By Sandy , , , In 2000, in a case named Troxel v. Granville, the Supreme Court of the United States described the interest of parents in caring for their children to be, “. . .  perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.”

And indeed, for the vast majority of Americans, the right to live with and parent our own

children is taken for granted. However, that right is subjugated for those found to have harmed their children, and for a smaller sub-set in one state, it is denied completely for those who have done nothing at all to harm their own children.

While several states have codified prohibitions and restrictions on persons with sexual offense convictions in regard to their own children, they appear to be tied to stringent requirements—narrowly tailored–and/or have built-in pathways to ending the prohibition. Apparently Alabama’s alone goes furthest. In Alabama, one conviction for any sexual offense involving a child, including people whose offense involved no contact with a child, renders many parents being barred for life from living with their own children as long as they are minors.

A man named Bruce Henry challenged that law as being unconstitutional.

In 2013, Mr. Henry had pled guilty to possession of child sexual abuse material. He served five years, relapsed in 2019 by viewing pornography while on probation, and his supervised probation was increased. He was clearly in the demographic that would place him under Ala. Code § 15-20A-11(d).

In August 2021 a child was born to Henry and his wife. Before the year was out, he had brought a 14^th amendment constitutional challenge against the sheriff and the county attorney of his county and the attorney general of the state of Alabama.

The case, Henry v. Abernathy, would go through three courts with each one finding essentially the same thing: The law was found to be unconstitutional because it is not sufficiently narrowly tailored. While lower courts found this to be the case on its face, the final decision is that it is unconstitutional as  applied to Mr. Henry.

But the prohibition is breached. Precedent is set.

Upon the last decision September 29, 2026, a journalist with the Alabama Courthouse News Service reached out to NARSOL—(National Assc. for Rational Sexual Offense Laws)–for a comment, which he published unedited: “Any law or practice that keeps parents from parenting their own children when no crime has been committed against those children is not only unconstitutional but also cruel. It causes harm not only to the children and parents involved but to society as a whole as it undermines the basic structure of society–the family.”

NARSOL first wrote about the case in May of 2025.

NARSOL is thankful for courts that are willing to speak out concerning laws and practices that are unconstitutional and sincerely hopes that this decision is but the beginning in Alabama and indeed the Eleventh Circuit.

We are grateful for journalists and media outlets that still report the news objectively, showing both sides of an issue without bias or editorializing.

We are especially thankful for Mr. Henry and his persistence and determination to gain that most basic of rights, the right to fully parent his own child.

According to U.S. Laws, “The case could have far-reaching effects on similar laws in other states. Legal experts will be watching closely to see how this decision influences future cases involving sex offenders and parental rights.”

They will be watching—and so will NARSOL.

The post “The oldest fundamental interest” first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . What is going on at Pawleys Island Baptist Church and school in South Carolina? For anyone who follows the topics of interest to our community, it would have been impossible to miss the headlines and videos starting the week of July 13, 2026, and intensifying every day for, as of this writing, almost two weeks.

A teacher at the school checked the South Carolina sex offender registry and recognized the church and school custodian as a registered sex offender. Another teacher reported to the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Department that Warren Perry, the registrant in question, was working in a children’s school; the sheriff’s department investigated, verified that Mr. Perry was in violation of his probation conditions, and subsequently arrested him on July 14. Whether his status was that of volunteer or of employee is unclear.

Mr. Perry had started volunteering/working at the church and school in

2021, possibly as early as 2020, which was the same year he committed the crime for which he was charged and convicted in 2023. He was convicted of one count of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. In South Carolina, this offense translates to possessing or viewing child pornography, now called CSAM—child sexual abuse material. Generally. each count equals one picture or image. In South Carolina law, a minor is defined as anyone under 18 years of age.

Perry was on probation; his conditions specified that he was not allowed to be in the proximity of children, and he knew it. He had probation’s permission to be at the church, but “Triple P”—Parole, Probation, Pardon—did not know about the school—almost without doubt a deliberate deceit on Mr. Perry’s part.

