Members of the American Law Institute (ALI), the most important and prestigious organization of legal scholars and prominent attorneys in the nation, will consider a proposal next week that could significantly change the nation’s sex offender laws. The most significant of those changes would be the elimination of public registries in all 50 state. The proposal also includes, but is not limited to, recommendations to abolish all public notification laws as well as most residency restrictions, internet restrictions and GPS location monitoring.
Those who oppose the proposal include journalist William Dobbs because he believes the ALI proposal does not go far enough. Instead of restricting the registry only to law enforcement officials, Dobbs advocates the total elimination of all sex offender registries.
[FAC NOTE: We agree with Dobbs – the registry needs to be abolished in it’s entirety.]
Alaska is the only state that holds true to the state constitution as to not permit retro active registration , nor do they recognize Sorna.
So no news? I cant find anything on the institutes website
Has a decision been made as of yet? Any update or news? We’ve been anxiously awaiting the results since we read about this last week.
I have looked at the American Law Institute website today, but saw no reference to changing sex offender registries. Their meetings were June 7th and 8th. Guess we will have to wait to see if they submit any proposals. But remember that they only make suggestions regarding laws. Always in the hands of legislators.
Manny F:
ALI came down big time on the side of registrants. They didn’t recommend the end of registries but sure wants them restricted.
ALI is probably the single largest organization as far as impact on state laws.
This was a huge win for registrants and could start to turn the tide.
Expect this to start serious debate in several state legislatures in the coming years.
This is fantastic news!!!!
Is there a link or somewhere we can read what their recommendation is? I am curious to know exactly what they have determined regarding the registry, because along with the decision made by the South Carolina Supreme Court, maybe some of us wouldn’t have to wait years for new legislation to be written. Maybe we can just take matters into our own hands and petition the courts for removal. I mean this is case law now in SC so that means it wouldn’t be an unprecedented attempt at removal based on their (SC) findings.
Manny F, the “Source” link for the story will lead to a download pdf for their entire draft suggestions. Many pages long. However, you will also see that the DOJ vigorously opposes the draft. And since the sex offender registry is one of the most politicized legal issues EVER, it is far too early to get excited about it. For example, I live in Michigan. The Legislature just rewrote the registry law here, but left it virtually as onerous as the old law, despite the fact that Michigan’s Attorney General believes that the registry should be abolished. The proposed draft doesn’t carry the force of law. It is mostly an attempt to stop the practice of shaming and over punishing those convicted of a sex based crime. But with politicians stoking paranoia with false recidivism claims, too many people want to continue branding sex offenders. The tough on crime zealots are in control in too many states now. Don’t expect any change to happen quickly.
Gerald
I would say that illegal immigrants is either first or a close second. A lot more people care about or do not care about illegal aliens. Neither side really wants anything to do with sex offenses though.
Many in the U.S welcome the immigrants, especially farmers who can pay low wages and no benefits and not get a complaint from anyone.
Cherokeejack, you are spot on. Both issues involve the need for some people to look down on others as inferior, either because of race or nationality or even past mistakes. It’s a way for people to hate in a socially acceptable manner. Very sad. Leads to violence against others far too often.
It would be great but I see another stumbling block those who are on probation will still have to face . the fact that while on probation they are still required to divulge they’re status to any perspective landlord or employer so will effectively still have a hard time finding housing and or employment
I agree, the registry did nothing but paint a worse picture for people on the list than needed to be. It is an archaic system that has only been used to get politicians re-elected because the general public is clueless to its true ineffectiveness. It is nothing more than a list used to keep people who have served their time for their mistakes and keep them from truly bettering themselves.
It limits work, housing, continued education, and even ones social life limiting vacations and relationships.
And it only targets one group of individuals, many who were first time, non violent offenders that now have had their lives completely compromised and painted in a certain way. What about the murder or the violet drug dealer who was released with no such fanfare and is now living on your street with you being non the wiser?
The registry needs to go completely, so hopefully this is the start and they will vote and do the right thing, and not just make a decision based on re-election.
The draft proposal also reduces the number of offenses that trigger registration to the offenses below. The proposal lowers nearly every crime level for sex offenses.
1) Triggering offenses. Section 213.11A sharply restricts the class of individuals to whom the duty to register and other sex-offense collateral consequences apply. It precludes registration of nearly all juveniles, and for adults, it imposes the threshold duty to register only upon conviction of offenses that most strongly arouse public concern, specifically:
(i) Sexual Assault by Aggravated Physical Force or Restraint.
