Dividing Sex Offenders

Sentencing Law & Policy points to a Houston Chronicle article about an effort to only list the most dangerous sex offenders on registries. From the article:

Martin Ezell is tired of the dead-end jobs and unrelenting stigma that comes with being a registered sex offender.
He has a master's degree in liberal arts and wants to be a teacher.
But employers have been unable to see beyond his presence on the state's sex offender registry, which he is required to be on for the rest of his life.
It's true that a decade ago, he was convicted of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl who was half his age. But the registry doesn't divulge that his victim was his girlfriend who now is his wife, with whom he has three children.
Glancing at his profile, there's little to distinguish him from the repeat pedophiles and violent rapists who are among the 54,000-plus registered sex offenders in the state's database....
This unlikely political force, which dubs itself Texas Voices, vows to fight the state's — and the nation's — sweeping registration laws.
The group believes community notification laws fail to protect the public, because they don't distinguish dangerous predators from otherwise harmless men and women who foolishly had sex with underage lovers, served their sentences and don't need a lifetime of public scrutiny.

While I think the proposal of Texas Voices could potentially improve sex offender registries, it does not address the deficiencies embodied in the registry approach generally. Still, even with the Texas Voices proposal, there are a lot of ambiguities that might determine its worth. 

Should rapists of adults be included? There is no evidence to support the idea that they are more dangerous to children than other violent criminals, so why should they be listed (while murderers are not)?

What about offenders like Ezell who are convicted of statutory rape, but the crime was the result of a guilty plea where rape was charged?

What do we do with child pornography possessors? They are non-violent, but have a higher risk of molesting children.

At the end of the day, the Texas Voices proposal might only cherry-pick a few people off the registry. Ultimately, the better solution (if we are wedded to a registry approach) still seems to give the power to judges to make actual determinations as to the dangerousness of offenders (sexual or otherwise).

Since the story is in Texas, Grits for Breakfast is of course covering it.

Comments

[Mheald]

I think any effort to improve the registry is better than keeping it as is, but I agree with your point about murderers. As someone who works in the anti-sexual violence field, I naturally want to keep people safe from rapists, but personally, I don't see the rationale for having a registry for sex offenders, but not for other violent crimes.

[JT]

This is the reality of the sex offender registry. It's purpose was great, but it's turned into a scarlet letter that makes mild sex offenders and pedophiles share the same stigma.

[disillusion1998]

JT, there shouldn't be any "stigma" for anyone. After a pedophile, rapist, or whomever is released from prison, we definitely should not seek out to stigmatize, ostracize, punish, or do whatever else to the person. We should be concentrating on whatever we can to help the person live a productive, law-abiding life.

Registration (and especially, especially the rest of the BS it has enabled) is just about worthless. It doesn't prevent any crimes. We obviously aren't bothering to even Register millions of felons (i.e. non sexual offenders) who have actually harmed children and there are millions more that might harm children that we don't know about. When I was raising my children, I had ZERO use for any Registries. I didn't care if a person was on a Registry or not, anyone got the same benefit of the doubt - none. I didn't let my children have unsupervised relationships with people. Didn't matter to me if a person was on some government list or not, I was watching them.

The Registries are a "tool" that we don't need. But unfortunately, Registries and the rest of it are not just worthless, they are much, much worse. They are causing a tremendous, unbelievable amount of damage all for very, very little benefit.

[lawdoc]

"What do we do with child pornography possessors? They are non-violent, but have a higher risk of molesting children."

Is there some new information that shows this? This has been the million dollar question for some time: What significance does possession of child pornography mean to risk assessment for future contact offending? As far as I can tell, the current consensus of unbiased experts is that the risk is indeterminate.

There are cases where contact offending and child pornography possession co-exist. It is sometimes easier to get the conviction on child pornography. But what about when the index crime is solety possession? One study by the Justice Department showed that when the crime was solely possession, investigation revealed there was a prior contact crime about 15% of the time. This means a thorough investigation should be done when someone has posession because 15% is a high risk. However, most will not have a history of prior contact offending.

But this still leaves the question of future risk of contact offending against a child. If there is any new information, please share it.

[female libido supplements]

I totally agree with you disillusion, let's just focus on improving the person as a whole rather than stigmatize. He's paid the price and hopefully the lesson that he has learned the hard way would be enough to make him reconsider his choices before even trying to repeat such vile act that he has done.