Arguably, what is with a great deal of doubt is that the church’s minister, Pastor Don Williams, his wife Ginny, and former school director Jennifer Howard knew about and colluded with the deception. This is the contention of Sheriff Carter Weaver and Georgetown County solicitor Jimmy Richardson when they arrested them on the 20^th, along with Perry, and charged them with a barrage of offenses; it is also the contention of the multiple civil suits brought in the case.

Pastor Williams, his wife, and the school director resigned July 17.

The lawsuits started immediately, with the first, filed on the 17^th, being a class action suit asking for 25 million dollars. Three more were filed on the 21^st. They claim negligence, collusion, putting children at risk, and at least one claims a child was molested by Perry in 2022. There almost seems to be a domino effect in play.

This is not uncommon when a celebrity or person in a high position is arrested for a sexual crime; new victims come forth daily. When victims are adults, this is understandable. A lone victim could be reluctant to make such a charge against a movie star, a state senator, or even a local popular figure, but once someone else has had the courage to do so, other victims see that they are not alone. This is akin to what created the “me too” movement.

It is difficult however, is it not, to apply this to the molestation of children? If your child was the victim of such an assault, would you wait for others to come forward before you did? If a child was molested at the school in 2022 by Perry, why is this not part of the criminal charges against Perry? Why is it brought up only as the basis of a civil suit?

So what is going on at Pawley Island’s Baptist Church? It is still very much of an active investigation, but several factors are indisputable:

• Perry began volunteering or working around the church and school in 2020 or 2021.
• In 2023 he pled guilty to a sexual crime committed in 2020; he received a sentence of probation and was placed on the sex offender registry.
• The conditions of his probation expressly forbade his being in proximity of children.
• He did not tell his probation officer that the church included a day-school for pre-k and kindergarten age children.

What does this mean for our advocacy community? Whenever a registrant reoffends or violates the terms of probation, especially when it becomes a high-profile case, the risk is increased for negative consequences. Some one in our legal community opines that whatever progress registrants have made in gaining acceptance in in-person faith communities has been, not only wiped out, but set back twenty years due to this one situation.

Additionally, many bad bills have been proposed and quickly passed in the wake of circumstances such as this one. South Carolina advocates need to be prepared for proposed bad legislation related to this specific case come January 2027.

The post What is going on at Pawleys Island church? first appeared on NARSOL.

NARSOL has received sad news. Our dear friend and one of our faithful and extremely competent gatekeepers, Ken Roberts, died Sunday morning, June 12, from complications related to congestive heart failure. Ken was 74.

In 2012, Ken was “on paper,” on probation. His first two probation officers were very strict in following the rules. So was he, by necessity. His third PO started out strict but over time realized that Ken wasn’t much of a threat and loosened some of the restrictions. Nevertheless, according to Ken, “I sort of went into a cocoon that I’m slowly crawling out of.”

Ken was reading the “Loving a Sex Offender” thread in the now-defunct PrisonTalk website and noticed several positive references to RSOL (later NARSOL). He checked out the national RSOL website and started following its work. After a while, he shared a couple of its brochures and the URL for its website with his PO and asked if it was okay to volunteer with them. His PO checked it out and said he thought it was a good thing to advocate for for him to advocate for his situation and gave him permission to proceed.

We are so very thankful that he did.

After correspondence with Brenda Jones, Ken was encouraged to be a state contact for his state and in 2015 became the official RSOL contact for Mississippi. That position asks the person filling it to become familiar with the state’s registry and sexual offense laws; the support that is available for jobs, housing, counseling, and legal assistance; keep up on current legislative activity that affects registrants; and communicate with people in the state to help their situation and answer questions as needed.

Later that year, Ken filled in for Tim Burgess, the then-gatekeeper for RSOL, while he went on vacation. Upon his return, Tim hinted he was looking for another person to do the gatekeeping job, and Ken decided to help out with that as well as remaining the Mississippi state contact.

