FAC Weekly Update 2026-02-16-The Epstein Proximity Panic

Weekly update for February 16, 2026. This is recording number 355

Special NOTE: If you missed the Monthly Membership call 2/5/2026 where we interviewed a retired a Probation Officer with both Federal and State experience, you can listen to the 90-minute recording.  Simply call 605-475-4953, enter code 739392# and recording ID 353#.

Dear Members and Advocates,

In 2013, following the tragic abduction and murder of Cherish Periwinkle by a convicted sex offender, Florida legislators declared the state “scorched earth” for registrants and passed sweeping new restrictions during the 2014 legislative session. What happened to Cherish was an extremely rare, but horrible, horrible event. The public was up in arms, and lawmakers reacted. Even though the man responsible was already in custody, tens of thousands of people on the registry—men and women who had nothing whatsoever to do with Cherish’s murder—were suddenly subjected to harsher laws, broader bans, and lifelong consequences.

This year it feels like we are being hit from all sides again. On the municipal level, counties like Putnam and Union ratcheted up their laws. On the state level, we are facing HB 45/SB 212. On the federal level, there’s a bill proposing to strip Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies from people on the registry. It is like Whack-a-mole — we focus our efforts on fighting one proposal, and another pops up somewhere else.

We do not need to remind you that the empirical research is clear: Sex Offender Residency Restrictions (SORRs) and proximity ordinances do not reduce recidivism or improve public safety. And the idea that taking away health coverage from people on the registry will somehow make children safer is mind-boggling. Creating a population of homeless, jobless and medically vulnerable people does not promote rehabilitation. It undermines it. In fact, I can see desperate people going out and intentionally committing crimes just to get a roof over their head and healthcare!

So what explains this moment? The overwhelming majority of people on the registry have been law abiding since their offenses and there’s been no documented spike in sexual crime driving these proposals. Yet, without any change in circumstances, it seems this year lawmakers across the country feel an urgency to “do something.”

Let’s give this phenomenon a name: “The Epstein Proximity Panic”. In the wake of renewed public attention surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful figures who were associated with him, political leaders across the spectrum are acutely aware of contamination by association. In politics, proximity alone can be weaponized. Even tangential or historical connections — regardless of context or culpability — can become political liabilities in a hyper-reactive media environment. When that kind of contagion is in the air, lawmakers instinctively reach for the most visible, dramatic ways to demonstrate distance. They seek insulation. They introduce or support aggressive legislation aimed at the broadest, safest political target available: people already on the registry. It becomes less about evidence and more about optics.

If the fear is political contamination, the perceived antidote is overcorrection. Radical proposals – even illogical and ineffective ones – can function as public declarations: “Look at how tough I am. Look how far I stand from anything that could be associated with that ‘Epstein stuff’.” But here’s the reality… public policy driven by reputational anxiety rather than data produces really crappy law. It leads to measures that sound forceful but erode constitutional principles and in this case paradoxically undermine the very public safety goals they claim to advance. What we are experiencing is not a reaction to a crime wave, it’s not implementing tested and proven strategy, but it’s merely a political reflex and one that will backfire in very damaging ways.

Understanding the dynamic does not make it less dangerous. It means we must respond strategically. On one hand, we must do everything we can to keep fighting these bills. On the other hand, if some of these measures do pass, we must be prepared. We must be postured to challenge them in court and require the government to do what it so often avoids doing in the legislative arena: that is, explain itself under constitutional scrutiny.  Let the government articulate how stripping healthcare coverage from people on the registry has any real nexus to the goal of making children safer.  Let it demonstrate, with evidence instead of rhetoric, how destabilizing housing, employment, and medical access advances public safety.  That is a burden they should have to meet.  Using the analytical framework laid out in the recent Ellingsburg decision, judges may finally examine whether these measures are procedural in purpose or punitive in effect.

This year may feel relentless. But relentlessness cuts both ways. We must keep doing the work. We must keep showing up. When a highly publicized crime occurs, we cannot allow an entire class of people who are completely unrelated to those crimes become the target of irrational political reaction. And if they insist on passing laws untethered from data and detached from legitimate public safety goals, we’ll see them in court.  At some point, the straw does break the camel’s back.

Sincerely,

The Florida Action Committee