MUST READ: Sex offender registries don’t make us any safer. Abolishing them would

There is a growing consensus that our approach to punishment in the criminal legal system creates more harm rather than reduce it. Yet we summarily exclude those with sex offenses from these conversations.

The reality is that registries do absolutely nothing to deal with the scourge of sexual harm. They don’t make us safer. They’re merely a punitive tool of social control that subjects millions to cruelty and harm that then spreads to their families and communities. Denying so many people an opportunity to be a part of our polity and a chance to thrive, while paying lip service to a carceral notion of public safety, disserves the rest of us. By making monsters out of them, we reveal who the real monsters are.