The following is an excerpt from an article that announced the 20th anniversary of the Iowa Sex Offender registry. It includes the observations of a police sargent whose job it is to track those on the registry. I think his thoughts are telling:
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The registry online, though, announces goals that are more ambitious: Protect the public. Deter offenders. Serve as an investigative tool for law enforcement officials.
On those points, the registry can claim less success, according to Petersen and researchers. Based on his experience, the list does little to prevent crime.
“I do not believe the sex offender registry laws have any deterrent to keep people from committing sexual abuse crimes — any more than the penalties for the sex crime itself deters,” Petersen said.
He added that’s true for any criminal law. As an obvious example, Petersen noted murder is illegal, but people still commit murder.
A study published in 2011 in the Journal of Law and Economics supports Petersen’s anecdotal observations.
Researchers J.J. Prescott at the University of Michigan and Jonah Rockoff at Columbia University determined laws that require sex offenders to register may, indeed, reduce the chances those people will offend again. However, the research also suggests when information about convicted sex offenders is disseminated to the public, offenders may, in fact, be more likely to commit additional crimes.
The Legislature in 2008 created the Sex Offender Research Council and charged it with research and policy analysis for sex offenses, offenders and prevention. Cowman is a member.
The Iowa Sex Offender Research Council cited Prescott and Rockoff’s study in its annual report in 2014 to the Iowa General Assembly.
“Prescott and Rockoff argue that public notification may increase stress on offenders, leading to destabilization in their community lives. The social consequence of public registration may reinforce the notion that changing behaviors would not improve offenders’ life circumstances,” according to the report.
Another researcher, Amanda Agan at the University of Chicago, examined more than 9,000 convicted sex offenders released from prison in 1994. Half were in states with a registry, half were not.
According to Agan’s comparison, those released in states with registration requirements were slightly more likely to offend again.
“Agan found little evidence to suggest that registries, or knowing where sex offenders lived or worked, improved public safety ‘either in practice or potential,'” according to the Iowa Sex Offender Research Council’s annual report.
According to the report, Agan’s research and other studies suggest that “registries largely serve a symbolic versus an instrumental purpose.”
Petersen, in his experience, finds that is true.
“I can’t really say (the registry) has helped locate the unknown person who may have committed a new crime,” he said.
“I know in a few major cases I have been involved with over the years, we have tracked down sex offenders in an area to determine if any had any involvement in the crime. None of those cases have been solved to date because we were able to develop a suspect from the sex offender registry database,” Petersen added.
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