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, in reality, is what drives down recidivism.

The match that starts the blaze is the totally appropriate desire, a desire we all share, to protect children from sexual harm. Residency restrictions, however, are an inappropriate 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 strangers, when in reality 94 % or higher of cases involve someone known to the child.

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 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, 90% 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. 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 that, in Florida, “There was no significant relationship between reoffending and proximity to schools or daycares.”

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,” 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.’ ”

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 residence restrictions that homelessness has escalated, especially in states where residency restrictions are aggressively implemented, such as Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the state of Kansas, who

actually has a page on their DOC website about why residency restrictions do not work and who passed legislation in 2006 prohibiting their jurisdictions from implementing them.

What drives down reoffense? Housing and employment stability; family and community connectedness. What makes those things difficult, sometimes impossible? Residency restrictions.

The choice should be easy.

The post Sex offender residency restrictions: bad, bad public policy first appeared on NARSOL.

Dr. Chrysanthi Leon and Maggie Buckridge are interviewing formerly incarcerated folks about their re-entry experiences with religious communities. They are especially interested in learning about what religious communities provide for people on the sex offender registry. In addition to speaking with those who found a church or another place of worship to join, they are also interviewing people who wanted to join a place of worship but did not because of various barriers. The purpose of this study is to examine what re-entry practices for religious communities people find beneficial, and what practices they find stigmatizing and harmful. What are re-entering persons hoping to find in religious participation and community after incarceration? What is it like to join or re-join a religious community after incarceration? What practices deter re-entering persons from attending or partaking in certain religious communities?

Participants will receive a $20 gift card as a token of appreciation. Interviews typically last around 60-90 minutes. Please pass this along to anyone you know who may be interested in participating. If you have any questions, or are interested in participating, please reach out to Maggie Buckridge: bmaggie@udel.edu and Dr. Chrysanthi Leon: santhi@udel.edu. Their study consent form is here.

Research study applicants sought by Emily Harowitz

Dr. Emily Horowitz, author of Protecting Our Kids? How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us (Praeger, 2015) and Professor of Sociology & Criminal Justice at St. Francis College is seeking to interview those listed on the public registry about their experience for a forthcoming book project. The interviews will be conducted by phone and all published work will keep the identity of those interviewed anonymous and confidential. If you are interested in participating or learning more about this project, please email Dr. Horowitz at ehorowitz@sfc.edu and she will send you more information about the project and how to set up an interview.

The post 11-8-2022 New research study posting: the impact of faith communities on registrants first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy Rozek . . . In the early 2000s a young man we will call Joseph was serving a sentence for a sexual crime, an internet crime, in the Federal Bureau of Prison’s Butner Low Unit in Butner, North Carolina, when he was approached by a Dr. Andres Hernandez. As he listened to Dr. Hernandez explaining a treatment program that he had developed, Joseph felt that maybe participating in the program would be a way he could, just a little, turn some of the wrong he had done into something good, something that could be of benefit to others who, somewhere down the road, made some of the same poor choices that he had made.

The program was designed, so explained the doctor, to help those who had been involved in viewing illegal images of children understand the depth of the harm they were doing. It would provide a safe space where men with similar offenses could share with each other and with medically trained staff members, both in group and in individual settings, and where peer and staff support would help each other see their crimes for what they were and encourage the building of empathy for the victims and aversion for their own actions.

In agreeing to be a part of the program, Joseph knew he would be leaving Butner Low and moving to Butner Medium, where the medical facilities were, but it was with the understanding that if he wished to leave the program at any time, he would be transferred back to Low. He had asked if he could think it over and come into the program at a later time and was told it was “now or never,” a one-time offer. He agreed, and thus began, without his knowledge, his participation in a portion of what would later be published as the Butner Study Redux.

The program consisted of an eighteen-month cycle, and Joseph was in the program for several cycles during the next four years until his release from prison.

The one-on-one individual sessions with a staff member went as Joseph expected, and he found them therapeutic and helpful. However, the group sessions took on a totally different tone and became unpleasant, even somehow threatening.

“The pressure was always on,” said Joseph. Staff encouraged the men to talk about offenses other than their arresting offense, offenses they had not been charged with, more serious offenses, offenses that were pre-arrest history. “Men were pressed continually to ‘tell the truth,’ and when they were hesitant or fearful of incarceration by disclosing other ‘possible’ crimes, it was suggested they could be polygraphed.” Denials were disbelieved by staff, and the rest of the group was encouraged to join in the ridicule and accusations of denying the truth.

