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Sex Offender Laws May Do More Harm Than Good
09/11/2007
End Registration of Juveniles, Residency Restrictions and Online Registries
Laws aimed at people convicted of sex offenses may not protect children from sex crimes but do lead to harassment, ostracism and even violence against former offenders, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch urges the reform of state and federal registration and community notification laws, and the elimination of residency restrictions, because they violate basic rights of former offenders.
The 146-page report, "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States," (PDF) is the first comprehensive study of US sex offender policies, their public safety impact, and the effect they have on former offenders and their families. During two years of investigation for this report, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted over 200 interviews with victims of sexual violence and their relatives, former offenders, law enforcement and government officials, treatment providers, researchers, and child safety advocates.
"Human Rights Watch shares the public's goal of protecting children from sex abuse," said Jamie Fellner, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. "But current laws are ill-conceived and poorly crafted. Protecting children requires a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach than politicians have been willing to support."
In many states, registration covers everyone convicted of a sexual crime, which can range from child rape to consensual teenage sex, and regardless of their potential future threat to children. Unfettered public access to online sex-offender registries with no "need-to-know" restrictions exposes former offenders to the risk that individuals will act on this information in irresponsible and even unlawful ways. There is little evidence that this form of community notification prevents sexual violence. Residency restrictions banish former offenders from entire towns and cities, forcing them to live far from homes, families, jobs and treatment, and hindering law-enforcement supervision. Residency restrictions are counterproductive to public safety and harmful to former offenders.
Sex offender laws reflect public concern that children are at grave risk of sexual abuse by strangers who are repeat offenders. As the report documents, however, the real risks children face are quite different: government statistics indicate that most sexual abuse of children is committed by family members or trusted authority figures, and by someone who has not previously been convicted of a sex offense.
In addition, the laws reflect the widely shared but erroneous belief that "once a sex offender, always a sex offender." Authoritative studies indicate that three out of four adult offenders do not reoffend. Moreover, treatment can be effective even for people who have committed serious sex crimes.
"Politicians didn't do their homework before enacting these sex offender laws," said Sarah Tofte, US program researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Instead they have perpetuated myths about sex offenders and failed to deal with the complex realities of sexual violence against children."
Registration Policies
Federal law and the laws of all 50 states now require adults and some juveniles convicted of a vast array of crimes that involve sexual conduct to register their addresses and other information with law enforcement agencies. Because registration requirements are overbroad in scope and overlong in duration, there are more than 600,000 registered sex offenders in the US, including individuals convicted of non-violent crimes such as consensual sex between teenagers, prostitution, and public urination, as well as those who committed their only offenses decades ago.
"The public believes everyone on a sex offender registry is dangerous," said Fellner. "But what's the point of requiring registration by a teenager who exposed himself as a high-school prank or even by someone who molested a child 30 years ago?"
Most states do not make individualized risk assessments before requiring registration. Nor do they offer former offenders a way to get off the registry upon a showing of rehabilitation or years of lawful behavior.
Human Rights Watch found there is scant justification for ever registering juvenile offenders, even those who have committed serious offenses. Most are likely to outgrow such behavior, particularly if given treatment. Recidivism rates for juvenile offenders are extremely low, and few adult offenders ever committed sex crimes as youth.
In "No Easy Answers," Human Rights Watch recommends that registration requirements be limited to people assessed to pose a real risk of committing another serious sex offense.
Online Registries
Because of community notification laws, all states now have publicly accessible online sex offender registries that provide a former offender's criminal history, photograph, current address, and often other information such as license plate numbers.
The laws do not limit access to online registries: anyone with internet access can find out who is registered anywhere in the country. The consequences to registrants are devastating. Their privacy is shattered. Many cannot get or keep jobs or find affordable housing. Registrants' children have been harassed at school; registrants' spouses have also been forced to leave their jobs. Former offenders included on online registries have been hounded from their homes, had rocks thrown through windows, and feces left on their doorsteps. They have been beaten, burned, stabbed, and had their homes set on fire. At least four registrants have been targeted and killed by strangers who found their names and addresses through online registries. Other registrants have been driven to suicide.
Human Rights Watch acknowledges the desire of parents to know if dangerous offenders live next-door. But carefully tailored community notification, provided directly by law enforcement agents, would supply them with the information they want while minimizing the harm to former offenders.
Residency Restrictions
A growing number of states and municipalities have also prohibited registered offenders from living within a designated distance (typically 500 to 2,500 feet) of places where children gather, for example, schools, playgrounds and daycare centers. Many of these restrictions apply even to offenders who were not convicted of abusing children. With regard to offenders who did victimize children, available data suggest that prohibiting them from living near any place where children gather does not reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend. Many law enforcement officials and sex offender treatment providers emphasize the importance of stability and support in reducing recidivism. They decry residency restrictions as counterproductive because they isolate and push underground people who may need family contact, treatment and supervision. Existing parole and probation laws permit individualized restrictions and conditions to be placed on former offenders when appropriate.
Human Rights Watch concludes residency restriction laws should be eliminated.
"Residency restrictions solve nothing," said Tofte. "They simply make it nearly impossible for former offenders to put their lives back together."
