By Sandy . . . Follow the money trail. How often has this advice been given, and how often has the heeding of it led to the unraveling of an enigma or a crime.

The sex offender industry is both an enigma and a crime, and following the money trail reveals what lies at the heart and continues to drive this occasionally well-meaning but more often self-serving and punitive complexity of businesses, individuals, and motivations that comprise the billion-dollar “sex offender” industry.

The industry is well diversified. It has three well-developed branches and a fourth smaller but highly important one.

The first, and certainly the lynch pin that holds it all together, is the appeal to the public for security and protection, especially for the need to protect children. This branch encompasses, first and foremost, the public sex offender registries; it includes varied screening, monitoring, and alert products, from systems in schools and libraries to cell phone and email alerts that notify instantly if someone on the registry enters the building or moves into the neighborhood.

The second, and even larger, branch of this industry is the management of those on the registry. Many of these are applicable to registered offenders living in the community, especially when they are on parole or probation. These include the sex offender treatment industry, GPS monitoring, and the polygraph (often used with treatment programs).  The demand for the polygraph creates a need for them  and of course for those who operate them; also, they must be manufactured and marketed. Additionally, many states found the day to day management of their sex offender databases, aka registries, too onerous and demanding for them to keep up with, and a new industry was born–the sex offender database management companies, who, for a fee, take care of all the day to day work of keeping the state online registry updated.

Law enforcement has benefited as their budgets were increased to allow the hiring of new personnel to do parole compliance checks, take care of the constantly ongoing registration process, do home visits, and check on compliance with residence restrictions. In some cases, entire sex offender task forces were created, aided by the U.S. Marshals Service. Their image and public approval are enhanced with every “sex offender” they report violated for a parole infraction or arrested for failure to register.

The management of sex offenders not yet released has spawned another group of businesses–civil commitment “hospitals.” They are extremely controversial, yet they flourish in the 20 states that have them. Among the most protested are the ones in Texas and Minnesota.

The third major branch of the sex offender industry is the role the federal government plays. Under the Adam Walsh Act, the Federal Marshals are empowered to track and capture “absconded” registrants, and they receive large grants each year with which to accomplish their work. Additionally, most investigation of electronic/computer sex crime, such as online solicitation, teen-age “sexting,” and viewing illegal images falls under federal jurisdiction. Federally financed sting operations are infamous. Some federal prisons are filled almost exclusively with those convicted of sexually related crimes.

Finally, comprising the fourth of the components of the sex offender industry are individuals who have and continue to benefit from their participation in the industry. Most notable, perhaps, is John Walsh. Certainly his involvement was thrust upon him in a way no one would ever choose, but it cannot be denied that he built a career that has spanned several decades using his son’s murder. Other parents and some victims have to lesser degrees stayed in the limelight with activism, victim advocacy organizations, and endorsement of harsher and harsher laws dealing with registrants.  One could not possibly count the number of those seeking political office or campaigning to be reelected who used some variation of, “I promise to crack down on those who sexually abuse our children.” Another type of individual who has found a way to earn a living from the sex offender industry is the “scamser.” For close to two decades, across the nation in almost every state, telephone scams targeting persons on the registry have abounded. Registrants are especially vulnerable as they often live in terror of overlooking something they should have done and being rearrested.

The offenses that require public registration run the gamut from the ridiculous to the heinous. Proper management of such a vast range of behaviors requires moving away from our “one size fits all” model and actually reading the research and listening to the experts in the field. Even more essential is focusing on the very real problem of child sexual abuse and those who really do sexually abuse children and developing appropriate programs of education and prevention. But first we need to dismantle the sex offender industry; we need to remove the financial and personal incentives from which so very many benefit.

The post The sex offender industry: follow the money first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . Looking at some of the headers of the articles sent in today’s alerts, I cannot help but shake my head in wonder.

