By Savannah . . . Question: During a polygraph, can I still avoid self-incrimination by saying, “I request that my attorney respond to that particular question”?

Answer: The instinct is correct, but those words ask for the wrong protection. Two different rights are involved. The Sixth Amendment right to have a lawyer present applies to police questioning while you are in custody. A polygraph taken as a condition of probation or supervised release is usually not custody, so that protection usually does not apply. No lawyer can answer for you, and asking for one will not stop the questions.

What you want is the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and it does not work on its own. The Supreme Court has held that a person on probation who answers without claiming the privilege cannot argue later that his answers were forced. If you say something unclear, including asking for your lawyer, a court may decide you never claimed the right at all. To claim it, say so plainly: “I invoke my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and decline to answer that question.”

Before you use those words, though, be sure the question calls for them. The privilege covers only questions where a truthful answer could expose you to a new criminal charge, usually for an offense you were never charged with. It does not cover the offense you were already convicted of or questions that could only get you in trouble with your probation officer, such as missing curfew. Claiming it on a question it does not cover gains you nothing and marks you as uncooperative.

Remember, too, that invoking the privilege does not happen in isolation. Your refusal will be recorded and reported to your probation officer, who will want to know what it concerned. Refusing one question out of thirty tells everyone which subject you did not want to discuss; you may protect the answer and still give away the topic. Expect closer attention afterward: more testing, stricter conditions, a setback in your treatment program. Courts have held that your supervision cannot be revoked for the invocation itself, but that protection is narrower than it sounds. It does nothing for a revocation that grows out of the closer scrutiny your refusal invites, and in practice that is the more likely path.

Your state’s law also matters here. Some states protect these disclosures. In West Virginia, for example, what you say during a full disclosure or sexual history polygraph cannot be shared with law enforcement without your consent or used in the state’s courts, unless it concerns a plan to commit a future crime. W. Va. Code § 62-11D-2(e)(2). Many states have no such protection. If your answers already cannot be used to prosecute you, the Fifth Amendment may add nothing, and refusing may be treated as plain noncompliance. If there is no protection and a truthful answer could expose you to a new charge, that is when the privilege matters most.

In short, asking for your attorney is not claiming the Fifth Amendment. If you want the privilege, claim it in plain words. But whether you should claim it depends on your state’s law, your treatment program, and facts about your case that no article can know. Do not work it out in the polygraph room. Write to the public defender’s office in the county where you were sentenced, or to a criminal defense attorney licensed in your state, before your examination.

The post Legal Corner: Can I Ask for My Attorney During a Polygraph? first appeared on NARSOL.

By Larry . . . The Minnesota Supreme Court recently issued a decision in Siegel v. Evans. Chad Loran Siegel was charged with two counts of kidnapping, a predatory offense under the predatory-offender-registration statute, as well as attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault related to an incident where Siegel and accomplices beat victim J.A.L. The case went to trial. The trial court entered a judgment of acquittal on the kidnapping charges. The jury found Siegel not guilty of attempted second-degree murder but guilty of assault.

Minnesota’s predatory-offender-registration statute, Minnesota Statutes section 243.166, subdivision 1b(a)(1), provides that a person who has been “charged with” one of the statute’s enumerated predatory offenses and “convicted of” that offense or another offense “arising out of the same set of circumstances” must register as a predatory offender. Minnesota is or is close to being unique in imposing predatory-offender registration on every person who has been charged with, but not convicted of, a statutorily enumerated predatory offense and who has been convicted of a non-predatory offense arising out of the same circumstances as the charged predatory offense.

In August 2022, Siegel sued Drew Evans in his official capacity as the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Siegel argued that requiring him to register as a predatory offender based on the dismissed kidnapping charge was a violation of his procedural and substantive due process rights and that it violated the predatory-offender-registration statute. Siegel also argued that the predatory-offender-registration statute is an unconstitutional bill of attainder. Siegel brought suit under the United States and Minnesota constitutions.

The question on which the court granted review is whether Siegel was required to register as a predatory offender under section 243.166. Siegel argued that section 243.166, subdivision 1b(a)(1), does not require a person to register under circumstances where the trial court entered a judgment of acquittal on the charged predatory offense. He contended that after the trial court entered the judgment of acquittal on the kidnapping charges, he was no longer charged with a predatory offense for purposes of section 243.166.

