will need to explain crimes committed ages ago, long before children and grandchildren were born.

Registered sex offenders will lose jobs, lose housing, and almost certainly lose relationships because of the changes to the registry.

The interest of public safety is better served by making it  more possible for RSOs to have a place to live, a job, and community support--not by passing laws that make it less possible.

Under the old system, 1,923 were considered Tier 1, or low-risk offenders. That number declines to 1,646 under the new assessment. Tier 1 offenders are required to register for 15 years and appear annually in person at a local law enforcement agency to update and verify their information. 

The number of Tier 2 offenders goes from 2,648 to 1,790. They must report every six months for 25 years. 

Tier 3 offenders jump to 3,014 from 239 under the old classification system, and are required to report in person every 90 days.

Nevada will go from having 239 on the high risk tier to over twelve times as many on the highest tier. Not because the 2775 people added to the highest tier are more dangerous than they used to be, remember, but because categorization no longer takes into account anything about them except their crimes.

Critics argue the law does not take into consideration the age of the offender or circumstances. A bill to try to fix some of the problems was passed by the 2015 Legislature but vetoed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval because it also eliminated a requirement that certain offenders stay at least 500 feet away from schools, parks and other places frequented by children.

When a legislature starts down the path toward bad law, it seems they can only make it worse.

how does this distressing news affect our fight?

Known for his work on behalf of registered sex offenders, Galen Baughman is in trouble. Again.

At 19, Baughman went to prison for 6 1/2 years on charges that he had had sex with an underage boy.

After he completed his prison sentence, Baughman said, the state of Virginia refused to let him out. Instead, he was kept behind bars for more than two additional years because prosecutors believed he might fit the profile of a sexually violent predator. That meant Baughman could be held against his will under what’s known as “civil commitment,” a form of long-term psychiatric treatment that in practice amounts to indefinite detention. (Civil commitment is legal at the federal level and in 20 states. According to the New York Times, roughly 5,000 people convicted of sex crimes are now being held under civil commitment laws around the country.)  

 Baughman became a leader in the cause of reforming civil commitment laws.

About two months ago, Baughman’s work was abruptly interrupted when he found out that his probation officer suspected him of violating the terms of his release. There were allegations that Baughman had exchanged inappropriate text messages with a 16-year-old boy. On March 3, Baughman was ordered to hand over his cellphone and his laptop. A month later, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.  

This news is rippling through the sex offender advocacy community. Reaction from fellow advocates and registrants run the gamut from sadness to anger.

How to explain that the likeable guy with a story easily understood as unfair might be having trouble staying on the straight and narrow? His sypmathetic story helped many people understand why the registry was so damaging.

The anti-registry world likes to use sympathetic victims to show why the laws need to change.

But injustices aren’t any less unjust when they happen to unsympathetic people. If you believe it’s wrong to make it almost impossible for sex offenders to find places to live; if you believe it’s deranged that people who have served their prison sentences can be “civilly committed” for years under the banner of treatment; if you believe it’s immoral to let a label like “sex offender” follow someone around for his entire life because of something he did when he was a child—if you believe all that, it shouldn’t make a difference what Galen Baughman did or did not do. Insofar as the United States treats sex offenders with shameful cruelty, it treats them all that way, including the ones who are hard to feel sorry for.  [My emphasis.]

Roger Lancaster, the George Mason anthropologist, believes reform movements would be better off if they leaned less heavily on “perfect victims.” As he sees it, the tactic of using individual stories to build support for reforms originated with tough-on-crime politicians and victims’ rights advocates in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, Lancaster explained in an email, law-and-order conservatives frequently used tragic and memorable cases, like the murder of Megan Kanka, to promote harsh punishment for convicted criminals. Lancaster wrote:

[T]he poster child strategy orchestrated collective rage and emotionalism and fostered the passage of expansive punitive laws. Now some have more recently tried to turn this strategy against itself, presenting victims of police violence, mass incarceration, sex offender registries, and other forms of state hyper-punishment as injured innocents, icons of unnecessary suffering. Upon viewing these posters, we are to emote and empathize rather than to think. I suppose the mold is set: American moderns are really neo-Victorians who need wholly innocent victims and wholly wicked perpetrators. I’m skeptical that we can turn the logic of the poster child …  against itself this way. We should argue instead from facts, evidence, logic, and serious scholarship.

