Truth has been said.

Yeah, good luck putting the rogue genie back in the bottle. The AWA was a blatant and authoritarian POWER GRAB, not some magical “public safety” mechanism named after a dead kid who’s father was a bitter narcissist. that threatened to “name and shame” the senators that voted no or absent. The manner in which it passed was controversial to say the least, at night during a voice vote under suspension of rules to meet the 25th anniversary of Adam’s death.

Memorial laws pasted post-haste should be illegal.

I did not fight for this country to see 90-year-old men arrested over something they didn’t even know about—especially when they cooperated. The stress this puts on them, their wives, and their families is heartbreaking. At that age, that kind of stress can have devastating, even fatal, consequences. Is this really justice?

I fought to defend fair laws and the Constitution. Those protections are meant for every American citizen—even those society may consider the worst. Rights don’t disappear because someone is unpopular.

For decades, I’ve felt my own government has come after me. I’ve endured things that made me strong enough to survive behind enemy lines, make it through checkpoints without being captured, and face incredible hardship. But today, it feels like my own government in Florida views me with prejudice.

I’m not a predator, yet law enforcement comes to my door four times a year. I see that as harassment, not justice. I believe our government should protect constitutional rights, not intimidate people through repeated actions that feel unjustified.

I AM SORRY as a soldier this happened to you!

Dear Obvious Answers:

You NAILED it!

The problem is not your lack of tech savvy, Duane. The problem is that they arrested you under a law that they themselves do not understand and have not read.

Duane, This is awful and we certainly wish you the best of luck with your new case. To all reading this. Please take this as a lesson. Read, re-read, and re-read the weekly update we posted last week (https://floridaactioncommittee.org/fac-weekly-update-2026-07-21-at-risk-of-being-falsely-accused/) and pay special attention to this section, “If you are question by law enforcement (other than if you are on supervision and your PO is questioning you) you do not have to consent to a search of your home or property (including your cellphone). You do not have to answer questions without legal advice. You have the right to consult an attorney, and you have the right to remain silent until you do. And that’s something you should absolutely do! Even if you’re totally innocent, you should not assume that explaining everything immediately will resolve the situation. Statements made during stressful encounters can sometimes be misunderstood and by saying anything or voluntarily handing over your phone thinking you have nothing to hide, you are inviting law enforcement to “find something” during their fishing expedition.”

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, know your rights and exercise your rights.

I’m 90.5 years old and still can manage quite well. However, the internet had came in like gangbusters and I forgot to get on board with a lot of it. I didn’t grow up with it. The rules of 2005 under which I was first arrested only had maybe 6 laws. Since then over 50 or more modifications, updates, new laws have expanded those of that date. How can any of us remember all of them in order to obey perfectly each of them? Even yet, how can the police remember them any better? I feel like I’ve become home bound.

I registered last Thursday as I have done faithfully for the past 21 years and I was asked if I had reported all my internet identities. I had to scratch my head. I really wasn’t quite sure what I was asked. He had never asked me that ever before.

He asked permission to see my phone. I immediately gave it to him as I had nothing in my conscience to register any fear. He asked me twice if I would give him liberty to look into it. I said he could.

Then he said something, I wasn’t aware of any entrapment, if I had registered these identities that he claimed he found. I was confused, not knowing what to say. I responded that I only knew what was provided with the phone at purchase. I must have looked dumb because I was.

One thing he discovered had something to do with FaceTime and the other something to do with Cloud. I told him that I didn’t know about the two of them having to do with the internet. I thought I had previously reported to him on the remaining item. He then responded, “I see that you are not tech savvy,” and I responded that I wasn’t. I wasn’t knowledgeable about where I was to find that information.

He added those that he found on the form and I signed the registration form and left with thoughts that I was done for another six months.

On the following Thursday evening my 90 year old wife and I went to bed early and were both very soundly asleep when we heard tapping on the front door. It repeated a multiple times before I became awake enough to know what to do.