The BCA disagreed. The BCA argued that a person is charged with a predatory offense during the period it labels the time of charging, a period which includes pretrial proceedings, but which ends when trial begins. According to the BCA, a person who is initially charged with a predatory offense but later prevails on a pretrial motion to dismiss the charge for lack of probable cause is not subject to registration. But because a judgment of acquittal occurs after the trial starts and the “time of charging” ends, the BCA requires that a person who is acquitted of a predatory offense by judgment of the trial court register if the person is convicted of another crime arising out of the same set of circumstances.

The court did not find that argument persuasive. NARSOL agrees with this. The court stated, “Even if we accept the BCA’s interpretation that the statute requires Siegel to register, we hold that requiring Siegel to register after the trial court entered a judgment of acquittal at trial on the predicate predatory offense violates the Minnesota Constitution’s substantive due process protections.” Opinion, 8. Also, they stated, “Nothing suggests that the Legislature considered—or had any facts before it to support—whether expanding the statute’s requirement to register to persons acquitted of a predicate predatory offense at trial by entry of a judgment of acquittal would address the concerns underlying the law that we have identified. The BCA provided us with no such evidence.” Opinion, 18.

Although this decision is an “as applied” win for Siegel, it bodes well going forward for others who have charges dismissed at trial.

The post Dismissed Charges Do Not Trigger Predatory Offender Registration first appeared on NARSOL.

By Robert . . . At what point does a law described as “civil” or “regulatory” become punishment in everything but name? It is a question about constitutional limits and whether government may continue to add serious restraints to a person’s liberty long after judgment while avoiding heightened scrutiny simply because each new burden is placed outside the formal sentence.

I entered a guilty plea in Montana on March 31, 1988. The judgment imposed a criminal sentence. At that time, the modern architecture of sex-offender registration did not exist in anything resembling its present form. There was no lifetime public internet registry attached to my plea, no modern tiered classification system, and no warning that decades later my conviction would trigger an expanding network of residence, employment, travel, treatment, reporting, and family-association consequences.

The harder question is whether constitutional analysis can end once a legislature calls a burden “civil.” The Constitution has never treated labels as conclusive. Courts routinely look to substance, operation, and effect.

In Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144 (1963), the Supreme Court identified considerations for deciding whether a nominally civil measure is punitive in effect, including affirmative disability or restraint, traditional aims of punishment, and excessiveness in relation to a nonpunitive purpose. Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003),

held Alaska’s then-existing registration statute nonpunitive for purposes of the ex post facto clause. But Smith evaluated a particular statutory scheme and record; it should not be read as a constitutional blank check for every later restriction.

One recurring problem is fragmentation. Each restriction is examined separately: a reporting rule here, a residency rule there, a treatment requirement somewhere else. But a person lives under the system as a whole. If separate “civil” restrictions together produce a substantial restraint on ordinary life, courts should examine their cumulative effects.

Later civil consequences are not automatically part of the plea bargain as a matter of constitutional doctrine. But when those later consequences become increasingly restrictive and increasingly connected to liberty, the principle of finality deserves renewed attention.

That concern also appears in federal supervised release. My present federal judgment requires participation in sex-offender treatment. In describing possible treatment services, however, the judgment states that services “may include” clinical polygraph testing and other assessment procedures.

Those words matter because federal sentencing power belongs to the court. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d), supervised-release conditions must involve no greater deprivation of liberty than reasonably necessary. United States v. Diggles, 957 F.3d 551 (5th Cir. 2020) (en banc), emphasizes the court’s responsibility to impose substantive conditions and probation’s authority to administer them.

A treatment provider may be authorized to use a clinical tool when appropriate. That does not necessarily mean the provider may convert every authorized tool into a freestanding mandatory condition whose refusal exposes the supervisee to discharge and possible revocation consequences. If an additional deprivation of liberty is to become mandatory, the legal system should identify the judicial source of that obligation.

The issue becomes more serious when treatment questioning seeks admissions about potentially criminal conduct. Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420 (1984), recognized that ordinary probation questioning does not automatically violate the Fifth Amendment, but the analysis changes when a person is forced to choose between self-incrimination and a penalty for remaining silent.

If refusing particular questions can lead to treatment termination, and termination can support allegations of noncompliance with supervised release, the therapeutic setting can carry coercive force. Courts should scrutinize that structure carefully.