(ii) Sexual Assault by Physical Force, but only when committed after the offender had previously been convicted of a felony sex offense.
(iii) Sexual Assault of an Incapacitated Person, but only when committed after the offender had previously been convicted of a felony sex offense.
(iv) Sexual Assault of a Minor, but only when the minor is younger than 12 and the actor is 21 years old or older.
(v) Incestuous Sexual Assault of a Minor, but only when the minor is younger than 16.
A brief respite from our nightmare. The decision to change the law is up to legislatures, not rational attorneys. Most legislators are not attorneys and far less are rational. The legislators won’t read the report, and even if they read it, they likely won’t understand it. Their decisions are driven by: “if it saves one vote”
But for a brief moment we can dream.
GL
THANK YOU
This was all I was saying when I said this was dead in the water before it even started. I was not being negative just a realist. All the lawyers in the U.S could ban together and not stop the registries if the law makers don’t want to go along with it, which we know they don’t, won’t, will not, ain’t gunna happen.
Talk about trying to justify the need for the registry, this is one that really irks me;
“… if adopted, the proposal “would attempt to unravel sex offender registration and notification systems nationwide, severely limit law enforcement information-sharing capacity, weaken youth-serving organizations’ ability to conduct background checks to protect children,…”
The Justice Dept knows damn well they are LYING!! If an employer does a background check, your felony conviction AND THE DETAILS OF IT come up. You don’t need a registry for that. I’ve Googled my own name and my history comes up that my offense was of a sexual nature. And I’m no longer on the registry. So this “talking point” of theirs is BS and they know it. I hope Janice is wise enough to shut this talking point down real fast.
Let me know when I can stop holding my breath. 🤣
Helpful info below re ALI’s Model Penal Code and its influence on state law.
I’m going to assume that FL is one of the 17 states that disregards MPCs. Hopefully I am wrong.
But but but……..
Let’s please not get greedy. If we threat all or nothing, we might shoot outselves in the foot. If we can at least get off the public registry, we can work on abolisment in its entirety later.
Just like when one of us tries to get off the registry, it is less likely to get push back than when we try and get everyone off at once. Not saying we shouldn’t try, just saying sometimes baby steps work better than ramming ideas down law makers throats.
I for one will take any win I can get. Heck I celebrated when I got my license renewed this year and they was only a small statue # on the front instead of the HUGE one they threatened to print.
Having said that, if sucessful, I sure won’t complain. Just worried be TOO radical back fires in our faces.
CherokeeJack,
With all due respect, it’s been over 25 yrs of the SOR. How much longer do you feel we need to take “baby steps”? We’ve been taking these baby steps for over 2 decades. It’s time to tell it like it is and shut this thing down.
Maestro
If a judge cannot over throw the registry (Michigan was a hot mess) who are these people to take on the U.S vs. the People on the registry?
That is all I am saying. I guess there point is, if you want to prove you got balls, Pass over the little guys and step into the ring with Mike Tyson???
Maestro/CherokeeJack:
The judge hasn’t signed the final order yet in Michigan. Wait until he signs the final order and you will see how many come off of the registry.
The registry has been on hold since February 14, 2020 in Michigan and is still on hold. A lot of people haven’t registered since 2019. Wait until they tell those 34,000 people they have to go back registering (for the ones whose registration hasn’t expired).
Michigan is going to get a one/two punch. First they’re going to have to get people to register who hasn’t registered in almost 2 years and then the judge will sign the final order which will take them back off.
I’m just sitting back waiting to see how they handle this.
Detroit
Not to be disrespectful, but Michigan has had Government issues for years. Robo Cop was based on Detroit at the time being the higest crime rate in the nation. The water scandel was another crazy issue. I mean water and food and the two essentials required for life along with oxygen to breath.
Having said that, if state like Michigan can throw out the registry successfully, hopefully other states can follow. Just hope I am not in the old folks home by then. Oh wait, we are not allowed in Nursing homes. Shit we cannot even go to Hurricane shelters during a storm. We have to take our chances and ride it out.