What is a gatekeeper? The gatekeeper is the primary contact and liaison between an organization and people seeking information or help. Communication can be by phone or email. If there is a state contact in the person’s state, the gatekeeper usually will refer the correspondence to the state contact to follow up. If the gatekeeper doesn’t know the state or what the person’s issue is, he usually calls or emails the person back to better understand their needs.

“Part of the gatekeeper’s role is to be a good listener,” Ken related. “Often people just need to vent or share their story, and we are there to give help when we can, to give a sympathetic ear, and to give encouragement.”

Ken has been a gatekeeper ever since. He held the dual role of gatekeeper and Mississippi state contact until he had medical issues that made it necessary to drop one of the two positions. He decided to vacate the state contact position and maintain the gatekeeper role. Fortunately, we have had some other people step in to take the Mississippi position.

“It’s been gratifying to be a gatekeeper, to help people who are dealing with the many issues the registry places on them,” Ken said. “It’s enjoyable to talk or correspond with people in every corner of the nation. Maybe we can’t solve their situation, but we can at least let them know there are people who care and understand where they’re coming from.”

Ken was as good at doing that as anyone we know. He listened. He was patient. He was non-judgmental. He truly cared. He was a dear, dear friend to NARSOL, and we feel his loss greatly, but primarily, we are more appreciative than words can convey for the time he so generously gave to us.

The post A dear friend has died first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . Vigilantes killing individuals required to be on a sex offender registry is nothing new. The first recorded case we found was in Utah in 2005. Since then these murders have occurred in Maine (a double murder), in Washington State (twice, both double murders), in Nevada, in California (at least four times), Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and at least another half-dozen states.

A significant number were cases where the murderers used the state’s registry to identify, locate, and slaughter their victims. One of the most horrific was when a couple, Jeremy and Christine Moody, tracked Charles Parker and, with gun and knife, slaughtered him and his wife Gretchen in South Carolina in 2013.

For shock value,  however, and horror verging on disbelief, it is difficult

to imagine anything more gruesome as what occurred on or about May 23, 2026, when Kian Neal slaughtered Robert Locke in Tennessee. Neal, who had been abused as a child, now–at 18 years of age–said that he decided killing someone on the registry would bring him justice. According to his statement, he used the registry to locate the registrant who lived closest to him, went to his home armed with a hammer, saw, and large trash bags, and beat Mr. Locke with the hammer repeatedly. When that was not totally effective, he choked him with the plastic trash bag ties.

Mr. Neal said that he then dismembered the body with the saw, put the body, hammer, and saw into the bags, and put them in a dumpster. Surveillance tape shows him loading two large garbage bags into a dumpster on May 23. Law officers have searched a landfill for the remains; they have not been recovered as of this posting.

This story is so fraught with tragedies that it is difficult to know where to begin.

It is a horrible tragedy that Kian Neal, for whatever reason, received no or so little help or therapy after his childhood trauma that he felt taking a man’s life would bring him justice.

It is a tragedy that Mr. Locke’s family, who reported him missing in late May, suffered the loss of their loved one in such an horrific manner and that, as of yet, they have no body to lay to rest.

It is a tragedy that persons who commit sexual crimes and are held accountable through our justice system are then marked, often for life, by public sex offender registration.

It is a tragedy that Tennessee, as well as the vast majority of other states, chooses to make the physical addresses of registrants available to the public in spite of the many, many known instances of vigilante attacks on the property, the homes, and the registered persons and their family members.

This all speaks to our justice system being broken, an utterly failed system when it comes to the handling of not only the persons who commit sexual crimes but also the persons harmed by them. For all of the millions spent on sex offender registries since their inception, they do not do what is needed.

They do not protect new victims from sexual crime; a very high percentage of all new such offenses are committed by first-time offenders. They offer no healing for previous victims. They impede, and are actually in conflict with, both private and state-sponsored rehabilitation mandates and programs.

And they facilitate vigilante activity against registrants. They allow disturbed men—and a few women—such as Kian Neal and others who have come before him to utilize the registry like a road map, locating and murdering persons they do not know out of some sense of twisted justice.