None of these arguments requires minimizing sexual violence or denying government’s legitimate role in protecting the public. Victims deserve recognition, protection, and respect. But constitutional rights are often most important when the person invoking them is unpopular.

I seek rigorous legal and academic examination of these questions. Government must justify substantial restraints on liberty; courts should examine actual effects; administrative actors may not silently enlarge sentences beyond what judges imposed. The legitimacy of the justice system depends not only on its power to punish but also on its willingness to say when punishment has ended.

Robert Payne Watson, Jr., is a guest contributor; he is a registrant living in Texas.

The post When Civil Regulation Becomes a Second Sentence first appeared on NARSOL.

By John . . . Oklahoma lawmakers spent most of an afternoon on a question the state has dodged for years: does the sex offender registry still do the job it was built for? The joint interim study hearing ran roughly three hours and heard from researchers, prosecutors, judges, treatment providers, police, defense attorneys and a survivor advocate.

Senate Majority Leader Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville) says she came to the issue through a constituent who wanted a pardon. She was “quite surprised that we had something in place that did not allow any pardon or any removal.” Later came a panicked text from someone who feared a new bill would keep them from their grandchildren for another 10 years. That was when she started asking whether the state was “undermining public safety with the very broad net that we have cast.”

• Watch the hearing recording

Representative Suzanne Schrieber (D-Tulsa), her partner on the study, said the registry has been “layered on and layered on and layered on” since it was created to answer a fair question: how do you protect families from the most dangerous predators?

A far cry from the original registry

Daniels’s slides showed how far it has drifted. The 1989 act covered nine statutes, required registration for 10 years, shared information only with police, put no limits on where anyone could live, go or work, and treated noncompliance as a misdemeanor. Today it covers 27 statutes, with tiers of 15 years, 25 years or life. Names are online. Residency restrictions extend 2,000 feet, the second-highest in the country after Mississippi’s 3,000. Employment is restricted, and failing to comply can be a felony. The act has been amended 23 times. Of the 8,344 Oklahomans on the registry, 74% are on it for life.

Attorney Janice Bellucci, a California civil rights attorney and executive director of the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, testified about how the registry took shape. The first registry began in Los Angeles in 1947, she said, aimed only at gay men, and federal laws in 1994, 1996 and 2006 spread it nationwide. She highlighted the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Smith v. Doe (2003), in which the Court held that registration is not punishment. That ruling, she noted, leaned on a “frightening and high” reoffense claim from a Psychology Today article that put the rate as high as 80% with a promise that if the article’s author was allowed to “treat” people with sex offenses, he could cut the rate in half. She said the author later retracted his baseless claims, but the Court changed nothing. She shared that earlier this year, Michigan’s Supreme Court found registration is punishment, largely because of its collateral consequences.

How people get sorted matters just as much. Oklahoma sets a person’s tier by the offense of conviction. There is no individual risk assessment. A board created to develop one was dissolved without producing anything, and the statute says the assigned level can never be reduced by the level assignment committee, the Department of Corrections, or a court.

Brittany Gendron testified. She was the child victim in the case that put her mother on the registry. Her mother was convicted of a non-contact offense more than 25 years ago, served 15 days in county jail, and is now disabled with cognitive decline. Every 90 days, Gendron takes her to register. “Each visit feels less like accountability and more like watching a sentence renew itself,” she said. Residency restrictions keep her from bringing her mother home, and her mother’s status keeps blocking long-term care. “I was the child this system was supposed to protect. And today, I am the daughter left to navigate its consequences.”

“We have assessed a label”

Dr. Stephanie Jerstad, an assistant professor of criminology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and a recent NARSOL Conference plenary speaker, studies aging and criminal justice and spoke about a group that rarely comes up in registry debates: people who are old, seriously ill, or cognitively impaired and still have to register. Her central point was short. “A conviction is part of a person’s history,” she said. “It is not by itself an assessment of the risk that person poses today.”

She pointed to the age-crime curve and to work by Dr. Karl Hanson that put the five-year sexual reoffending rate at around 3% for people in their 60s, with rates falling further after that. The average nursing home resident in the U.S. is about 81. Against that, she said, “we may be making placement decisions about someone in their 70s, 80s, or even 90s based primarily on a conviction that occurred decades earlier.”