I found my pants and got up as quickly as possible and walked to respond to the noise. Two deputies were standing on the porch and at just about midnight put me into handcuffs saying they had a warrant for my arrest. I was not allowed to get properly dressed so they told my approaching wife to get some shoes and a shirt and took me to a car and drove me to the booking department at the sheriff’s office.

I couldn’t contact my wife until about noon and some inmates helped by persuading the officer on daytime shift to allow me to use a phone to call her. I couldn’t get her from the bonding office phone earlier probably because of not wearing her hearing devices. I worried because she would be confused as to what to do and so I explained what she needed to do. I was bonded out that afternoon by paying 10% of the $15000 bond. Now I have a court date on August 31.

What had I done that was a crime of endangerment against a child? I am guilty of ignorance of what to report and where to find it to report it on my registration form. I guess it was because I was too dumb. Not tech savvy enough.

You cannot “reevaluate” a hydra by asking the heads to vote on whether they should eat. The Adam Walsh Act isn’t a policy that failed to achieve its stated goals—it’s an economic engine working exactly as designed. The “evidence” has been in for decades, and it doesn’t matter. It was never meant to matter.

The people who would need to conduct this reevaluation—legislators, law enforcement, registry administrators, compliance officers, treatment providers, private prison contractors—are the primary beneficiaries of the system. You’re asking the payroll to vote on whether the payroll should exist. Police departments would hemorrhage funding and positions without registration enforcement. Politicians would lose their most reliable attack ads and fundraising hooks. An entire industry of monitoring, compliance, and “treatment” would collapse overnight.

Elections are won on this. Jobs are created by this. Budgets are justified by this. The collateral consequences aren’t unintended—they’re the point. A registrant who can’t work, can’t house himself, and can’t stabilize is a registrant who remains visible, taxable, and controllable indefinitely.

You can stack studies to the ceiling showing registries don’t work. You can document the family destruction, the homelessness, the recidivism rates that increase under these policies. None of it moves the needle because public safety was never the actual objective. Control and extraction were.

The Adam Walsh Act will not be “abolished” or “replaced with evidence-based policy” for the same reason we don’t see politicians campaigning to downsize the police departments that depend on it. The incentives are structurally inverted. Reevaluation is impossible when the evaluators are the ones cashing the checks.

Twenty years isn’t “long enough”—it’s just the beginning. The system is immutable because it was built to be.

Today, July 27, marks the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, one of the most sweeping pieces of federal criminal justice legislation affecting people convicted of sexual offenses in American history.

Named after six-year-old Adam Walsh, who was abducted and murdered in 1981, the Act was enacted with the stated goals of protecting children, improving information sharing among law enforcement agencies, and creating greater uniformity among state sex offender registration systems.[1] It established the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), expanded federal registration requirements, created incentives for states to adopt national standards, and imposed significant penalties for failing to register.[1]

While protecting children remains a goal shared by everyone, the question twenty years later is whether the Adam Walsh Act has accomplished that objective—or whether many of its most burdensome provisions have produced significant unintended consequences while failing to meaningfully improve public safety.

Over the past two decades, registration and notification laws have expanded dramatically. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are now subject to lengthy or lifetime registration requirements, public internet disclosure, residency restrictions, employment barriers, travel limitations, and extensive reporting obligations. For many individuals, these restrictions continue decades after completion of their criminal sentences, regardless of demonstrated rehabilitation, age, or individualized risk.[2,3]

The impact extends far beyond those required to register. Spouses, children, parents, and employers frequently experience the collateral consequences of registration through housing instability, economic hardship, social stigma, harassment, and forced relocation. Entire families often bear penalties for offenses they did not commit.[2,3]

Perhaps most importantly, a substantial body of research published since 2006 has called into question many of the assumptions underlying broad registration and public notification policies. Numerous studies have found little or no evidence that public registries or blanket residency restrictions significantly reduce sexual recidivism or improve community safety.[4–7] Instead, researchers consistently identify stable housing, employment, family support, treatment participation, and successful community reintegration as among the strongest protective factors associated with reducing reoffending.[2,3,8]