This particular situation has a relatively easy albeit temporary fix.

Whatever value is believed to be present by this information would still be accomplished with listings such as “500 block of Crawford Ave.” This would not stop vigilantes completely, but it would make them work a little harder to locate their victims. It could save some lives.

A “fix” of a more permanent nature will be much more difficult. That will require a revamping of sex offense legislation across the nation to reflect what addresses the needs of, not just victims, not just offenders, but society as a whole.

See the letter to Governor Lee here.

The post NARSOL asks TN. governor to remove registrant addresses from online registry first appeared on NARSOL.

NARSOL’s 18^th conference hit the ground running Friday morning, June 26, and didn’t slow down for two and a half days.

With powerball speakers such as Catherine Carpender and Miriam Auckerman, the

deeply moving stories of Amber Vlangas and Shawn Barrera-Leaf, and the brave advocacies of Peter Dross and Grant Hill, the conference attendees met with inspiration and encouragement at every turn.

The workshops enhanced the major presentations, completing and reinforcing what came to be recognized as the unifying theme for this conference: It takes all of us, and together we can!

The Friday night awards banquet was a delight. The meal was  good southern-cooking; the space in which to relax and enjoy the evening and each other was needed and appreciated; speaker Amber Vlangas moved us to tears, and MC Robin Vanderwall kept the program moving, culminating in the presentation of the year’s awards and the drawings for the raffle prizes.

The winners of the NARSOL 2026 awards are:

NARSOL Advocate of the Year: Shawn Barrera-Leaf

Paul E. Shannon Lifetime Achievement Award: Cindy Prizio

Braveheart Award: Grant Hill

Hawthorne Award: Catherine Carpenter

Hawthorne Award: Guy Hamilton-Smith

NARSOL Excellence in Service Award: Craig McAlexander

NARSOL Excellence in Leadership Award: Stephen Herto

Most of all, NARSOL thanks our wonderful attendees without whom there would be no conference. We are appreciative of your loyalty, your advocacy, and your dedication. Thank you!

The post NARSOL’s 18th conference is a wrap first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . Is there anything more despicable than a scam? Schemes that use fear to extract money from those already living in fear go a step beyond despicable. Scams targeting people required to be listed on sex offender registries have worked their terror for longer than ten years, and they show no tendency of ending.

NARSOL warned registrants and the general public about this odious, illegal activity as soon as we became aware of it, and our efforts were eventually joined by those of law enforcement.

The scams have never stopped, but we have recently been notified of increasingly sophisticated efforts.

These scams can vary to some degree, but they will involve some variation of this: A person representing himself as someone in authority in law enforcement calls people on the registry and tells them that they are deficit in something regarding their registration, probation, or a new law; that a warrant has been or will be issued; and that he can take payment and stop the warrant.

This is what you need to know.

Law enforcement will not telephone you with notices that you are delinquent in some area of registry.

They will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER ask for money over the telephone.

The scammers will sound totally professional and knowledgeable and real, but they are NOT.

Here is what you should do: HANG UP.

However, if you don’t, if you, for whatever reason, think he might be legitimate, ask for his name and tell him that you will call him back at your registry office. Then HANG UP, call your registry office, and tell them you are calling to report a potential scam.

For more thorough information, including some law enforcement warnings, here are a few of the previously printed pieces. Some of the links within some of the pieces may no longer work.

https://www.narsol.org/2023/11/law-enforcement-paying-attention-to-sex-offender-scams/

https://www.narsol.org/2021/08/be-sure-you-know-about-sex-offender-scams/

https://www.narsol.org/2021/06/new-scam-warning-out-of-virginia/

https://www.narsol.org/2020/02/beware-of-scams-targeting-those-on-the-registry/

The post Scams targeting people listed on sex offender registries are alive and well in the U.S. first appeared on NARSOL.

Updated 4/23/2026; originally published 2/4/2025 at narsol.org as Sex offender residency restrictions: bad, bad public policy.”