Her sharpest line came when she described registry status standing in for a risk assessment: “If the decision begins and ends with ‘this person is on the registry,’ we have not actually assessed the individual that is standing in front of us. We have assessed a label.” Individualized review, she added, is not the soft option. “Using contemporary individualized information is not less protective of the public. It is more precise public safety decision-making.”

Her own research on long-term care found that facilities are reluctant to admit people with sexual offense histories, and that those decisions don’t always track medical need. When a facility says no, she said, “The person doesn’t stop needing nursing care. The responsibility moves.” It moves to hospitals that can’t discharge patients, to corrections when someone overstays a sentence because no facility will take them, and to relatives who end up handling dementia care, toileting, medication, and registry compliance “without any kind of skilled nursing training or medical training, without financial support.” The cost doesn’t disappear. It lands on another public system or on a family.

Jerstad shared that other states have built exits. Georgia lets courts consider relief for people in hospice, skilled nursing or elder care, or who are 80 and older under certain conditions. Virginia lets a guardian petition when a physical condition makes reoffending and registering impossible, with periodic review. Alabama offers relief from residency restrictions for terminal illness or permanent immobility, and Colorado recognizes severe disability. She did not ask Oklahoma to copy any of them. She noted that Oklahoma’s House Bill 3606, which would have allowed a petition in cases of permanent impairment, passed the House and then stalled in Senate Judiciary.

Pressed on liability, Jerstad said facilities already manage risk for every resident, and that people with dementia and no criminal history are more likely to act out sexually because of the disease. She cited a 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study in which administrators said they worried more about residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia than about those with offense histories. Her answer was not to drop safeguards. “The solution is the right safeguards for the actual person,” she said, meaning individualized assessment, care planning, and supervision.

What survivors actually need

Amber Vlangas, executive director of the Restorative Action Alliance and recent NARSOL Conference keynote speaker, joined as both an advocate and a survivor of institutional sexual violence as a child and of military sexual trauma. She opened with a warning: survivors are not a monolith, and many never get heard. Then she set two statements side by side. Sexual violence is a serious problem that “is not up for debate.” And “current sex offense policy doesn’t actually decrease sexual harm. And in fact, it creates some of the exact conditions that increase risks of violence.”

Her numbers run counter to the idea that the criminal system catches most harm. Of every 100 sexual assaults, she said, 27 are reported, five lead to an arrest, and fewer than three end in incarceration. About nine in 10 abused children are harmed by someone they or their family know and trust, often a relative. She argued that undercuts the idea that sexual violence is mostly committed by strangers.

On risk over time, she said each year offense-free lowers the odds of sexual reoffense by about 12%. After 10 to 15 years, most people with a sexual offense conviction are no more likely to commit a new sexual offense than someone with a nonsexual record.

She named four things that drive violence: exposure to violence, isolation, shame, and not being able to meet economic needs. Registries, she argued, feed all four through vigilante violence, unstable housing and work, and stigma that reaches whole families. They can also keep children quiet. Survivors often tell her group they didn’t report because they knew the person harming them would be removed from the home, sometimes the household’s main earner.

Residency restrictions drew particular criticism. She cited a 2015 Department of Justice SMART Office review that found they do not reduce recidivism and may raise risk, along with results from Jacksonville, Florida, and from Michigan and Missouri.

She also described what the registry hands survivors: information with no context. One person her group worked with learned that a neighbor was registered and wanted to sell their home, without knowing anything about that neighbor’s rehabilitation or actual risk. The result, she said, is “affecting survivors with information without context.” Meanwhile, the system “siphon[s] resources from services and support” toward punishment and control.

What do survivors want? To be believed, to have a say in what happens, to get answers, to be physically safe, and to get practical help like housing, job retraining, and culturally sensitive therapy. “The justice piece of it is a component, but it is not the whole pie,” she said.

She ended pointedly. “Asking survivors to carry the full weight of this policy analysis is unfair and it is not theirs to bear,” she told lawmakers. The loudest voices tend to be the most privileged, she said, and survivors harmed inside families lose out when only those voices are heard. “Survivors’ pain is being weaponized to create policy.” Her test for any bill is whether it ends cycles of sexual violence. “Honoring survivors means examining the evidence. It means weighing your outcomes.”