“Communities explore other Halloween plans after sex offender law abolished,” announces a Missouri news outlet. This is in regard to the Missouri Supreme Court’s recent ruling that requiring those on the state sex offender registry to post “No candy here” signs at their homes is unconstitutional.

Even if the signage requirement were not only one part of a comprehensive set of restrictions, would this require that Halloween plans be changed?

Another media outlet says, “California’s tiered sex offender registry law allowed two convicted sex offenders to remain off list.” This is a reference to changes in the registry law in California that allows registrants to be removed after a certain length of time. This is part of a legal process, and a process followed in many states, not, as the article implies, some “loophole” that is used to skirt the law.

In spite of the online outlet Patch abandoning its “red dot” Halloween safety maps in virtually every state and location, a few Illinois editors are running them, “warning” parents where registrants in their communities live. NARSOL has done battle with Patch for years and are pleased that so few editors remain who are willing to defy all empirical evidence by printing this information.

Changing Halloween plans, dismay over legal registry procedures, and trick-or-treat “safety” maps—why would these have me shaking my head in wonder? Perhaps because I am old enough to remember the time when the registry and all it has spawned did not exist.

What was life like then? Were children molested while they were trick-or-treating? Did community members feel panic over who might live down the street? Were sexual crime and reoffenses rampant? Were children grabbed daily—or weekly—or monthly–out of school playgrounds and parks?

No.

Empirical evidence shows the rate of reoffense by those convicted of sexual offenses has remained steady over many years, both before the registry existed and since. As shown in an AI overview, “According to research, there is little evidence to suggest that sexual crime recidivism was significantly worse before the existence of sex offender registries, with most studies indicating that sex offenders generally have a low recidivism rate regardless of the registry system; in fact, some studies even suggest that public registration could potentially increase recidivism rates by making it harder for offenders to reintegrate into society and find employment, potentially leading to further criminal behavior.”

And as far as Halloween, this has been said many times, and it remains true: research reveals no instance of a child being abducted or molested by a person on the registry while trick-or-treating. As far as can be determined, the only time this has happened was pre-registry, in 1973—51 years ago—in Wisconsin. The victim was a little girl named Lisa French, and the perpetrator was someone who, even if there had been registries, would not have been registered.

This is a good place to remember that virtually all sexual crime against children is committed by those who are not already registered. What does this mean for Halloween?

Quoting myself from the Lisa French piece:

According to research, approximately 96% [of the perpetrators of sexual crime] have no previous history of this type of crime and therefore are on no registries. They aren’t locked up or confined to their homes with all lights off on Halloween. They aren’t checked on by law enforcement to assure that they are keeping themselves away from all child-related activities. They don’t show up as red dots on a map warning parents away from those addresses.

They are in your homes, at your parties, in your neighborhoods. They answer the doors and hand out candy to your children. They are where they have always been. And all of the Halloween restrictions on all of the people on sexual offense registries across America mean absolutely nothing.

The post Halloween 50 years ago and now first appeared on NARSOL.

Originally published in the CT Mirror; reprinted here in full with the author’s permission.

By James Cornelio . . . I was born in Torrington in 1955, the son, one of four, of a successful small-town automobile dealer and a stay-at-home mom. After graduating from Cornell University in 1977, I moved to Manhattan, attended Fordham Law School and, upon graduation from Fordham, practiced real estate and private banking law in Manhattan for over 20 years. Upon my release from a New York prison in 2007, I moved back to Connecticut and, as the law required, registered as a sex offender.

Understanding the power of those two words, I have tried elsewhere to explore, as best I could, why and how those words have come to forever define who I am. Here, however, I’m going to explore the effect of those words not just on me but on the legal system which, trained as I was, I had come to respect.

On April 22, 2018, I was arresed in my home because of a warrant issued at the request of the sex offender registry unit of the Connecticut State Police (SORU) for failing to file an email address with them which, as a registered offender, Connecticut law also required. Notably, it was an email address which, though I hadn’t ‘filed’ with SORU, I had used multiple times over several years in communicating with them prior to their request for a warrant. So why did they nonetheless seek my arrest?