By Sandy . . . Residency restrictions for persons required to register as sexual offenders are often enacted for no reason other than neighboring towns have implemented them. They spread like wildfire, and like that

destructive force, they wreak their own form of havoc, making it more and more difficult for registrants to find decent housing for themselves and their families. This, in turn, makes it more and more difficult for them to create the stability they need to become productive citizens, which, according to research, is what drives down recidivism.

What with adding more people to the registry and in some cases making the laws retroactive, the number of individuals caught up in this maelstrom of flame grows exponentially each year.

The spark that starts the blaze is one we all share, the drive to keep our children safe. Residency restrictions, however, are an inappropriate and contraindicated response to that desire. They are based on three assumptions that are contradicted by evidence:

Residency restrictions assume most child sexual abuse is committed by persons unknown or barely known to their random victims when in reality 93% or higher of cases involves someone well known to the children who have been specifically chosen.

The percentage of situations in which a prior relationship exists between an abuser and a child victim varies dependent on the age of the victim. A study done by the Office of Juvenile Justice found that for very young children, family members and very close acquaintances comprise close to 100% of their offenders while for teens, those categories make up 94.3%. The U.S. Department of Justice, in a mega study, found that overall, 93% of the offenders of children and teens were either family members or trusted acquaintances (p.10).

The policies presume offenders choose victims based on residential proximity, which is not supported by research.

Residency restrictions create zones around schools, daycare facilities, and often parks. These laws and policies, once begun, spread throughout a state with unstoppable ferocity. A two-state study, Michigan and Missouri, did not support the mistaken theory that living close to one of these was a factor in repeat sexual offenses against children. Another study examining several states found “. . . proximity to schools and daycares, with other risk factors being comparable, does not appear to contribute to sexual recidivism. These data do not support the widespread enactment of residential restrictions for sexual offenders” (introduction).

Residency restrictions assume that most sexual abuse is committed by repeat offenders, which research shows to be inaccurate.

On average, a significant majority of registered sex offenders are one-time, first-time-convicted offenders. A study in New York found that “. . . over 95% of all sexual offense arrests were committed by first-time sex offenders, casting doubt on the ability of laws that target repeat offenders to meaningfully reduce sexual offending” (abstract), and a study from the university of Tennessee had very similar findings. They report, “Another factor constraining [sex offender registries’] effectiveness is that past studies have shown that . . .‘94.1% of those arrested for child molestation were first-time sex offenders’ ” (conclusion of major findings).

Restrictions often force offenders away from support systems, treatment, stable housing, and employment opportunities, which are crucial for successful reintegration. These are the elements associated with remaining offense-free. Some areas are so encompassed by residency restrictions that homelessness has escalated, especially in states where residency restrictions are aggressively implemented, states as diverse as Wisconsin,  Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, and many more.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the state of Kansas, which actually has a page on its DOC website about why residency restrictions do not work; the state passed legislation in 2006 prohibiting its  jurisdictions from implementing them.

What drives down reoffense? Housing and employment

stability, access to evidence-based treatment, amd family and community connectedness. What makes those things difficult, sometimes impossible? Residency restrictions.

Are there individuals for whom restrictions from a specific type of place is appropriate? Almost assuredly, and they should be handled on an individualized basis.

Creating “umbrella” laws that indiscriminately restrict everyone listed on a state’s registry, or everyone of a certain classification or tier, thus creating pockets of homeless registrants and acting as a barrier between registrant and rehabilitation, is more than just inappropriate and contraindicated.

It is unrestrained madness.

The post Sex offender residency restrictions–a harmful response first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . His email was long, disjointed, confusing. I could tell he was angry with NARSOL (National Assoc. for Rational Sexual Offense Laws), but I couldn’t tell why. I emailed back asking if I could call him. “Yes,” and the phone number was the reply.

He was an elderly gentleman—we’ll call him William–and almost as agitated on the telephone as he had been in the email. He told me his story, which left me as bewildered as before. When I asked pointblank why he was displeased with NARSOL, he said, “It’s always men. You always make it about the men.”

