The most common misconception is that everyone on the list is a predator who poses a substantial risk to strangers.
Sexual predators are in your neighborhoods and parks! This is the major takeaway from recent news reports about Hawaii’s sex offender registry. It makes for sensational copy, but it overlooks and ignores several serious problems with sex offender registries.
Hawaii News Now recently revealed that 28 sex offenders on Hawaii’s registry listed public parks as their residence. The headline read, “Dozens of sex predators registered as living in Oahu parks.” The reports have generated understandable public angst, especially about children’s safety.
We believe it is reasonable for our elected representatives to address this situation, as Scott Nishimoto has pledged to do. But the outrage triggered by this news should be tempered by consideration of empirical research which shows that sex offender registries are often poor public policy. They are misleading, they do little to promote public safety, and they can even increase crime. Rather than perpetuate myths about super-predator sex offenders, responsible journalists should report some well-established facts.
Perhaps the most common misconception about sex offender registries is that everyone on the list is a predator who poses a substantial risk to strangers. The very term “sexual predator” conjures up images of a stranger-pedophile kidnapping, raping, and murdering children. In reality, the vast majority of sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by persons well known to the victim’s family.
Similarly, the term “sex offender” reflects an extremely wide range of offenses, from urinating in public to consensual sex between teenagers to soliciting a prostitute to the rape and murder of a child. This is hardly a coherent category, for these behaviors have very different causes, consequences, and levels of seriousness.
Also lost in this capacious label is the fact that most offenders on registries in the U.S. have been convicted of sex crimes of lesser severity. And then there is the problem of inaccuracies in the registries, which have led to miscarriages of justice and egregious acts of vigilantism.
Another myth about registries is that they are necessary for public safety, because sex offenders purportedly have a high likelihood of reoffending, and because they are believed to be highly resistant to treatment. But these premises are also untrue. Some persons who register do present a high risk of reoffending, but most sex offenders are no more likely to reoffend than other criminal offenders. In fact, some sex offenders have a lower risk of recidivism. What is more, treatment programs work for many sex offenders, including some child sexual abusers, while the registries themselves produce no reduction in recidivism.
Sex offender registries may even increase recidivism because of the “collateral consequences” of criminal punishment. Incarceration can be one result of criminal conviction, but other consequences are often more obdurate and insidious. A criminal conviction can exclude an individual from social welfare programs such as food stamps, income assistance, and public housing. A criminal record may also mean that one’s job application goes directly in the trash.
And people on sex offender registries are subject to harassment and physical assault. In a Kentucky study of registered sex offenders, 47 percent of respondents reported that they had been harassed, and 16 percent said they had suffered physical assault.
Other collateral consequences of being on a registry include loss of job, damaged relations with family and friends, and being denied housing. We bring attention to these consequences not to gin up sympathy for sex offenders but to suggest that registries make it more difficult (sometimes impossible) for some convicts to reintegrate into society, which in turn raises their risk of reoffending.
A tiered system of classification based on future danger, not past convictions, would go a long way in reducing “predator panic.” Of course that’s too much effort for Floriduh oafficials. They know a tiered system would reduce their bloated federal funding.
Massachusetts has got one thing right:
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/massachusetts/articles/2018-08-01/court-board-needs-proof-in-sex-offender-reclassification
Fortunately few of those designated ‘predators’ in Florida are really predators. But the designation does help to validate the need for the registry and long-term employment for those who have the ‘vaunted tasks’ of maintaining it.
I agree Capt. This is finally an educated write up of the subject but unfortunately these type articles are far to few and usually in obscure places in papers where few people see them. When is a major newspaper going to put truthful and factual write ups of the subject on its front page ,or a popular tv program going to air the facts, instead of biased unfactual garbage.
Please remember that all sex offenders are not predators and that in Florida all sex offenders who are designated as ‘predators’ are not in fact predators. The so-called ‘justice system’ uses a bureaucratic definition for predators that can cause some to end up so designated without facts to back up the designation. I know!
Captain…..
Sir, Thank you for you post. It is filled with truth; unlike the Florida Judicial System. You & I are in the same boat, so to say (no pun intended).
It’s great that Honolulu Civil Beat recognized that Hawaii News Now was unfairly sensationalizing the problem of homeless sex offenders. However, if a gang of thugs went out and killed some of these registered offenders, I would bet that Hawaii News Now would face absolutely no consequences. I note that their article could site absolutely ZERO incidents of crime committed by these 28 homeless citizens. Would it really be that hard to help them with jobs and housing? Hawaii has the 18th highest per capita income ($46,034 in 2014) in the U.S., And yet has the HIGHEST per capita rate of homelessness in the country. Only the District of Columbia has a higher rate, but it is not a state. Spreading hate and fear does nothing to address the problem.
I plead out and got straight probation with the special conditions in 2000. I was early terminated in 2006. My life actually got worse around 2010. That just happens to coincide with when people started :broadcasting” the registry for fun and profit. I think most of these e-maisl go to junk now in my system, but I am sure that many of you have gotten the spam e0mail saying “CHILD PREDATORS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!! CHECK NOW!!!” As we well know, the percentage of predators on the registry and on the street is quite low even with the ease of classifying someone as a predator. So where do all of these “child predators” come from? For a number of us convicted before say 2005 who live in semi-sane towns, it is the card carrying members of the general public that have been our problem for the most part. It is only very recently that the Bookies have managed to get Rick Scott to sign crazy stuff. Prior to that, we only had to deal with guys like Victor Crist.
I found it interesting in the article that all types of sex crimes including rape and child sexual abuse rates were declining during the time 1990s when news media decided to start sensationalizing it causing the public to become fearful. Politicians picked up on this fear for there own financial gain. The sor has done nothing but make people stressed out and fearful of something that has existed for thousands of years and is in fact less of a problem than most times in the past. The public is so gullible and stupid.