The Michigan State Police have already notified people that a new registry law has been passed and signed by the governor this past March. I had to report again in person in April. Very little was changed from the old law to the new one. The belief was that the federal judge was going to have to approve any new law BEFORE it was enacted. That didn’t happen. The fact is that the judge gave the state the hint that all it had to do was enact a new law modeled after the federal registry law. I hope I’m wrong, but that judge has been silent about this new law in Michigan. The judge could have and should have acted by now if he was going to eliminate Michigan’s registry. Don’t hold Michigan up as an example for the rest of the country. You will be disappointed.
Gerald:
If you are currently registering then you are not aware of the current situation in Michigan. The registry is on hold in Michigan and you are not required to register until the covid pandemic is over and you receive notice from the state. The letter that you received relates to the new law and you are confusing the new law with the court’s orders. They cannot enforce the new law until the covid emergency is over.
I have done some of the registry related legal research in the past and am in contact with the Does attorneys on occasion. I am currently working with attorneys to plan litigation post Does. We cannot do anything until the Judge Cleland issues a final order. We will be opening an office to specifically address registry related litigation. To be successful in litigation you need extensive pretrial preparation. We have been going through pretrial preparation to prepare for future litigation. I am at the center of this pretrial preparation, am working on the legal issues on a daily basis so have a grasp of the legal aspect of registration. Even though I am not involved in the Does litigation I have a good grasp of the legal issues and implications. You are free to register if you wish but I believe you are misapprehending the current situation and allowing your paranoia to get the best of you. Michigan is and will continue to be the state in front of the registry debate for the forseeable future. What occurs in Michigan will affect the registries of the various states.
Detroit, I’m not a lawyer and I wouldn’t expect anyone to accept my comments as legal advice. But the ACLU attorneys are the ones handling the registry case in Michigan. Their current factsheet on the case specifically notes that while they have requested a final judgment from the federal court in the case, that decision WILL NOT AFFECT THE NEWLY ENACTED LAW IN MICHIGAN. The ACLU plans to attack that new law as also being unconstitutional, but the fact is that it IS the law now that we have to follow in Michigan. If you wish to ignore it, you will be subject to arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. If you can afford an attorney to fight your conviction, you won’t automatically be able to file an appeal in federal court, because it’s a brand new law. You would need to follow the usual steps, first to the Michigan Court of Appeals, then the Michigan Supreme Court, and then federal court. That process will take years, and you would be sitting in prison the whole time. I encourage everyone on the registry in Michigan to read the official comments from the ACLU.
https://www.aclumich.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/aclu_updates_on_michigans_sora_4.14.21_final.pdf
Cherokee jack, as long as the laws are different for me than for any other citizen of both Florida and the USA, then discrimination (Jim Crow) exists.
This government blacklist must end!
(It must not be allowed to exist in any shape or form lest it metastasize once again.) Half measures are anathema to our freedom.
It states that they will consider a proposal. Any idea who actually proposed it in the first place?
Do we want ALI to submit an amicus brief in our Ex Post Facto Plus challenge? Would it matter much if they did?
Have their amicus briefs influenced court decisions? I just don’t see how this development “could significantly change the nation’s SEC offender laws,” as ACSOL puts it, or even change anything at all.
Jacob:
Getting a proposal from ALI is bigger than getting this from the ABA or a group of state bars. The ABA can affect some legislation but not like the ALI can.
The ALI puts out the model penal code that most states look to whenever they write penal legislation.
Rest assured, this is huge.
It’s time to stop living in a fantasy world where what is being done is clearly not working. It’s simply being done because it makes some people feel good, at the high cost of the lives of others. That’s just wrong.
It’s time to face reality. Enabling people to continue living in fear is not a good thing. It’s a very bad thing. It needs to be fixed. They need to face reality for their own good.
Why do we even have people who refuse to deal with reality working in our legal system?
At least it’s a beginning of discussion. I hope this discussion also includes how there are some many requirements on what you must do or face additional charge of failure to register and the harm of there techinal violations.
The ALI meeting will be on the 7th and the 8th. I have been following it since my offense is CP. A most inportant aspect is that ALI will also change the Model Penal Code to say that only offenses with a violation of Article 213 of the MPC will even be on the registry. Those would strictly sex offenses and not possession of CP. It specifically eliminates posession of CP folks which is a hell of a lot of us. They call this a “sex related offense” not a sex offense. Thus if your a cp offender and a state adopts the new MPC, you will no longer be a RSO at all.
I sure hope that the lawmakers see it at the same eye level as this organization and do indeed abolish these draconians, do nothing but ostracizing laws.