I still wasn’t getting it. I explained that NARSOL’s focus wasn’t on who committed the offenses or what anyone’s offenses had been but on fighting unconstitutional laws and practices and legislation that was not grounded in solid evidence.

I must have been as confusing to him as he was to me. When I finished, he repeated that we “always make it about the men, but women do it too.”

Now we were getting somewhere. Parts of his story were starting to fit.

William had been sexually abused as a toddler and young child by a stepmother. He had vague memories that left him feeling confused and anxious, memories that still haunt him today over 80 years later. Just before she died, William’s older sister verified that the abuse had indeed occurred. Additionally, as an adult, William was a victim of an inappropriate physical assault by a woman in his church.

He was disturbed with NARSOL because we had not done anything to acknowledge that women commit sexual offenses. When I told him I could write a blog post about that, his reply was simple but powerful: “That’s all I want.”

Officially, the percentage of women identified as sex offenders is statistically insignificant. AI reports that women’s presence on sex offender registries ranges from 1% to 5%. The U.S. Sentencing Commission in its “Quick Facts” for 2024 reports that 93.5% of those sentenced for sexual crimes were men, leaving 6.5% women. However, research consistently shows women to be only a little over 1% of all who were incarcerated for a sexual offense.  The National Library of Medicine agrees with that figure. (The medical world tends to see much sexual offending as a health issue rather than a criminal one; NARSOL tends to agree with this position; health issues can often be prevented and treated.)

William and my commitment to write about this subject drove me to continue my research. And other things at the back of my consciousness were floating to the top. Things like Lauren Book, a child advocate and past Florida legislator who, as a child, was sexually abused for six years by her nanny. Things like “Joe” who is telling his story in serial form in the NARSOL Digest. In the first installment, “I am . . . , ” he lists all of the things he is and writes, “I’m the brother of a sister and a brother, both of whom were sexual abusers; I’m the child of an untreated, closeted, incestuous family with a taboo upbringing.”

A research study published in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law has this in its abstract: “Although reports have shown that female sex offenders make up two percent of the whole sex offender population, the true rate is remarkably higher because the caretaking behavior of women masks their sexual offenses.”

Every year more and more is known about the ubiquity of sexual offenses committed by women. Evidence suggests that female sex offenders are significantly undercounted and underreported. Even though they constitute roughly 1%–5% of official sex crime records, surveys that have been completed by victims indicate the actual percentage is most likely higher, with some estimates suggesting up to 12%.

More and more literature is emerging on the subject. The title of this 2025 research paper encapsulates everything that William was trying to get me to understand: Female Sexual Offenders: An Underrecognized, Underreported, and Under-researched Population.

If anything ever cried out for prevention, it is sexual abuse of young children.

Options are available today that were not when William was a child. Information is so much more available. The taboo of speaking about being a victim has lessened—although not so much for male victims. Some good child sexual abuse prevention programs are:

The Moore Child Sex Abuse Prevention Center

Erin’s Law

Darkness to Light

Addendum: I have heard from the head of one of NARSOL’s state affiliates after he read this. He feels that the crime of a portion of women who are registered as sexual offenders was the passive one of not taking effective intervention. One of his members was a victim of her father, who was convicted. Her mother was also convicted of enabling child sexual abuse and registered for life. This is certainly a scenario where education about prevention would be extremely beneficial, and the prevention programs listed above, as well as many others, would address the situation.

The post Something you thought you knew about child sexual offense–but probably don’t first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . As communications director of NARSOL, I receive many calls from reporters and journalists working on stories about persons in the community who are on a sex offender registry. Occasionally the presence of the registrant is being protested by the neighborhood. More often, the reporter has already decided on an “angle” and wants a comment from NARSOL.

I am always hopeful that the piece they write will open up the much needed, genuine discussion on the topics of those who are sexually harmed and those who have committed the harm. I am almost always disappointed.