“A community problem”

The last extended remarks came from Jacqui Ford of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, a defense attorney and the group’s past president. She called the hearing “the bravest conversation I’ve heard happen in this building in a very, very long time,” then set the tone: “I do not think blame and shame are in any place in this. This is a community problem. It’s going to require a community solution. But we have to trust the science, and we have to trust the evidence.”

The detail she kept returning to was plea offers. “The same offer that I get when they first get arrested with prison time and lifetime registration is the exact same offer that I get after they’ve been in treatment for two and a half years and completely changed their lives and healed the underlying cause of what got them in the criminal justice system in the first place, which is oftentimes abuse and addiction and trauma.”

Part of the reason, she said, is pressure. Elected judges who “bank on the treatment working” risk a campaign from a “dark money PAC” claiming they went easy on sex offenders, and legislators face the same threat. What’s missing is a way out. “I know we have good judges who want to do it, and they just need to have a path. And I know we have good prosecutors who see the humanity, and they need a path. And DOC needs relief. They need money. They need tools. They need assessments. And it starts right here.”

Her examples were concrete. A client in Cleveland County was charged with failing to comply with registration after setting up tables for a church event before the children arrived. And then there are juveniles: “taking pictures of yourself is manufacturing child pornography and selling it is distributing it.” She has three teenage boys, she said, and the fear of them landing on a registry comes up at home all the time.

She also rejected the idea that sex crimes are a special category and urged lawmakers to look at defendants’ childhoods and at what they lack now. The task, she said, is to see that “people are more than the worst thing that they have ever done.” On people pushed into homelessness by residency rules: “What does a person who doesn’t have a house and doesn’t have a job and doesn’t have money do to eat? I’m going to suggest to you that they commit crimes.”

She finished on a plain fact. People on the registry come back to their neighborhoods, no matter what the legislature does. “We live amongst them,” she said, so the work has to be done “with integrity and compassion and humanity and for the victims.”

Law enforcement and treatment providers provide perspective

Even the more cautious voices agreed some cases need fixing. They disagreed on how much to change.

Ryan Stephenson, assistant executive coordinator of the District Attorneys Council, said the statutes also cover “the boyfriend who’s been preying on children while mom’s been at work for years.” He asked lawmakers to avoid fear-mongering but to remember “here there be monsters,” and he noted that the current system at least tells a defendant their level on sentencing day. Will Drake, the district attorney for District 11, said Gendron’s situation could be adjusted, though he worried about unintended consequences.

Brenda Carter, a counselor and member of the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse, has treated sex offenders since 2005 and once worked in the corrections treatment program. She called tools like the Static-99R well-validated and said, “sexual offending is a behavior. It’s not a person.” She put reoffense rates at roughly 3% to 11% and argued that restrictions pushing people into homelessness raise risk.

Nicole Dulany, who manages the Department of Corrections’ sex and violent offender registration unit, said her nine staffers track 11,341 active offenders and that the unit goes by what the statute says on paper, with no role in assessing anyone. Rockford Brown, a sex and violent offender investigator with the Payne County Sheriff’s Office, said removal “would be beneficial” for some people and pointed to Gendron’s case, but noted that recidivism figures only count the people who get caught.

District Judge Leah Edwards of Judicial District 21 said any court-based change to a tier would need a statute giving courts that authority, plus funding and procedures for indigent defendants in rural counties. Another panelist called the 1997 Fields v. Vreel decision, which leaves people in corrections’ control once they are in custody, a separation-of-powers problem lawmakers can legislate around.

Lawmakers floated a few ideas: reassessing which crimes sit in which tier, using the factual statement in a plea instead of the statutory charge, and adding safety valves for specific situations. Stephenson confirmed the legislature has the authority to change tier assignments.

The discussion to continue…

Senator Daniels said the hearing “doesn’t end the discussion,” and Senator Brent Howard (R-Altus), the committee chair, closed by noting these statutes “weren’t built in one day.” The ideas that came up most were a petition path for aging and medically incapacitated registrants like the one in House Bill 3606, individualized risk assessment, court review of tiers over time, and a rethink of which offenses belong in which tier.

AI note: The author used an AI-generated transcript of the hearing to compose this article.

The post Oklahoma Lawmakers Take a Hard Look at the ‘Sex Offender’ Registry first appeared on NARSOL.

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 Matt . . . Houses of worship seem to be this place where many go to escape the world. Of course they are! For many of us, maybe it is a was a place we gathered for Christmas, Easter, Diwali, Eid, Passover, a baptism, a wedding, a bar or bat mitzvah, a funeral, or simply the ordinary rituals that marked our lives and connected us to community.