In part, because they could.

Thankfully, they no longer can, at least not for that crime.

On Sept. 14, 2023, a Federal District Court held in Cornelio v. CT, a case I initially brought pro se, that the Connecticut law requiring that registrants file their email addresses and all other “internet identifiers” with the police or risk being charged with a class “D” felony violates the First Amendment. Consequently, the court permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the law. Less thankfully, because I had not fashioned my case as a “class action” lawsuit, the court, notwithstanding our request to do so, refused to extend that First Amendment protection to any registrant in the state other than to me.

But given that the court itself acknowledged that “the reasons that the law is invalid as to Cornelio would appear to apply with equal force to all other sex offenders,” we fully expect that a class action lawsuit, to be filed as soon as resources allow, will extend the protection provided to me by my case to all other registrants in the state.

That law, it should be said, is duplicated in states across the country. Moreover, it is but one of many other laws which, of all those who have committed a crime and served their time, apply only to those of us who have committed a sex crime. In fact, it was SORU’s earlier enforcement of one of those other laws, and my reaction to that enforcement, which, most certainly, was the reason why SORU sought my arrest for my subsequent ‘email crime.’

Briefly, in July, 2015, I was arrested because I failed to confirm my home address within the 10-day statutory time period set forth in a Connecticut law requiring registrants to provide written confirmation thereof every three months or face a felony charge. Once the state prosecutor was convinced I would not ‘cop a plea’ to any charge because of my late mail, the case was dismissed. I then, in what was surely a first for them, brought my first pro se case by suing SORU in Federal Court for violating my Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

In my court papers, I pointed out that SORU, in seeking my arrest, had not only ignored both their own (reasonable) protocol on late confirmation letters and the relevant law’s direction that they refer late letters to local police but, more pointedly, they had ignored that the presumptive purpose of the law was to assure a registrant hadn’t moved. I hadn’t. And they had no reason because of a late letter or otherwise to believe that I had. And if, for some reason, they were concerned that I had moved, there were far simpler and more effective, and far less punishing, ways of determining that risk to the public than by seeking my arrest.

Well, I learned that, per the statutory language adopted by Connecticut lawmakers and interpreted by the state’s highest court, it doesn’t matter whether one has moved or not. Nor does it matter whether the police have a reasonable suspicion that a registrant has moved. Nor even whether the late return of a confirmation letter was unintentional or otherwise excusable. No, under that law as interpreted by that court, a registrant can be arrested and be held strictly liable for a Class D felony simply because their mail is late. Think about it. The elements of this felony are established by two postmarks.

Suffice it to say, with reasonableness rendered irrelevant, my Fourth Amendment case was dismissed. Not long thereafter, I was arrested for my email crime.

I write this not to bemoan my fate but to shine a light on the fact that laws which were meant to protect the public have, with little significant push-back, been weaponized by lawmakers, the courts and those tasked with enforcing those laws. Beyond my personal experience are these other examples: here, strict residency requirements wreak havoc and hardship: or here, even visiting registrants must beware; or here, Halloween horrors abound; and then there’s this; and this; and this; and this; and … more.

Given all that, let me suggest that the reasoning by the Supreme Court in its 2003 decision in Smith v. Doe was, at best, naïve if not willfully blind to what cruelty it might unleash. In that seminal case, the court ruled that an Alaska law establishing a public registry and requiring convicted sex offenders, who have already served their court-imposed sentences, to thereafter routinely re-register on that public registry was merely “regulatory” and not punitive in nature. In effect, the court’s decision meant that judges and juries — that is, those familiar with the particulars of the who, what, when and where of the crime — need not even be aware of, let alone weigh in on, whether the defendant before them may become subject to those “regulatory” reporting requirements. Instead, as I personally experienced by being required to register for life, a sweeping, harshly crude, paint-by-numbers formula for determining one’s “risk” to the public is unilaterally imposed by those who write the laws — and who answer only to the voters.