Joseph remembers an overwhelming feeling that they were being collectively brainwashed. “It felt like being in a pressure cooker,” he recalls. His shame and embarrassment at what he would say next was evident in the hang of his head even before he spoke. “I never confessed to anything I hadn’t done, only to my charge of possession, but looking back, I sadly remember toeing the staff’s lines. I confronted men about their pasts; I reported to staff men who did not comply or were resistant to treatment.  I did what I was programmed to do.  I thought I was doing the right things because when I did wrong, staff would correct me on it, and when I did right, they would praise me. It wasn’t until YEARS later that I started to deprogram and really see how much harm I caused to those men…all in the name of ‘therapy.’ ”

Courage and pride asserted itself again as he said, “People deserve punishment for their crimes regardless of what those crimes are. I committed crimes, and I deserved to be punished. Punishment must be appropriate, though, and being on the sex offense registry for thirty years after the completion of my sentence and never reoffending – I don’t see how that is justified.”

Continued denial in the group was sure to result in expulsion, but being expelled for not being “honest and forthcoming” was only one of the ways participants left. Some were judged “not amenable to treatment” from a psychological viewpoint. Some just gave up and quit. Refusing a polygraph when “suggested” to take one was a sure ticket out. Whatever the reason, leaving was a negative experience, and the group members all knew it. While they were group participants, the men were in a segregated, protected portion of the facility. Once no longer in the program, they were moved to the general population (gen pop) while awaiting transfer back to Butner Low, a transfer that was many weeks and sometimes months in the coming. “Men lied just to stay out of general population,” Joseph said.

2005 saw the end of Joseph’s term of incarceration and his participation in Dr. Hernandez’s treatment program. His release was marked by the death of a loved one within a month, a stint in a half-way house, several years of supervised release, and of course the ever-present requirement, which followed him and even worsened as he moved from the state where he was released to another, to register on the sexual offense registry. He has experienced obscenities hurled at him by neighbors, hostile and threatening drive-by incidents, and employment discrimination and hostility.

Much of it seems a blur of memories over the years, but crystal-clear in his mind is the day and the moment when on his computer screen he saw a reference to a sex offender study done at FCI Butner starting in 2000, and, with his heart in his throat and his head spinning, he clicked on it.

“I felt blindsided and betrayed!  I could not believe that the director of the SOTP (Dr. Hernandez) and some staff had collected information from men like me to use against us.  We were told we were in a therapeutic community and ‘safe place’ to build senses of responsibility, integrity, and honesty so we would integrate into society and never reoffend.  We were never told we were part of a study. We were never told the collected information would be used against us for purposes such as exaggerating an individual’s crime and having him committed.  They never said anything about our utterances being used against us; they said the opposite!  We were encouraged to talk about our histories and our lives, and staff told us that nothing we said would be held against us as long as we didn’t specifically name anyone. Reading the article and the report, all I could think was, ‘They used us. Oh my gosh. They lied.’ ”

Almost as soon as it was published, the entirety of the Butner Study came under fire for a variety of reasons. Some of its more damning criticism is found here.   

The post Butner Study Redux: “They used us. They lied.” first appeared on NARSOL.

The post Current sexual offense registration and notification policies are nothing but “window-dressing” first appeared on NARSOL.

Yvette Harris, a presenter at our 2021 conference in Houston, has launched a new study designed to identify the challenges that children and family members of the incarcerated have faced because of COVID. More specifically she is interested in determining how COVID has influenced their communication with their incarcerated loved one, how it has affected their mental and physical health, their financial stability, and their parenting. In general, the purpose is to determine how COVID has impacted their daily lives.

Study participants will complete the 46 item COVID household pulse survey, which is designed to measure the impact of COVID on households. The participants will be asked questions about their employment history, their relationships with their incarcerated loved ones, food security, housing, physical and mental health, access to health care, and children’s education and how COVID has impacted the participants and their family members in these areas. Participants will have the option of completing a Qualtrics survey, or a paper copy of the survey and will receive a $10.00 gift card for their participation in the research.

Get more information and contact information here.

The post 11/18/21 New NARSOL-approved research project first appeared on NARSOL.

The post Sex offense registries create blame and harm for spouses and children of registrants first appeared on NARSOL.

By Andrea Cipriano . . . 

In a recent study published in the journal Sexual Abuse, the researchers explored what they said was a trend in more severe punishment over the past decade since Congress has enacted several pieces of legislation aimed at increasing the punishment in federal sex offender and child pornography cases.

The researchers University of Texas at San Antonio criminology and criminal justice professors Richard Hartley and Alexander Testa, and alumnus Erika Martinez, noted that convictions in federal courts have increased over the last two decades.