Perfect victims can lead their champions down treacherous paths, particularly when they turn out to not be perfect. Given how few people are willing to step forward and become a face of this particular movement, Baughman’s interest in going public made him a consequential figure in the fight to reform America’s sex offender laws. That fight will survive Baughman’s alleged probation violation, but his arrest will inevitably distract from the ideas he was trying to spread.

It is disappointing to learn that Baughman, who delivered such a charming, persuasive TED Talk about sex offender laws, did something that--at the very least--looked as if he intended to reoffend. According to what has been reported, he has not been accused of another sex offense.

Disappointment, anger, sadness...all natural reactions when someone lets us down. We must remind ourselves, though, that those are emotional reactions. We should instead focus on the facts.

The fact is that only a tiny percentage of registered citizens reoffend, even when a highly visible RSO is among them.

The fact is that being on the registry does not prevent someone who wants to do wrong from doing what he is restricted from doing.

The fact is that being able to see who is on the registry does not stop parents thinking that their kids are safe with people we should be able to trust--teachers, pastors, family friends, relatives.

The registry protects no one and it damages hundreds of thousands of families. We can argue for abolishing it even when well-known advocates disappoint us.

thinking about Dennis Hastert and his curious sentence

Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, was sentenced today to 15 months in federal prison for structuring bank withdrawals so as to sidestep reporting requirements. It isn't illegal to withdraw cash in amounts less than $10,000 but it is illegal to do that in order to keep from being noticed by the feds.

Hastert was making the withdrawals so he could pay a man $3.5 million. He paid $1.7 million before the federal investigation into his withdrawals put a stop to the payments.

Why did he owe $3.5 million? When he was a high school wrestling coach, Hastert molested a boy and, several years ago, Hastert agreed to pay him that amount.

Jacob Sullum, at Reason.com, questions why the government does not see the $3.5 million as blackmail.

...Hastert was paying Individual A, who ultimately received $1.7 million of the promised $3.5 million, to keep their encounter a secret, fearing that other victims would come forward once Individual A made the incident public. Individual A's receipt of hush money certainly seems to meet the terms of the federal blackmail statute. Although it is understandable that federal investigators decided not to pursue that charge once they became convinced that Individual A's claim of abuse was true, it is disingenuous to pretend Hastert was not blackmailed.

In a weird twist, the victim is suing Hastert for the remaining $1.8 million.

The financial investigation uncovered the abuse but the statute of limitations prevents bringing sexual abuse charges against him. Sexually abusing students--sexually abusing anyone--is despicable, of course, but it is worth remembering that the judge was sentencing him for financial wrongdoing, not for sex crimes.

Federal District Court Judge Thomas M. Durkin sentenced him to fifteen months instead of the probation suggested by the defense or the five years requested by the prosecution.

Mr. Hastert... was ordered to pay $250,000 in fines, never to contact his victims and to receive sex-offender treatment.

Why sex offender treatment? Ostensibly, sex offender treatment is to help the offender avoid offending again. When there is no evidence that he has reoffended for decades, why sex offender treatment?

Is it possible the judge sees sex offender treatment as a punishment?

“If there’s a public shaming of the defendant because of the conduct he’s engaged in, so be it,” Judge Durkin said.

With that attitude, it seems the judge does see it that way. Many of those registered citizens who are paying for individual therapy and group therapy at the behest of courts, probation and parole officers--and, for some, at the risk of being sent back to prison if they cannot pay--would agree.

If I seem sympathetic to Hastert, I am not, even though I think his crime does not merit prison time or a $250,000 fine or sex offender treatment. From an article in the National Law Journal:

Hastert’s work on the Adam Walsh Act was “hypocritical and self-serving,” wrote Gail Colletta, the president of the Florida Action Committee, an organization seeking sex registry reform, in a letter filed by the court Tuesday. She asked the judge to impose a sentence longer than the six-month maximum advised by federal guidelines. 

“Hundreds of thousands of individuals and their millions of family members and friends have to live with the draconian punishments he fostered,” Colletta wrote. “These individuals are also the victims of Mr. Hastert’s actions.”