Many sought these places in an attempt to return to society, and many had doors closed in their faces, some completely and some more subtly. Finding a place, for those who could get through the doors, meant sitting in the back row and keeping their voices down.

Who makes these decisions? How did we arrive at practices that seem so incompatible with the nearly universal themes of redemption, repentance, restoration, and human dignity that span monotheistic, polytheistic, and other religious traditions.

And perhaps more important: Are these decisions actually theological? Or have houses of worship quietly allowed insurance companies, risk-management consultants, and institutional fears of liability answer theological questions for them?

“MinistrySafe,” which provides screening software geared towards houses of worship, published promotional material quoting leading executives from some of the top insurers of worship places. One CEO warns that “…sex abuse insurance coverage is being restricted, excluded, and eliminated by some insurance companies.” Another continues, saying, “One [sexual assault] claim can devastate a church, its reputation, and even its existence.” These statements are both in support of an overarching and more telling statement in the literature: “In the past…the decision as to whether a church would allow a registered sex offender to participate in ministry services was an internal one; now it might impact the church’s ability get or maintain insurance coverage.

“Church Law and Tax,” which is a legal and risk-management resource for churches and ministry leaders, maintains a legal library that contains an entire section on risk management as it relates to sexual abuse. Some of the suggestions are unquestionably great practices that, among other things, recommend that no minors are allowed to be alone with one adult, no minors are released to strangers, and video surveillance is present in classrooms and nursery. However, claiming to use FBI profiles, it goes on to warn under “Supervision of Known Molesters” that “Pedophiles who molest…should be

considered ‘incurable,’ predatory, and highly promiscuous.”

Do not let the easily-debunked pseudo-science distract; perhaps more indicative of the heart of the matter, it goes on to explicitly warns that allowing a convicted “child molester” to attend normal activities at church exposes the church to “substantial monetary damages in a civil lawsuit.” There are three responses to registrants that are given by the organization: ignore it, provide for conditional attendance, and exclude. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the organization strongly recommends exclusion as the best way to limit liability.

Even if we accept the argument that these policies are intended to protect a congregation’s most vulnerable members, the repeated emphasis on insurance coverage and civil liability raises a harder question. When the possibility of “substantial monetary damages” becomes part of the calculus, how do we distinguish a genuine concern for the vulnerable from an institutional concern about avoiding litigation and liability? The two may coexist, but they are not the same moral claim. A policy designed primarily to protect people and a policy designed primarily to protect an institution’s balance sheet may look similar on paper while arising from very different ethical commitments.

On the ground across Christian denominations, the response to registrants in congregational life is often shaped by insurance and risk management concerns within their polity or church governance. Some denominational guidance explicitly advises churches to notify their insurance carrier before allowing a person who is registered to participate and, in some cases, to obtain written confirmation that coverage will not be affected. Other governance policies recommend individualized participation agreements, supervision, legal consultation, or formal safety plans. The result is that questions of welcome, restoration, and belonging are frequently filtered through liability and insurability before they ever become purely theological questions.[1] [2] ³

This tension is not confined to Christian communities. Other religious institutions have adopted their own policies governing access, participation, and membership for people with certain criminal histories or registry status. For example, some Islamic institutions state that they reserve the right to restrict or deny participation based on sexual-offense history, while other religious traditions emphasize individualized risk assessment, proportional safeguards, or structured inclusion.⁴ The details vary across traditions, but the underlying question remains the same: When a religious community decides who may enter, worship, participate, or belong, how much of that decision is being made by theology?

None of this means that houses of worship should ignore genuine, fact-driven risk or abandon safeguards. To be clear, these communities have a duty to protect from actual threats. Insurance companies and safety consultants can only tell a religious community how to manage liability. They cannot decide what the community believes about repentance, restoration, dignity, or belonging. If convictions begin disappearing the moment they become difficult or costly to practice, then risk management has quietly become our theology.

[1]https://ncbaptist.org/ministries/children/safety-security/faq/ 

[2]https://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/Issues/2010/Spring-2010/Navigating-the-Sexual-Minefield-in-Todays-Culture/

^[3]https://nccumc.org/christian-formation/safer-sanctuaries/

^[4]https://www.friscomasjid.org/home/legal/code-of-conduct/

The post Insured Against Grace: When Risk Management Becomes Theology first appeared on NARSOL.

