Will someone please correct this journalist?!?
Yuma, Arizona’s NBC News 11 just posted a horribly misleading article titled, “Released to Reoffend: News 11 investigates the sex offender next door.”
The irresponsible news story makes the absurdly inaccurate statement that “Statistics show 99% of child sex offenders reoffend, yet they are still being released into our community.”
The statistic allegedly comes from an organization called “Amberly’s place” Diane Umphress, who started the family advocacy center, Amberly’s Place in Yuma, 20 years ago. says that “It’s grown into an empire” Of course it’s grown into an empire if you feed people false statistics and scare them into supporting you.
The same story quotes some politician, Congressman Paul Gosar, (R) Arizona who said, “It defies common sense that these offenders receive light sentences, and are often released into society when the data shows high risks of recidivism.”
Released sex-offenders are less likely to be rearrested than other released prisoners, according to new data released by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorsp9yfu0514.pdf). The commonly held “frightening and high” myth has long ago been debunked (https://reason.com/2018/11/14/the-frightening-and-high-factoid-about-s/) and we know sex offenders have a LOW rate of recidivism.
Stories like this are responsible for the irrational and ineffective policies that govern persons who have sexually offended. It shows how bullshit statistics perpetuated by a self-interested organization are regurgitated by irresponsible journalists who mislead the public and lawmakers into passing irrational and ineffective laws.
Please take a moment to correct those responsible:
Diane Umphress, Amberly’s Place: dianeumphress@amberlysplace.com
Jenny Day, journalist, KYMA News 11: [email protected]
Ernesto Romero, KYMA News Director: [email protected]
Congresman Dr. Paul Gosar: https://gosar.house.gov/contact/
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Some agencies report a violation of registry compliance arrests as a re-offense : IE another sex offense.
When someone gets arrested it is rarely reported on and if so, they do not go into that person’s past much. That is unless it is a sex offender.
I see all the time someone who is on the news for say getting into an altercation with their neighbor over a noise complaint but that story is overshadowed by them saying ” A convicted horrible predatory high risk sex offender was just re-arrested.”
* No indication they were arrested because the neighbor claimed the offender threatened them, making people think they were arrested for another sex related offense.
Also if any other offender violates their probation, it is not a story but when someone on the registry does it is front page news.
The news justifies and sensationalizes stories regardless if it destroys someone’s family or invades their privacy. I once saw a report sitting outside a middle school waiting to interview a teen about their Father being arrested.
I hate to say this but I feel many reporters are lower on the totem pole than most sex offenders in my book.
Well said!! Such great points you have made.
I know that at least 2 members of FAC have sent emails to the recipients listed above. For those of you who do have email, please send something. It does not have to be long or elaborate or filled with research. Plenty of that has already been sent. It helps a lot if you just let them know that their information is all false and has caused a lot of damage for registrants who are now law-abiding citizens of this country.
I could not get my email to go through to the Representative. I tried contact information at his website in Arizona, but it would not let me send an email to him because I was “out of his district”. Maybe someone can find an email address to use. He really needs to get his facts straight.
I also sent my email to [email protected]. This is the contact to notify NBC News in New York City of incorrect information in their news reports.
Email sent. Short and not so sweet. I also sent a copy to the nbcnews email above. Thank you.
Can we send this to our sister organizations and ask them to also respond??
Trust me, our FAC leadership is working behind the scenes on all of this. Our leadership does so much that most of us never know about. I am out on this website all the time communicating with people about the things I do, but what I do is nothing compared to what our leadership people are doing. I am finding that they are always one step ahead of us in dealing with all of these matters. Their knowledge level is tremendous; they have given their whole life to the causes of FAC; they put in more hours working on our cause than any of the rest of us do; and they have donated a lot of their own money for our cause.
Our leadership team really needs our help in the way of more volunteers. You will find that they will work with you and understand that we know basically nothing when we start volunteering. They never expect you to do more than you have time to do. They always understand if you tell them I just cannot do that or do not have enough time to do it.
You do not have to be a writer or a speaker. The leadership team will work with you to find what you would be most comfortable doing.
Please consider offering your services. You do not have to figure out what services that might be. They will help you figure it out.
The NARSOL affiliate in Arizona is AZERSOL:
http://azrsol.org/
It looks like their website hasn’t been updated since August [with June news], but I emailed them the link to this post nonetheless.
Thanks – There are some active affiliates in AZ. not sure about how active their affiliate org is. We should get it active though. If things in AZ are not as bad as they are here, just wait… a few more stories like this one and the laws will start changing based on a false statistic. Don’t believe it will happen? Think Smith v. Doe!
This is why I appreciate our FAC leadership so much. If we start losing them, I am not seeing any replacements out there, and we will start to look like some of the NARSOL affiliates in certain other states. Just look at how well our website is kept up along with all of their other duties.
All members of congress are subject to ethics complaints for these types of things.
https://oce.house.gov/contact-us/make-a-submission
I would love for all of us to send in a report on this representative, but does ignorance constitute an unethical behavior?
Nice. I like that. Every time that a pandering, lying politician even mentions Registries, an ethics complaint ought to be filed. They are constant violators of being ethical humans.
As long as Registries exist, I’m going to make people sick about hearing it. They are going to hear about their harassment and crimes every day.
Just like my grandma said, years ago. There are big black lies like the ones being told by certain people in our government right now, then there are the little white lies like when wife asks if you think she’s gained some weight in the last couple of weeks, then….there are statistics.
The good news is that she is getting absolutely hammered on Twitter for this. 149 comments, of which 148 are negative, at last count.
But she has not responded yet, and we cannot rely exclusively on Twitter to correct her. At least there, NO ONE is buying the 99% figure.
Also, the offending statistic on amberlysplace.com cannot be found or has been removed.
All good to hear. I am seeing more and more the strength in numbers.