Amarillo, TX compliance check is a huge failure
Amarillo’s News Channel 10 (WFDA), a CBS facility, reported on a week-long sex offender compliance check. The story aired with the graphic below:
The graphic shows the operation was “successful in making arrests”. So the inference is that “success” is measured by the arrests made. Well if you read down in the story, they disclose that five agencies were involved in the operation; the Amarillo Police Department Special Victims Unit, the Amarillo Police Department PACE Unit, the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigations Division, the FBI, and the United States Marshals Service. That’s a lot of resources! They also disclose that 639 registrants were checked and 9 arrests were made.
Now I’m not a statistician, but 9 out of 639 is only 1.4%. If the benchmark for success in this operation is arrests, it sure seems like this operation was a total failure. By any measure, an investigation that occupies the resources of five law enforcement agencies for a week and targets hundred of individuals, yet only comes up with a handful of arrests, would be a total embarrassment.
Notably the story doesn’t disclose what the arrests were for. If the arrests were for kidnapping and they recovered 9 missing children, they can certainly claim success. If I were to guess; the arrests were not for new sexual offenses, but for technical violation of registration laws. Benign omissions that would not be illegal for anyone other than someone on the registry. Maybe News Channel 10 should share that information, which might then make this story and the operation look a little less silly? Otherwise, maybe News Channel 10 should spin the story in a more accurate direction by letting the citizens of Amarillo know that after significant police resources checked on them, it turns out 98.6% of the people on the registry are compliant!
The fact is the compliance statistics are not isolated to Amarillo. MOST people forced to register go on to live law abiding lives and very few re offend. If news stations highlighted the very high rate of compliance instead of fear-mongering, the public would not be so up-in-arms about a non-existent problem and those same police resources could have spent the week solving actual crimes?
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The management of sex offenses and offenders in America is shaped less by thoughtful justice than by political pressure, media sensationalism, and public fear. At its core lies a contradiction: most men openly acknowledge their interest in sex, an instinct given by God. Yet our justice system has blurred the line between normal human desire and criminality.
The reality is that most borderline or even abnormal sexual encounters—whether in marriages, on dates, among relatives, or within friendships—go unreported. Even more occur only in the private thoughts of individuals and never cross into action. Still, our laws treat sexuality through the lens of crime rather than humanity.
The harsh federal framework we now live under did not arise from careful debate, but from political showmanship. Legislators eager to appear “tough on crime,” backed by a naive public, passed sweeping rules in sleepy congressional sessions. These were seized upon by agencies like SMART and the U.S. Marshals Service, which used the registry to expand their reach and budgets, even influencing small nations to adopt similar restrictions. On paper, this expansion appears noble—protecting children, promoting safety—but it has created a sprawling system of permanent punishment.
What lawmakers overlooked is that most offenses leading to registration are not crimes of violence. Many are minor acts—teenagers exchanging selfies, public urination, consensual relations across arbitrary age lines, streaking, or “petting” once considered part of youthful exploration. These are now often charged as felonies, with lifetime administrative punishments. Behavior that once earned a reprimand or short-term consequence has become a life sentence on the registry.
The irony is stark: recidivism rates for minor sexual offenses are among the lowest of all crimes—just above murder. Yet registrants often face harsher lifelong restrictions than violent criminals. This distortion of justice flows from laws shaped not by consistent moral reasoning, but by the personal struggles and imperfect judgments of politicians, judges, and public officials—most of whom, in their own youth, wrestled with the same desires.
Justice Thurgood Marshall once wrote: “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.” By extension, should the state impose lifetime punishment for private, nonviolent sexual expression or consensual behavior?
Here lies the deeper issue: lawmakers invoke children as the emotional lever. History teaches us how powerful this is. Hitler himself declared, “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” The danger is clear—when the rhetoric of protection becomes absolute, liberty itself is sacrificed.
What America now enforces is not balanced justice, but a blurred line between human sexuality and criminal stigma, cemented by laws that are more political than rational. Until we confront this imbalance, we risk preserving a system that punishes not only genuine offenders, but also ordinary people who crossed youthful lines or committed minor misjudgments—and condemning them to a lifetime outside the bounds of normal liberty.
Bo, you touched on a topic that has been rattling around in my head for some time; that is the subject of nearly universal sexuality. You only mentioned men, but women are strongly sexual beings too. I’m an engineer and not a psychologist, but allow me to present an observation.
Jonathan Swift once wrote that, “You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.” The very fact that sexuality is ubiquitous among humans is the reason why so many come to the stage of moral panic and illogic. There are probably very few who have never had a sexual thought, urge or action that made them uncomfortable or fearful of their own desires and unwilling to be persuaded by recidivism reality.
Clinging to the myth that the monsters are “others” provides a degree of comfort in the belief that the danger is “out there.” Pretending that the potential for unacceptable sexual behavior exists only within certain defective humans allows us to push the mirror away to a comfortable distance. We are soothed by the belief that the monster is not part of us or those we keep around us. Ironically, just the opposite is true and danger–particularly to children–is increased by ignoring this reality.
Dr.
No one is defending sex crimes against children here. We’re fighting against a registry system that doesn’t prevent sex crimes. The registry serves only as an end run around adjudication. Your general statement of recidivism is a lie.
Thank God where I live, the Deputy comes by, asks how I am doing, ask if I have any questions, and asks if I have any problems or complaints. He then tells me to remember to register on time and is on his way, in a professional and friendly manner.
No sex offending was stopped by this costly government operation. None at all.
I emailed them. I’m sick of this crap!