Bo, YES 10000% please contact info@floridaactioncommittee.org or our Executive Director, anita@floridaactioncommittee.org and let her know you would like to volunteer. This is a role we desperately need and behind the scenes is totally fine.

Your article was excellent—thoughtful, courageous, and genuinely important. I’d like to explore the idea of working behind the scenes, at my own pace, to help bring outside pressure on this issue. Is that something that would be welcomed by FAC? Too often, we end up speaking only to the choir, when what’s really needed is breaking the shame barrier so the broader public can finally see the constitutional and human rights problems built into the current system.
Unfortunately, I wonder if Florida is hopeless. Unless attention and pressure can be brought on the state legislature, I do not see much push back by voters or politicians on any consideration for the former offender population. I wrote to Governor DeSantos and got no response. But there is a greater population out there that might begin to see beyond their prejudices.
I also wonder if FAC might want to reach out under their letterhead to various human rights organizations to see whether there is interest in forming a coalition of groups with voters willing to endorse or lend their names to coordinated approaches with news outlets and government agencies. From what I can tell, there is currently no strategy and no organized effort to build the kind of base needed to confront this ongoing malfeasance. A letter to an editor staffed with multiple backers might carry more weight than a single unaffiliated author.
It is wrong that the registry sweeps in so many minor, nonviolent offenses.
It is wrong that details of people with Tier One and Two offenses are made public and exposed to harassment and vigilantism.
It is wrong in principle as Cruel and Unusual Punishment that administrative technicalities are treated as major violations.
It violates in principle the Privacy Act of 1974 that federal agencies—whether the State Department or the U.S. Marshals Service—impose restrictions that effectively limit free international travel.
It is Constitutionally wrong that the registry continues to dictate where people can live, work, and travel when the government already has fingerprints, DNA, addresses, and every modern online tool needed to locate any citizen at any time.
It is wrong that much of the federal “surge” is driven not by their charter of trafficking but by low level entrapment operations conducted by well-meaning local agencies using dubious methods and overtime funded by the federal government.
It is wrong that overzealous sheriffs are ignorant of their oath of office when denying citizens emergency shelter during life threatening storms and posting signs on the lawns of those on the registry to mark them publicly.
It is Constitutionally wrong that some city councils are denying access to city halls, blocking individuals from running for elected office, or restricting entry to fast food restaurants, parks, and other public spaces.
It is wrong that driving licenses and passports are marked with a scarlet letter that stigmatizes citizens.
It is wrong that voting rights have been stripped of people who have completed their sentences.

The result of a late-night vote by Congressmen eager to rush home for the holidays has become an invasive, constitutionally questionable, $700 million to $2 billion dollar per year decentralized program that academics suggest doesn’t to what it is supported to do, namely diminish sex offenses nationwide. It controls a population that has the lowest recidivism rate next to murderers, creates homelessness, dehumanizes a large segment of America, and goes way beyond reducing sex trafficking.
In short, this article deserves to be seen beyond our own community. Would you and FAC be open to having pieces like this forwarded—under a FAC letterhead—to places such as the Civil Rights Division, the Attorney General’s office, DHS, the New York Times Opinion section, or other newsrooms and agencies that should be paying attention?

It’s neither a deterrent, nor a Magic 8 ball. The majority of people forced to register are “one and done” first timer’s that did something implusive and stupid. NOT because they didn’t think they wouldn’t get caught.

The registry doesn’t even give parents a so-called “informed decision.” That’s a huge crock of BS! The moment ANYONE sees your info online, you’re automatically going to be shunned and snubbed. No “informed secision” -making needed for reactionary, tribalistic behhavior!

Correct. Every sex offender here proves the registry did not deter them from committing a sex offender crime. They did the crime despite the registry.

I have been writing to reporters and editors when those stories run and have tried to encourage others to do the same. I also write legislators who write these silly bills. Admittedly,I get blown off most of the time. But agree that preaching to the choir doesn’t accomplish much.

Contact info@ and let them know you want to help.

I would love to help. Do have one tampa bay journalist I was going to do a peice with before I moved last time on homelessness and call out hernando. I will always be now on Florida’s registry being got second offense I can help even if I moved out of state. Have contacts in military too