The Human Rights Watch report includes several cases of people whose lives were significantly harmed by the restrictions. One woman, who as a high-school student had oral sex with another teenager, had to leave her home because it is near a daycare center. A softball coach, who six years ago grabbed the buttocks of a 12-year-old team member, cannot live with his wife and family because their home falls within a restricted zone.
The Adam Walsh Act
The federal Adam Walsh Act, passed in 2006, will exacerbate the problems with state sex offender laws. It forces states to either dramatically increase the scope and duration of registration and community notification restrictions - including requiring states to register youths as young as 14 - or lose some federal law enforcement grant money. Compliance with the Adam Walsh Act will preclude states from adopting more carefully calibrated and cost-effective registration and community notification policies. At least some states are debating whether the costs of complying with the law outweigh the benefits. Human Rights Watch urges reform of the Adam Walsh Act.
Recommendations
In "No Easy Answers," Human Rights Watch makes a number of recommendations to state governments:
- Refuse to change registration and community notification laws to meet Adam Walsh requirements;
- Eliminate residency restriction laws;
- Limit registration requirements to people who have been convicted of serious crimes and who have been individually assessed to pose a significant risk of reoffending; and,
- Prevent unlimited dissemination of registry information by eliminating publicly accessible online registries. Community notification should be undertaken only by law enforcement officers and only about those registrants who pose a significant risk of reoffending.
"Everyone has the right to live free of sexual violence." said Tofte. "States should craft laws that will protect this right in a fair and sensible way."
Patty Wetterling - The harm in sex-offender laws
09/14/2007
My son Jacob was kidnapped on Oct. 22, 1989. Neither his brother nor his friend saw the man's face. He was masked, he had a gun and he ordered them to run to the woods. By the time they looked back, Jacob was gone and so was the man. Since that day, I have been on a journey to find him and to stop this from ever happening to another child, another family.
But I'm worried that we're focusing so much energy on naming and shaming convicted sex offenders that we're not doing as much as we should to protect our children from other real threats.
Many states make former offenders register for life, restrict where they can live, and make their details known to the public. And yet the evidence suggests these laws may do more harm than good.
Jacob's Law was the first federal attempt to prevent convicted sex offenders from repeating their crimes after release. It was the outcome of my unwanted education in sexual violence against children.
Soon after Jacob was taken, I learned that sexual motives are usually behind child kidnapping. That was a thought totally out of my realm of consciousness. Who would do that? Who would sexually harm a child? As the search for Jacob went on, I asked law enforcement, what do you need? An investigator told me: A ready list of potential suspects, a central database of offenders convicted of sexual violence against children.
The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children Sex Offender Registration Act was part of the 1994 Crime Bill signed by President Bill Clinton. Our goal was to give law enforcement a tool to help build safer communities. Back in 1990, when we first recommended registering convicted sex offenders, we were met with resistance: "You can't do that. These people have rights!" How times have changed. Few people today are concerned about the rights of sex offenders. Most now complain our laws are not tough enough.
But they might be missing some basic facts. First, in most states "sex offender" covers anyone, including juveniles, convicted of any sexual offense, including consensual teenage sex, public urination and other non-violent crimes. Second, Jacob was the exception, not the rule: more than 90 percent of sexual violence is committed by someone the child knows. And third, most shocking to me, sex offenders are less likely to re-offend than commonly thought. A Department of Justice study suggested ex-offenders have a recidivism rate of 3 percent to 5 percent within the first three years after release.
Another study found that, after 15 years, three out of four do not re-offend.
Shortly before Jacob's Law was passed, Megan Kanka was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Her parents felt it wasn't enough for law enforcement to know where sex offenders were: they thought we should all know. Maybe, if they'd known that there was a convicted sex offender living next door, their child would be alive today. Megan's Law was created to let people know when a violent offender was released into their community, so they could talk to their children and perhaps save another child from sexual violence. But the law has been expanded so that now anyone with an Internet connection can download details about almost any offender, whether or not they pose a risk, and whether or not they live nearby.
Are these policies working? Are our "get tough on sex offenders" laws having the desired effect? Human Rights Watch has taken on the challenge of looking at sex offender policy to see what parts are working and what aren't.
This week it published a 143-page report, "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States." The researchers examined whether we are building safer communities with these laws, and what issues policy-makers should consider. HRW found that many laws may not prevent sexual attacks on children, but do lead to harassment, ostracism and even violence against former offenders. That makes it nearly impossible to rehabilitate those people and reintegrate them safely into their communities -- and that may actually increase the risk that they'll repeat their crime.
We need to keep sight of the goal: no more victims. We need to be realistic. Not all sex offenders are the same. Not all sex offenses are the same. We need to ask tougher questions: What can we do to help those who have offended so that they will not do it again? What are the social factors contributing to sexual violence and how can we turn things around? None of us want our loved ones to be victims of sexual violence. None of us want to be the parent or sibling or child of a sex offender. But since the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the family, sexual violence becomes personal very quickly. It affects all of us.
We need better answers. We need to fund prevention programs that stop sexual violence before it happens. We need to look at what can help those released from prison to succeed so that they don't victimize again -- and that probably means housing and jobs and treatment and community support. Given that current laws are extremely popular, taking truly effective measures may exact a high political price. But that's surely not too much to pay to prevent the kidnap, rape or murder of another child.