Extremely Misleading Massachusetts and Maine Report on Recidivism
The recently-released report “Recidivism Among Sex Offenders in Massachusetts & Maine” shows how statistics can be slanted to make people believe whatever you want them to believe.
According to themainewire.com, “The report was funded by a Bureau of Justice Statistics grant, in order to provide policy makers with empirical data on a critical issue of public safety – sex crimes committed by reoffenders.”
But the report includes any arrest that resulted in a conviction within a five-year period from release. This included arrests for sex offenses, violent offenses, registry violations, and any other type of offense.
Part of the problem is that release from a sex offense conviction triggers the criminalization of otherwise-ordinary behaviors, such as failure to timely update a temporary address, that have been shown to have nothing to do with sexual re-offending. These behaviors are usually known as “failures to register.”
Among “Key Findings” on page 2: Maine’s five-year recidivism rate was 43%.
Buried down on page 34 of the report is the statement: “Overall, only 5% of recidivating offenses included a sex offense” for sex offenders in Maine who were released from 2005 to 2019. This is the same Maine study that showed a recidivism rate of 43% on page 2 of the report.
For our math-minded people, 5% of the released inmates committed a new sex offense out of the group of 43% in Maine who committed any type of offense. If you were to look at the entire group of people released in Maine (661) who had previously committed a sex offense (with some re-offending and some not), it would not be 5% of the entire 661 people used in the Maine study.
5% of 43% of 661 = 14 people leaving prison for a sex crime and committing a new sex offense.
What percent of the total people (661) in the study, with some committing an offense and some not, is 14 people? Answer: 2%
Yes, 2% of the 661 people released from prison for a prior sex offense in this Maine study committed a new sex offense.
Is this made clear in the report? Absolutely not!!!
The problem with this report is its use of the word recidivism – a word that is not defined with uniformity throughout various studies. Even this report, “Recidivism Among Sex Offenders in Massachusetts & Maine,” acknowledges in the Executive Summary on page 1 that the “…recidivism definitions…can vary across local, state, and federal agencies.”
The raw data in this report is probably correct, but the conclusions being drawn are grossly misleading.
The comment section is still open at themainewire.com.
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Misleading you say? Are not all internet sex registry offenses misleading…. but who’s the witness.. something to ponder on.
One wonders who’s naked today in this registry ordeal. Talk about bearing the sword in vain. So who’s trying to put humpty-Dumpty together again and at the same time having a great fall.
If Governments could speak of the back alley lie’s and the ill-ethical way some or most of these registry ruses are done their would be more horse sh@@it to sling. Remember there’s ethical principals in everything. Authorities have gone to far on this registry issue.
I may hold my peace on a pardon but the truth is better than a pardon and authorities are just as much at fault with their gun-ho conning approach. And I do believe they had a decent law at one time in America but its wide open today and law enforcement should enforce all these porno sites on the internet. Even authorities are on probation if you think about it. Are authorities inducing evil in many ways of trickery.
Here is an interesting tidbit.
The Catherine Cutler Institute is run by the University of Southern Maine.
USM was the school where I held the Art Protest when USM took down three paintings from an on-campus art exhibit because they were painted by a Registered Person.
This report is not just poorly written. They use degrading terms like “child rapist” and “child predator.” if you look at a naughty pic of a teen online you’re a “child predator” going by their definition.
This is a lousy report from a crappy school that freaked out over paintings from a Registrant.
Appreciate Jack’s point, but I think we want to resist the temptation to tell ourselves that, if we just made the right legal argument, we could defeat the registry in court.
The hard part about defeating the registry in court is not, making the right argument (the lawyers fighting for us already are familiar with the arguments). It’s proving them. That’s one reason that most of our FAC legal donations go towards expert witness fees and deposition costs.
We know that the entire registry scheme is punitive. Its defenders say, not necessarily, as the registry can also promote public safety, they say. Which is nonsense, but can we prove in court that it’s nonsense?
Notice how the cases that have gone best for us lately (MT Supreme Court, PA trial court, Federal 6th Circuit) employed conventional legal arguments but also (crucially) proved them. It doesn’t always work (consider McGuire) but it’s our best shot.
Nothing we do or say is going to change the minds of some judges. That is why some states have wins and others do not. 50 different states and 50 different registry rules. Then throw in Federal rules/laws and not even the judges sometimes know how to interpret the jumbled mess of laws, rules, and regulations.
All ideas from everyone are worth listening to. To say just let the lawyers take care of it cannot be used as a blanket statement. We are more likely to get off individually than to take down the registry as a whole. As many of us know, the registry is about funding, power and control.