I remember my first and most poignant disappointment.

The soft-spoken young reporter seemed genuinely sympathetic that a registrant was being harassed by neighbors who had put up signs on their properties with hateful words and arrows pointing to his house and/or his address.

I spoke to her at some length about the harassment and danger that persons on the registry suffered from vigilantes. I asked her if he or his family had been harmed. I asked her if law enforcement could help, and she said no, the people were exercising freedom of speech and using publicly available information.

She sounded as though she cared, and I couldn’t control a sense of personal betrayal when I read her published piece. The word choice and tone placed her clearly in the camp of the protesters. She reduced my carefully chosen words to a few “sound bites” that sounded as though I were excusing the behavior of the registrant and thought he shouldn’t have been held accountable for his crime.

What a disappointment. What a missed opportunity to do an actual community service.

The piece is certainly not the worst I have read, as these pieces go, pieces designed to do nothing of any actual value but only to agitate and raise the collective community’s level of fear, apprehension, and even hatred.

I know now that I asked the wrong question.

I should have asked her how the actions of the protesting neighbors would help make communities safer.

I should have told her that between roughly 95% and 98% of sexual crime against children is committed by persons who are in what is called the “circle of trust” of the family. This translates to the family members, peers, and authority figures of the victims. With this information, it’s an entirely different ballgame. Actions intended to “out” a registrant to the community or even drive hm from their midst will not arm families with protection when the risk, if it comes, is almost sure to come from within.

Clearly a focus on persons with a sexual offense conviction will meet with little to no success increasing public safety

I should have told her that over 95% of new sexual offenses are committed by persons with no previous conviction for a sexual offense. This figure jibes well with the fact that roughly 5% of people with sexual offense convictions reoffend. This is borne out by a huge number of reoffense studies, both federal and state. Random registrants with one conviction are statistically unlikely to reoffend; concentrating on them will have no discernable impact on public safety.

Focusing on one-time convicted registrants in hopes of making a difference in public safety is futile; it yields nothing but wasted taxpayer money and law-enforcement hours, not increased public safely.

Research shows that the safest communities are created when former offenders are given the opportunity to re-assimilate and show their ability to be law-abiding, productive community members. Public safety increases when vigilante activities are discouraged through peer pressure or law enforcement intervention. Behaviors and policies that isolate and ostracize former offenders only exacerbate conditions that lead to lessened community safety rather than greater.

Good prevention programs are shown effective in reducing the rate of sexual harm against children, community-wide initiatives and other evidence-informed programs. Indeed, prevention programs and targeted treatment  have a higher proven impact on reducing crime and making communities safer than do resources squandered on sex offender registries and lengthy incarcerations.

I now ask journalists who contact me this important question: What can you write about child sexual offending that will give parents legitimate information and useful tools with which to help protect their children?

In addition to links in the article, links to studies for much of the factual information and statistics are found here.

The post Public safety: What it is and what it isn’t first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . Even though registrants are as different from one another as everyone else, they do have some commonalities. Almost all registrants report feelings of isolation and being disconnected from others. One way to help lessen these feelings is to find groups where you feel like you fit and can gain the support you need to help you with your way forward.

One of the frequently used pages on NARSOL’s resource site is the listing of organizations that might help you do this.

They are arranged alphabetically by state, so it’s easy to find what you are looking for. Each one contains the contact information, including a link to the website, so you can check it out before contacting them. There are also a number of organizations that are national; they are listed alphabetically with the states as “US.”

Another similar category is that of support groups. They are predominately Fearless group meetings. Every state is not represented, but we are working to change that.

Whether you’re looking for a place to volunteer your talents, a place that has group meetings where you can participate if you wish, or just a place where you feel you belong, check out the “Organizations” page under the “Orgs & People” menu item and “Support groups” under the “Life Support” menu.

And if you know of a good organization that isn’t listed, go to the bottom of the page to “Add an organization” and fill out the form.

The post How can the NARSOL resource site help you? first appeared on NARSOL.