It is not unusual that someone caught up in the criminal justice system receives an unjust sentence. It seems that Hastert may be one of those cases.

I am not happy to see anyone go to prison, especially not a 74-year-old with health issues.

I do hope that Hastert's public humiliation has made him see how wrong he was when he worked to impose that fate on hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens.

bad for kids, bad for all: abolish the registry!

Judith Levine and Erica Meiners write about sex offender advocates who use stories about kids on the registry to push for change. Stories about juveniles are often quite sympathetic. Josh Gravens and Zach Anderson are two cases that have drawn much attention to the cause of keeping juveniles off the registry.

...these “new” sex offenders are humanized: attractive, promising, law-abiding heterosexual sons and fathers who made some youthful mistakes and deserve a second chance. ... 

In one way, it makes sense to focus on extricating juvenile sex offenders from the registry. An estimated one-fourth of the people on the public sex offender registries were convicted as juveniles. Fifteen states post the names and photos of offenders who are minors on the online registries. Thirteen of the 20 states that lock up people in indefinite civil commitment—preventive, dubiously therapeutic detention for crimes not yet committed—include people who committed their offenses as juveniles. “The single age with the greatest number of offenders from the perspective of law enforcement was age 14,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

As Raised on the Registry powerfully showed, with little or no intervention these young people are virtually guaranteed not to “reoffend,” mainly because so many of them are penalized for engaging in sex play—things that, even if not always entirely consensual, are common among children and usually without long-lasting harm. 

There is no question that getting some people off the list can be a first step toward getting others off—and a way of chipping away at the policy. 

Anyone who sees the damage caused by the registry celebrates any of the incremental improvements to the lives of registrants.

But there are also significant downsides to campaigns that construct children as exceptional and different from adults. The public may just as easily be left feeling that adults who break the law are bad and deserve all they get—or that guilty people do not deserve fairness or sympathy. This gives legislators a rationale for trading off youth-friendly criminal justice policies for harder adult penalties, as recently happened when New Mexico legalized sexting between teens but increased penalties for people 18 and older sexting with people under 18. Not just adults but some youth can be penalized by the focus on “children.” Call the person who breaks the law a “child,” and there’s a danger that any young person not demonstrably childlike will end up prosecuted as an adult. 

Exclusive focus on the young offender—rather than a rejection of the entire sex offender regime—avoids the larger, less politically popular truth. “Sex offender registries are harmful to kids and to adults,” says Emily Horowitz, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and a board member of the National Center for Reason & Justice, which works for sensible child-protective policies and against unjust sex laws. “No evidence exists that they prevent sex crimes either by juvenile offenders or adult offenders.” [My emphasis.]

The sex offender registry is a bad idea for anyone. No matter how guilty or how unsympathetic, no offender deserves extra-judicial punishment long after serving the sentence handed down by the court.

Who could quibble about an organization like Center on Youth Registration Reform (CYRR)? Why not work to keep juveniles off the registry? Why not start there?

When focusing on juveniles, it is easy to sacrifice adults with worse crimes as a sop to those who still believe registries offer some benefits to society.

Such a strategy can invite a wider range of supporters, but it also can mean inadvertent acceptance or even endorsement of policies that are antagonist to justice for wider groups, if not for everyone. For instance, CYRR is collaborating with Eli Lehrer, of the free-market think tank R Street; he is also a signatory of the conservative Right on Crime initiative. Flagged on the CYRR site is an article by Lehrer, published this winter in National Affairs, that argues for taking kids off the registry. But the piece also concludes that ending the registries would be “unwise” and suggests they’d be really good with a few “sensible” tweaks. Lehrer also proposes hardening policies—such as “serious” penalties for child pornography possession and the expanded use of civil commitment—that data reveal to be arbitrary or ineffective and many regard as gross violations of constitutional and human rights. 

In a more recent piece in the Daily Caller, as well as testimony before the South Dakota legislature this session, Lehrer repeats how important it is to punish “child molesters” harshly, and while he notes the low recidivism rate for juvenile sex offenders, does not mention that other adults with sex offenses show similarly low rates.

The registry is useless in the cause of public safety. Let's not pretend otherwise.

