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.

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