We got to keep fighting and with that, I mean that we need to keep the hope alive that one day, all this crap will be finally he abolished….and with the hope that it will not be replaced with something worse.
Good news. It’s absolutely terrible that politicians have misused this issue to make themselves appear to be tough on crime, and that the registry protects the public, despite evidence to the contrary. All registries do is continue to punish people who made a mistake in the past and served prison time for it, often a great deal of time. The collateral damage done to families of registrants is just unconscionable. Unfortunately, many politicians have no conscience when it comes to advancing their own careers.
Does ALI have any influence in Tallahassee?
None
How about facts and reality?
I like to keep this evidence-based. That way, the facts remain on our side, even where the law is not (yet).
We have volumes of evidence that public registries are ineffective. But where is the evidence that non-public, police registries are ineffective? For the latter, I’m referring to examples such as Canada, UK (mostly), Australia, NZ. What is our most persuasive case against those?
I would say all the same arguments can still be used against private registries because even though you’re neighbors don’t know you’re on it, the police do. And they’ll most likely still come knocking to do “check ups”/verifications. You’ll still have to tell them how many vehicles are parked on your street, what (if any) social media you use, all your passwords, have you still asking permission to go on a vacation and all your itinerary and your passport will still most likely be stamped and you’ll have a hard time going anywhere outside the country. Not to mention the embarrassment that showing a passport with a Sex Offender stamp on it will cause.
So therefore, private registries are NOT any better than public ones.
Maestro
It was said on here in the past, even if registries were banned, the passport issue would still stand. I just saw that on a post recently in here where someone got off the registry but still has passport issues as well as travel bans to certain countries.
Based on charges not the registry.
CherokeeJack,
I got my passport BEFORE the IML went into effect. I was NEVER informed to turn it in for the updated one with the SO stamp. My passport expired the same year that I completed my 10 year registration with the state of CT. I had misplaced the passport and had to get a whole new one. My new passport also does NOT have any SO stamp on it. So I dunno where this info about passports would still be stamped with the offender info if the registry was to disappear or you’re no longer on it.
Mine only had a bar code. No one knew what it was unless you scanned it and then the TSA would see on their screen that you were an offender (ex offender)
I never had anything that someone picking it up would know but the bar code
This is an area where FAC board does not even agree among themselves, and that’s ok so long as we are delivering a consistent message to lawmakers.
Specifically, eliminate or reform?
FAC members tend to be pragmatic individuals. Has anyone here ever told a lawmaker in Tallahassee that the registry should be eliminated in its entirety? If so, how did that go?
We all know that the registry should be eliminated, but since that will not be happening any time soon, we are fighting to to tear down as many of the unconstitutional statutes and ordinances as we can. People not caring about facts, research, and the truth is becoming a growing problem in this country. I read this over and over again: Too many people think that their opinion is now fact.
Media
I think some registry workers are over it as well. Fortunately where I register, they push us through like cattle. They cannot keep employees and every time I register there is a new person at the window.
I agree that facts and research are our inherent strength.
If we are going to take the public position that even non-public registries (Canada, Australia, NZ, UK, Ireland) are ineffective for public safety, where are the facts and research to back up our position?
Maestro above pointed out some non-public features of the public (FL) registry that seem quite counter-productive, and I agree. But actual non-public registries (such as the examples above) lack those features. In particular, there are no officers blowing someone’s cover by knocking on the door for a “check.”
So all I’m saying is that if we are going to take a position that all forms of SO registry should be “abolished,” I think we need to be ready to address challenges to that position, using, as you say, facts and research.
Everybody who believes in a higher power please pray to them
Are any actual laws in effect that are traceable back to this American Law Institute?
If not, then what makes ALI “important and prestigious”?
ALI created the Model Penal Code, look it up on wiki. 33 states pattern much of their criminal law based on the MPC and some states like Oregon use it totally.
The group are the finest legal minds in all area of criminal law
I wonder if this will apply to all SO, or just the ones whos crimes were on or before a specific date
need to as well find AWA unconstitutional it as well has destroyed lives of people Including petitioning family Visas
It is obvious that these disgraceful laws are very similar, in principle, to the Jim Crow statutes that came into being during civil war reconstruction.
Not much is different, in principle, except for the targets of the discrimination.
The registry must be abolished in its entirety; for as long as Jim Crow exists for any single citizen of the US, then Jim Crow is alive and well.
Jim Crow must be utterly and completely destroyed!
Very good point!