Ineffective, Costly, and Harmful: DEBUNKING THE SEX OFFENSE REGISTRY
The Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center (SOLPRC) at Mitchell Hamline School of Law published a report (March 2025) that contains significant evidence and resources that debunk the Registry, defining it as ineffective, costly and harmful to registrants and their families.
The report states: “The modern sex offense registry was borne out of the belief that a public registry listing people who had been convicted of a sex offense would make communities safer. That premise was wrong. We now have thirty years of data concluding that public registries do not work as intended—in fact, there is evidence that public registries actually increase registrant recidivism. Furthermore, there is no definitive evidence that these laws deter non-registrants from sexually offending. At the same time, sex offense registration and notification (SORN) laws contribute to the stigmatization of registrants, which make securing employment and housing more challenging, and disrupt or preclude the maintenance of strong social ties. Registrants’ families also experience significant hardships. SORN laws should be abandoned, and resources should instead be invested in evidence-based interventions to address sexual violence that are currently starved for resources.”
The report concludes: “Experts on sexual violence policy recognize that SORN laws do not reduce sexual offense recidivism. The gratuitous burdens that SORN laws impose on registrants and their families harm both them and the communities in which they live. Those communities would benefit from shifting the resources currently devoted to administering SORN laws to funding interventions to reduce the incidence of sexual violence that are effective, including primary prevention85, support services for victims/survivors, and reentry and treatment programs to facilitate the reintegration to civil society of people who have sexually offended.”
This is a MUST READ document that FAC intends to use in wide-spread distribution to lawmakers, media and public sectors. Do your part and share this report with your friends, neighbors, and community organizations.
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While the impact on registrants and their families is significant, it is very unlikely to gain any sympathy or understanding from the legislators and policy makers (I would think) the paper targets.
I wish it had included data about the specifics of registrant arrests. I haven’t dug too deep into it, but I’m willing to bet that well over 90% of registrant arrests are for registry violations, as opposed to actual crimes. There are mountains of research that show when sex offenses happen at churches, they’re committed by a clergy member, not the prior offender residing on the next block. And when they happen at schools or day cares, it’s always a staff member, not the prior offender working at the convenience store across the street.
I would have also mentioned (though maybe not expanded on at this point) the registry’s uselessness as a law enforcement tool, appropriately highlighted by the unfortunate Dru Sjodin case, for which the federal registry is named and provides the blueprint for the results of registry use in criminal investigations. Despite her assailant’s registry status, the registry played no role whatsoever in his identification and arrest, despite the hundreds of man-hours spent chasing the “leads” the registry provided. A point that bears repeating is that no attorney general or law enforcement office can show one single case where the registry provided anything useful to a criminal investigations that was otherwise unavailable, apart from registry violations. Again, the only place I have ever found where the registry works when used as advertised is on Law and Order: SVU.