The registry does lasting harm to families who have a member on the registry and no family deserves that, not even families of someone who committed a crime that draws universal condemnation.

Levine and Meiners write about the argument that putting so many people on the registry makes it easy to lose track of offenders who really ought to be tracked. Some organizations like RSOL, Reform Sex Offender Laws, advocate for a registry available only to law enforcement. Changes like these could free many thousands from the registry but those changes would also abandon some families to the public humiliation of the registry and all its deleterious effects.

Offering to leave anyone on the registry is offering up families to suffer for the cause of the more likeable, more sympathetic offenders. No family deserves the registry. 

Incrementalism, or taking small steps, has often been posited as the pathway to justice–“Wait. We’ll make reforms now and work on the wider problem later.” Incrementalism can work. Reforms are necessary because they improve daily existence for the people inside the system—in court, in juvenile or immigrant detention, in jails and prison. But organizers must constantly calibrate the tension between reform and radical change, and the dangers of reform without a vision of radical change. By cleaning up a fundamentally corrupt institution, reforms risk legitimizing the institution, often just enough to make it politically palatable. As Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “Wait almost always means never.”

The registry, in any form, is not palatable. It does nothing to prevent sex abuse and does nothing to improve public safety.

Abolish the registry.

December 11, 2020

Edited to correct my mistake: Judith Levine's co-author is Erica Meiners (not Reimers).

lessons to be learned from teens charged with child porn felonies

In Bellevue NE, four teens and an adult have been charged with child pornography crimes. The article says the 20-year-old set up "an account online" and then lured a 17-year-old girl to send him sexually explicit photos of herself. The images were then passed around among the four teens.

Definitely nasty behavior, if this is truly what happened. The article gives very few details.

Amie Konwinski, of Smart Girl Style, was interviewed for the story and she has advice for parents.

Konwinski said it's a relatively new story but it's one she's heard before. Konwinski teaches teens and parents about the power of social media. 

"We really need to tell our kids that hey, this is a thing. Predatory sextortion is a possibility, and how easy it is for somebody to create a fake account and ask those girls for those pics," Konwinski said.

Predatory sextortion might be a thing but getting charged with a felony is a thing that might be more likely to happen and will do as much if not more damage to the teens involved. Konwinski ought to be educating teens and their parents about felony charges that can result from what teens see as private behavior.

Konwinski said parents need to have conversations with their children and keep an eye on their social media. She said one way to do this is making sure teens can't download apps without parental permission and to be aware that they may have accounts they don't want the parents to see. 

This is ridiculous advice. Teens using social media for private communication that may include intimate photos--no matter how unwise that is--need to know the dangers involved. They could be arrested, go to prison, and be on the sex offender registry for the rest of their lives.

"Parents need to sit down and say, 'Hey, what's your secret Instagram account?' And see what your kid says. If their eyes get big, you got them there," Konwinski said.

Well, there you go. Now that you know they have a secret account, you got them there. What are you going to do with that information? Parents who do not already know how easily kids can set up accounts without telling Mom and Dad are way behind in the game.

Instead of gotcha questions for teens about secret Instagram accounts, parents must educate kids about how impulsive behavior can be charged as a felony, how easily those crimes can be discovered, and the terrible weight of the punishment that can follow.

Instead of clinging to the belief that child porn always means unspeakable images of toddlers, parents need to tell kids that child porn can include images of teens who are definitely not children. Barring developmental issues, a 17-year-old is not a child.

Instead of teaching them the usual lesson that social media can be used to harm girls, teach them that both boys and girls can be charged with felonies for producing, sending, or receiving images meant only for significant others.

Instead of trying to catch kids at wrong-doing, educate them about how private behavior--exchanging naughty pictures or videos--can land them in serious legal trouble. Tagging kids with a sex offender label will hinder their ability to finish high school, go to college, get a job, raise a family of their own.

Perhaps most important of all, talk to your legislators about how easily kids can be caught up in the criminal justice system and how the laws need to change. Tell them that labeling kids with a label that will affect them for the rest of their lives is a grave injustice that must be righted.

Remember, too, that many families are already living that awful reality. Getting arrested as an adult instead of as a teen does not make the registry a more just punishment.

Tell your legislators that no family deserves to live on the registry. Tell them to abolish the registry.