More than 800,000 people are now on the nationwide list of registered sex offenders, a number that has grown dramatically in recent years and continues to climb.
Most of them are on the list for life, carrying the stigma and onerous restrictions of a registered sex offender with no chance of ever getting off the list. All offenders are treated the same, whether they are first-time, misdemeanor offender for, say, indecent exposure or serial rapists.
That stigma created by the public listing has, in a way, made it much harder for all offenders — even less dangerous ones — to become productive citizens. They are targeted for vigilante attacks and unable to get jobs or find a place to live.
Those facts have led defense attorneys and judges across the country to call for changes in way the lists are made and used and to allow, in some cases, an offender to be removed from the list after a period of time, most often 10 years.
Those recommendations include treating offenders differently based on the crime for which they have been convicted, modifying residency and public place restrictions as well as establishing a process for an offender to have the possibility of being removed from the list.
They are sensible ideas, do not endanger the public and need to be considered by state legislatures and enacted.
The national database, federal officials say, improves tracking of sex offenders, especially those who have moved from their home state, and allows investigators to more quickly identify potential sex-crime suspects and find those who have fled their states.
There is no question that the sex offenders registries have been valuable tools for law enforcement and, as a source of information, to the community since the federal laws requiring state offender registries were enacted in 1994 and 1996.
But, as court cases across the country challenge aspects of the registry on a state by state basic, it is clear that those 20-year-old laws need some reforms before the registry and judicial treatment of sex offenders becomes the same kind of tangled mess as drug enforcement and punishment.
The bottom line in the National Registry is how many crimes has it actually solved? Less than a fraction of a percent! So the registry is not the sex crime fighter it was meant to be. Its another bad governmental solution that in retrospect has never actually worked and improved Society.
Florida has cherry-picked the AWA by only adopting, and enhancing its most punitive clauses. Essentially in Florida, everyone on the registry is a Tier III. There is little, and getting smaller every year, distinction between Offender and Predator.
This editorial starts out reasonably enough, then takes a turn into the garbage heap by advocating for states to adopt provisions of the AWA.
Sex offender registries don’t need to be reworked. They need to be abolished.
An Establishment of Force has developed. Whose purpose is to find, convict, and punish. Any and All Missteps form the Straight and Narrow. While making All believe the most important thing is a Background Check, not the Heart of Individuals.