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/09/2026) The Michigan Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that Michigan’s current sex offender registry law cannot be applied to people whose registration-triggering crimes occurred before July 1, 2011, finding that doing so amounts to unconstitutional punishment imposed after the fact.

The ruling in People v. Eddie Lee Smith potentially affects an unknown number of longtime registrants whose underlying offenses predate the Legislature’s major 2011 rewrite of the Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA). The Court also said the state cannot simply place those people under an older version of the registry law instead.

The case involved Eddie Lee Smith, whose crimes occurred in 1995 and 2010. Smith was nevertheless required to register under the version of SORA that took effect in 2021.

“The statutory requirements enacted after the commission of his crimes amount to punishment,” the Court wrote. Requiring Smith to comply with the 2021 law therefore constitutes “an ex post facto punishment” prohibited by both the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.

In plain English, the government cannot create additional criminal punishment years after someone commits an offense and then apply that new punishment backward.

The Court reversed a January 2025 Court of Appeals ruling against Smith, partially vacated a Kent Circuit Court decision and sent the case back to the trial court. More broadly, the justices held that the 2021 SORA “may not be retroactively applied” to registrants whose registration-triggering acts occurred before the 2011 amendments. The Court also rejected “severance or revival” of earlier versions of SORA as a solution.

That latter piece could create a larger issue for the Legislature. Unlike when the Supreme Court issued a similar ruling involving the 2011 registry in 2021, there is no newer replacement law already waiting to take its place for the people covered by Wednesday’s order. A press release from attorneys supporting Smith said anyone affected by the ruling has already been on the registry for at least 15 years.

Microphone off Wednesday’s ruling follows the Supreme Court’s December 2025 decision in People v Kardasz, which concluded that Michigan’s 2021 registry is punishment rather than merely a civil regulatory program. In Kardasz, the Court pointed to lifetime registration for some offenders, repeated in-person reporting requirements, publication of registrants’ information online and possible imprisonment for failing to comply.

The Kardasz ruling set up Wednesday’s constitutional question: If today’s SORA is punishment, can those requirements be imposed on someone who committed a crime before those punishments existed? The Court answered no.

“Mr. Smith served his sentence and completed his parole,” said Smith attorney Drew Walbeck. “The Michigan Supreme Court confirmed what both the federal and state constitutions have always guaranteed him: the government cannot impose a punishment that did not exist when the crime was committed.”

State Appellate Defender Office Deputy Director Jessica Zimbelman, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, said the ruling follows the same approach the Court took in the 2021 People v Betts decision.

“Michigan’s Constitution does not let the state write a new punishment and then apply it backward to people who were sentenced years or decades earlier,” Zimbelman said.

The ruling does not affect people whose registration-triggering offenses occurred on or after July 1, 2011. Those registrants remain subject to the current SORA requirements.

The post Pre-2011 Sex Offenders To No Longer Appear On Michigan Registry first appeared on NARSOL.

Brandon James Furlough

In 2007 I was convicted of a crime of a sexual nature. I immediately accepted responsibility, served a prison sentence, and completed supervision, What remained—and remains–is lifetime sex offender registration and everything that comes with it. I did not fully comprehend what that would mean until my son was born in 2016.

I grew up as the only boy in a family of two sisters. My father left when I was young. I know firsthand the demons that can haunt a young man wondering why his dad is not there. I will not have my son feel that because I chose not to show up. I choose to be there for him. The problem is that sometimes the law makes that choice illegal.

Years ago, my son had an appointment that took place at a school. Since I had finished my sentence and supervision requirements, I thought I was good. I was not. They let my son and his mother inside and called the police on me. Luckily, the officer understood that I had not knowingly walked into a situation that could get me charged again, and I was allowed to leave.

That experience stayed with me because it showed me how easily trying to be a father can become a criminal act. Choir, sports, band, parent-teacher conferences, school events—if they happen where I am legally prohibited from being, I cannot simply walk in and support my son like another parent. I can be charged with another felony for doing so.

I have tried working around that reality. Once, just so I could watch his baseball game, I sat on a sidewalk in a neighborhood I did not know because I could not go where the other parents were. The awkward looks were enough to prevent me from repeating that. Indiana has also

recently considered legislation that would make taking my son to parks a felony. He loves parks–walking trails, rolling down big hills, playgrounds, swings. Those are ordinary childhood memories. For us, ordinary things can become illegal.