Most studies of federal sentencing have focused on “understanding what influences judicial decisions and whether racial/ethnic disparities in federal sentencing practices exist, regardless of the type of crime charged,” Hartley explained in an interview with the university journal, UTSA Today.

“Little research, however, has examined the determinants of sentencing outcomes for those convicted of federal sex offenses.”

The results of their research “generally demonstrates that male and minority defendants receive harsher punishments than their female and white counterparts convicted of similar offenses,” the report outlines.

Recent USSC statistics cited by the authors show that just more than 70 percent of those serving time in federal prison are racial or ethnic minorities, so these findings align with known information.

To that end, the researchers were shocked to find that despite federal prison facilities being populated with ethnic minorities, they’re not typically the individuals being convicted.

“The majority of those convicted of receipt or possession of child pornography are White (86 percent); there are very few Black (4 percent), Hispanic (10 percent), or Native American (<1 percent) individuals charged with this offense.”

Out of the individuals who are convicted of committing sexual abuse offenses, Black and Hispanic Americans receive longer sentences over time compared to White Americans.

To put this into statistical context, the authors write that Black individuals convicted of sexual abuse during FY 2006-2017 had a 1,330.47 percent increase in their sentences, whereas White individuals saw a decrease of 8.66 percent in their sentences.

Read full article

The post Black and Hispanic Americans receiving disproportionately harsher sentences first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . At this time of public outrage and demands for meaningful criminal justice reform, one area in need of serious attention is the racial make-up of our states’ sexual offense registries.

In 2018 a study was done that has been largely ignored. It shows conclusively that in every state in the union except one – Michigan – African American citizens are disproportionately represented on Megan’s Law registries. The disparity ranges from 1.08 in Texas to 10.99 in Minnesota. Only five states fall between 1 and 1.4. Seventeen states are between 1.5 and 2; twenty-three are between 2 and 4. The outliers on the upper end are Connecticut at 4.32, Washington at 4.26, Oregon at 7.20, and the already mentioned 10.99 in Minnesota. Michigan is 0.82.

These numbers may not seem large, but what do they mean? They mean that in Texas, African Americans are 1.08 times more likely to be included on the sex offense registry than their white counterparts, and in Minnesota they are 10.99 times more likely to become registered.

What does this mean in terms of actual people?

In Texas, the state with the least disparity, 78.8% of the population, according to the latest Census Bureau figures, is white (this number includes Hispanic) with 12.8% being black. The remainder are Asian and other. The percentage of Texas citizens on the sex offense registry, however, shows 76.93% white and 22.59% black.

Looking at a state whose disparity rate falls somewhere in the middle, North Carolina, (1.81) the white population is 70.6%, and the black is 22.2%. The North Carolina Sexual Offense Registry reflects a make- up of 60.97% white and 36.96% black.

Minnesota’s numbers are staggering. While the white population of that state is 84.1%, white Minnesotans make up only 54.74% of those on the registry. The black population of Minnesota comprises only 6.8%, yet 38.6% of the state’s registry is black.

Recent events have brought to the forefront the need for law enforcement to guard carefully against such things as racial profiling and  ill treatment of all, especially more frequently targeted people of color. However, this study indicates a deeper and more serious bias, one that reaches into our court system as well as our law enforcement entities.

It appears that black males in America are not only at a greater risk for being harmed or killed when stopped by law enforcement; they are also at greater risk of being included on the sex offender list.

It is time for equal justice under the law to actually mean what it says.

* Totals for state percentages will not add to 100 due to other categories such as native, Asian and other. Percentages for registries will be close to 100% but, depending on the state, not completely, also due to the other categories. Hispanic is included in white.

The post African Americans disproportionately represented on sex offender registries first appeared on NARSOL.

The post Two research opportunities first appeared on NARSOL.

NARSOL was honored to have Dr. Christopher Dum as a presenter at our 2019 conference in Houston.

Dr. Dum is now engaged in an important research project for Kent State University. The study participants are persons who are thinking about moving, or who have already moved, in order to be closer to an incarcerated loved one.

Participation will include a series of interviews (face to face, or over the phone/internet) about your experience of moving and how it has affected your life.

All participation is completely voluntary. There is no compensation for participating, and participation in this study will have no impact on anyone’s sentence, parole, or supervision decisions.

If you are interested or wish more information, please contact Dr. Dum at cdum@kent.edu or 330-672-9475 or go here. You may also direct any questions regarding this study to the Kent State University Institutional Review Board at 330-672-2704.

The post New research study seeks participants first appeared on NARSOL.