Reforming Florida’s Sex Offender Registry Laws
Licensed Professional Counselor Robert Longo has been vocally opposed to public registries for convicted sexual offenders for years. “I actually met with a group of people in New Jersey and sat across from Megan Kanka’s grandfather,” Longo said. The 1994 murder of 7-year-old Kanka gave rise to the public disclosure of sexual offender registries through what are commonly known as
Read moreThe results are in from “Operation Predator”, the joint operation of state and federal officers that included sheriff’s offices from 39 counties in Florida, and they are pretty weak. According to Suncoast News, a total of 10,839 face to face verifications were conducted and 134 arrests were made for registration violations. That’s not new sex crimes, just technical violations of
Read moreCosmopolitan Magazine features this story about a 12 year old Seminole County girl being arrested for pinching a boy’s butt. Now we all agree that children should be taught boundaries and that there should be consequences for inappropriate behavior, but have we gone too far? The article quotes the girl as saying, “If I don’t do the community service, I
Read moreThe passages of sexual offender registries have grabbed headlines as steps toward public safety against unchanging “predators” who are being released back into society. The registry laws themselves have cost billions of dollars and generally are passed with overwhelming support. But do they work? “These kind of laws have a limited usefulness, which is they make it difficult for offenders
Read moreThe legal battle over Pasco County’s strict new sex offender ordinance has taken a strange turn: Two Pasco sheriff’s deputies visited a sex offender at his home on March 15, according to court records, and tried to dissuade him from joining the lawsuit challenging the 2015 ordinance that governs where offenders can live in the county. The lawyer trying to
Read moreAuthors Martin Schmucker and Friedrich Lösel The Question Does sex offender treatment reduce recidivism? The Research In 2005, Friedrich Lösel and Martin Schmucker conducted an influential meta-analysis of the evaluation of sexual offender treatment. This 2015 study provides an update with more recent primary research and focuses on those higher-quality studies that have comparison/control groups as well as documented measures
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