Not only voters but any empathetic human being understands, and would seek to allay, the pain and abiding distress of those who have been sexually victimized and the fear of others, especially parents, about their own potential victimization or that of their children. But an uniformed belief that so-called “stranger danger” is widely prevalent and that but for public registries the recidivism of convicted sex offenders would be out-of-control have served to further inflame sexual fears already ignited by a competitive media seeking clicks and ambitious politicians seeking power, both more-than-ready to exploit those fears.

The result is a legal system which has gone well beyond the deeply unfortunate, if somewhat less punitively oppressive, Alaska law at issue in the Doe case to one which now embodies the modern equivalent of banishment for a whole class of citizens.

The post Life and occasional victory as a “sex offender” registrant first appeared on NARSOL.

Originally prublished in the Arizona Capitol Times

By John Covert . . . Among all the policy experiments in this country that have thoroughly missed the mark, sex offense registries have surely earned their own special niche.

Registries have been examined in numerous academic studies over the past several decades, and virtually all of them have found that registries do not accomplish what they were intended to do. They do not reduce recidivism.

They do not prevent sex offenses. They do not protect children. They do not make communities safer.

These findings certainly run counter to the beliefs of some policy makers seemingly more interested in inflicting additional punishment on past crimes or enhancing their “tough on crime” personas. New directions must be taken—employing evidence-based reforms focused on intervention and treatment methods that have been shown to reduce sexual violence.

Sex offense registries in this country go back to the mid- 20th century, when they had the limited aim of providing law ennforcement (and only law enforcement) with contact information on those who had committed specific types of offenses.

Then, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Alaska’s relatively lean registry, using the now debunked premise that people convicted of a sex offense have an exceptionally high recidivism rate. Policy makers around the country took it as an invitation to pile on new regulations and requirements, vastly expanding registries that had once focused on a narrow spectrum of serious crimes to include an ever- growing list of offenses, even including such things as public urination and sex among underage teenagers.

Those who seek to maintain, and even expand, sex offense registries make the claim that those convicted of a sex offense cannot be rehabilitated and need to be under constant surveillance. However, study after study has shown that therapeutic interventions largely lead to success. In fact, those convicted of sex offenses have essentially the lowest recidivism rate among all classes of offenders; a study done by the U.S. Department of Justice found a reconviction rate of 3.5% among individuals in 15 states released over a three- year period.

So, if registries do not work as intended, what can be done?

The American Law Institute (ALI) provided recommendations on where states might go when it adopted extensive model penal code revisions regarding sex offense registries in 2021. ALI’s model codes are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures, and in legal scholarship and education.

ALI’s proposed changes match the recommendations of academic literature, which shows that people convicted of sexual offenses have low reoffense rates and that registration hinders rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

Specifically, it recommends restricting the information on registries to be available to law enforcement only, limiting those registered to only the most dangerous, and shortening the length of time individuals must remain on the registry.

The first is important because publicly listing those convicted of a sex offense on the internet exposes them to a variety of negative consequences, ranging from public shaming, physical intimidation and violence, and difficulties in finding employment and a place to live.

The requirement of lifetime registration that many states, including Arizona, impose carries burdens for many convicted of a sex offense, often preventing them from ever being able to fully reintegrate into their communities even many years after the offense.

In her dissent in the Alaska Supreme Court case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that many registries, including Arizona’s, make no provision at all for the possibility of rehabilitation. “However plain it may be that a former sex offender currently poses no threat of recidivism,” she wrote, “he will remain subject to long term monitoring and inescapable humiliation.”

At a time when the American Law Institute, virtually all available research, and a growing body of public and professional opinion reflect the reality that our current sexual offense policies do not work, it is important for Arizona to take a new direction.

John Covert is a member of the Arizonans for Rational Sex Offense Laws Executive Committee.

The post AZ RSOL says, “It’s time for a new direction in sexual offense policy” first appeared on NARSOL.