I am not sure I cope with it, honestly. I write. I work building business organizations. I spend as much time with my son as I can. Mostly, I keep pushing forward because I have to change this for him. Where I am not present, it is not because I choose to be absent. I want to be there, I can be there, and I would be there. The law is the barrier.

That is what gets lost when people talk about registries and restrictions. The registry has my name on it, but my son feels its consequences too. He has done nothing, yet he can lose memories, experiences, and time with his father because of something I did before he was even born.

I am not dismissing accountability. I am asking when enough is enough. If society believes people should pay forever, then they should be kept locked up forever. But if they are released, they should be allowed to rebuild, work, grow, have a family, and live differently. What are we accomplishing when punishment to parents becomes punishment to their children?

That is a major reason I wrote An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends. Knowing how society looks at sex offenders, I wrote under the pen name Brent Jovani Falcone because I wanted the story to have a chance to be seen before the label ended the conversation. I wrote it in hopes that maybe we can do better than pretending people never change and that children do not suffer from the consequences.

Imagine something that you did as a teenager following you decades later; then imagine explaining that to your child and why it means you cannot show up for something important to him. If I am to be anathema, so be it. But I will make this truth known.

The post Path of Anathema first appeared on NARSOL.

Boynton Beach, Florida — August 11, 2026 — The Florida Action Committee (FAC), a statewide nonprofit organization advocating for evidence-based criminal justice policies, today announced the filing of a sweeping federal lawsuit challenging Florida’s sex offender registration and restriction scheme as unconstitutional.

Filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida (Case No. 4:26-cv-00388-MW-MJF), the lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass, along with fifty counties and municipalities that enforce additional residency and presence restrictions. The complaint argues that Florida’s registry has evolved far beyond its original purpose as a public notification system and now functions as a system of perpetual punishment that violates multiple provisions of the United States Constitution.

FAC spokesperson Teresa Bond explained, “This is not just another challenge to one law or one ordinance. This case asks the courts to recognize what has become increasingly obvious over the past three decades: Florida’s registry is no longer a civil regulatory system. It has become a lifetime system of punishment that reaches far beyond any sentence imposed by a judge.”

The lawsuit alleges that Florida’s registration scheme, together with the network of local ordinances adopted throughout the state, imposes severe and continuing restrictions on where individuals may live, travel, work, and even be present. It further alleges that the cumulative effect of these laws amounts to banishment, perpetual supervision, and punishment long after individuals have completed their court-imposed sentences.

Among the constitutional claims raised in the lawsuit are allegations that Florida’s laws violate:

• The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment;
• The Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause by retroactively increasing punishment;
• The fundamental constitutional right to interstate travel;
• Due process through vague and undefined criminal prohibitions;
• The First Amendment by restricting protected speech in public places.

Unlike prior litigation that has challenged individual provisions of Florida law, this lawsuit takes a comprehensive approach by asking the court to evaluate the registry as it exists today – not as it existed decades ago when courts first considered these issues. The complaint details how repeated legislative amendments have transformed Florida’s registry from a recordkeeping system into one of the most restrictive registration schemes in the nation.

The complaint also documents the practical consequences experienced by FAC’s members, including widespread housing instability, barriers to employment, restrictions on family life, obstacles to travel, and high rates of homelessness created by overlapping state and local residency restrictions.

FAC emphasized that the lawsuit does not seek to excuse criminal conduct or diminish the seriousness of sexual offenses. “People who commit crimes should be held accountable” explained Bond, “but once a sentence has been imposed and served, the Constitution still matters. Public safety and constitutional rights are not mutually exclusive. This lawsuit asks the courts to reaffirm that there are limits on how far government may go in continuing to punish people long after they have paid their debt to society.”

The organization noted that the litigation has been developed over many months with the assistance of nationally recognized constitutional litigators and is expected to address legal questions that have never before been presented together in a single challenge to Florida’s current registry system.

As with any major constitutional litigation, FAC expects the case to proceed through multiple levels of judicial review before a final resolution is reached.

A copy of the complaint can be read here.

The post Florida Action Committee Files Landmark Federal Constitutional Challenge to Florida’s Sex Offender Registry Laws 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.