Research has also shown that individuals convicted of sexual offenses are not a homogeneous group. Recidivism risk varies widely based on offense characteristics, age, treatment participation, criminal history, and numerous other factors. Modern actuarial risk assessment instruments have demonstrated that individualized assessments are substantially more accurate than one-size-fits-all classification systems based primarily on the offense of conviction.[8,9]

Despite this growing body of evidence, legislative responses have frequently continued to expand registration requirements rather than refine them. Many jurisdictions have adopted increasingly restrictive measures despite limited empirical support for their effectiveness.[4,5,7] At the same time, maintaining expansive registry systems requires substantial expenditures by federal, state, and local governments for monitoring, enforcement, compliance, and administration.[1]

The constitutional implications have also become increasingly significant. Courts throughout the country continue to grapple with challenges involving due process, ex post facto principles, excessive punishment, free speech, parental rights, and the practical burdens imposed by ever-expanding registration requirements. Although many provisions have survived judicial review under existing precedent, others have been struck down or limited, reflecting continuing legal debate over the appropriate balance between public safety and constitutional protections.[10]

Protecting children and respecting constitutional rights are not mutually exclusive goals. Effective public safety policy should be grounded in evidence rather than fear, individualized risk rather than broad assumptions, and rehabilitation rather than perpetual punishment. The best available research increasingly supports policies that focus resources on individuals who present the greatest risk while creating meaningful opportunities for successful reintegration for everyone else.[2–9]

Twenty years after the Adam Walsh Act became law, it is appropriate to evaluate its legacy honestly. Laws should not be immune from reconsideration simply because they were enacted with good intentions or carry the name of a tragic victim. Like any public policy, they should be measured by whether they achieve their intended objectives without imposing unnecessary human, constitutional, or financial costs.

Twenty years is enough time to assess whether the Adam Walsh Act has fulfilled its promises. The evidence accumulated over the past two decades suggests that many of its core provisions warrant fundamental reconsideration. It is time to replace broad, one-size-fits-all registration policies with approaches grounded in science, fairness, individualized risk assessment, and the principles of justice that strengthen—not weaken—our communities.

References

1. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587 (2006).
https://www.congress.gov/109/plaws/publ248/PLAW-109publ248.pdf

2. Levenson JS, Hern AL. Sex Offender Residence Restrictions: Unintended Consequences and Community Reentry. Justice Research and Policy. 2007;9(1):59-73.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3818/JRP.9.1.2007.59

3. Ackerman AR, Harris AJ, Levenson JS, Zgoba KM. Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood? A Descriptive Analysis of Individuals on Public Sex Offender Registries. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. 2011;34(3):149-159.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160252711000357

4. Prescott JJ, Rockoff JE. Do Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Affect Criminal Behavior? Journal of Law and Economics. 2011;54(1):161-206.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/658485

5. Zgoba KM, Veysey BM, Dalessandro M. An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Community Notification and Registration: Do the Best Intentions Predict the Best Practices? Justice Quarterly. 2010;27(5):667-691.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820903357761

6. Levenson JS, Cotter LP. The Impact of Sex Offender Residence Restrictions: 1,000 Feet from Danger or One Step from Absurd? International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. 2005;49(2):168-178.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306624X04271301

7. Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse (ATSA). Adult Sex Offender Registration and Notification: Policy Statement. 2017.
https://www.atsa.com/policy-and-legislative

8. Hanson RK, Bourgon G, Helmus L, Hodgson S. The Principles of Effective Correctional Treatment Also Apply to Sexual Offenders: A Meta-Analysis. Criminal Justice and Behavior. 2009;36(9):865-891.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0093854809338545

9. Hanson RK, Morton-Bourgon KE. The Accuracy of Recidivism Risk Assessments for Sexual Offenders: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Assessment. 2009;21(1):1-21.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-02011-001

10. Does #1–5 v. Snyder, 834 F.3d 696 (6th Cir. 2016).
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca6/15-1536/15-1536-2016-08-25.html

11. SMART Office, U.S. Department of Justice. Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
https://smart.ojp.gov/sorna

I second your prayer Nan.