Dealing with monsters -- uh -- sex offenders

If things really come in threes, then I have a monster story yet to come my way.

The first one was when an editor wrote a "Pokemon warning" to his readers and chose to call registrants living in the area "the real monsters." I took exception to that verbiage and, after contacting him, sent my rebuttal, which he, in decency, printed.

THIS IS A MONSTER

Now, this morning, when I opened my usual collection of daily alerts, one shouted at me, "Monsters among us site provides digital vigilance to help you keep track of sexual predators..." The thing turned out to be nothing more than an advertisement for Family Watchdog masquerading as a site review, but my initial reaction was, again, my radar going on high alert at the word "monsters" being used to describe those on the registry.

At the end of the piece was a request for readers to share their favorite sites for him to review. I took him up on it, sending him the following. Time will tell if I get a response.

Dear Mr. O'Neill,

Thank you for the invitation to share a favorite site. The one I would like to share is www.nationalrsol.org. It is the site of National Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc., and it is dedicated to the advocacy of laws and policies based on facts and evidence that support

THIS IS NOT A MONSTER

the successful rehabilitation and reintegration of law abiding, former sex offenders into society. This is our goal because this is what research shows will help create a safer society.

Unlike the site you most recently recommended, we do not call people "monsters." Research indicates that pejorative language of that type is counter-productive in furthering the rehabilitation initiatives approved by our criminal justice system.

Additionally, we find the type of site touted in your article "Monsters among us site..." contradictory to empirical evidence, and we find companies such as Family Watchdog extremely unethical as they are using deceit to play on the fears of parents. An exhaustive look at the research and scholarly literature on the subject will reveal that evidence does not support the use of public notification such as public sex offender registries. These popular but wasteful schemes do not further public safety, reduce sexual re-offending, nor offer any protection to children or other potential victims. They are predicated on misconceptions and myths and are denounced by academics and scientists alike.

I will be happy to dialogue with you further on this subject. Thank you for considering the site I have recommended for your column.

With sex offender issues, many media outlets don't want both sides

UPDATE: After this was sent to the publisher and editor, and after W.A.R. contacted them, I received an email yesterday -- 23rd -- saying the rebuttal would run "later this week." Today, the 24th, they ran a reiteration of their position. That means that this one should see print tomorrow, the 25th, or Saturday the 26th. Watch this spot for updates.

A May 13 editorial in the Longview, WA News Online proclaimed, "Laws Help Keep Children Safe." The editorial was essentially an expression of outrage that the organization W.A.R. -- and by extension all such-minded advocacy organizations-- even existed. "It takes a moment to digest that such a group exists...." Apparently the news outlet had received a brochure and some factual information from W.A.R. after a vigilante incident occurred in Longview.

The editorial angered me as it included several references that are blatantly untrue. I wrote the online editor inquiring whether she would consider for publication a rebuttal piece that I had started working on. By the time she responded that I could send it to her, I had finished it and immediately did so as this was a time-sensitive issue. That was over a week ago. Two separate inquiries to her as to whether

she had made a decision yet went unacknowledged.

A week is enough time to decide to print or not print submitted material. Besides, I have experienced this too many times to count: journalism, which once long, long ago in a place far, far away, would almost always respond favorably to a request for "equal time," no longer feels the necessity to do that.

And so I print it here, and I will send a link to the publisher and online editor of the Daily News.

In response to your editorial of March 13, "Laws help keep children safe," I would first like to thank you for your condemnation of vigilante activity. Fully agreeing with the title of your op-ed, I too want laws that help keep children safe, and there is nothing about vengeance-motivated activity that works toward that goal.

The organization you criticize, WAR, or Women Against Registry, is one of several organizations that advocate for laws that do just that -- keep children safe. Another is SOSEN, Sex Offender Solutions and Education Network. And yet another is RSOL, Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc. These organizations agree with what research studies show: laws that keep children -- and indeed everyone -- safe must, in order to do that, be based on facts and empirical evidence.

The public registry system is not based on empirical evidence, and, in your defense of it, you say that the murder of Adam Walsh is "not uncommon." Actually, it is very rare. Whether or not Adam's kidnapping and subsequent murder were sexually motivated will never be known, but it was a heinous crime as was the murder of Megan Kanka and another handful of horrific child murders at the hands of murderers.

Your statement that WAR grew out of murders such as these is untrue. WAR, SOSEN, and RSOL grew out of a realization, based on research, that public registration of those who had previously committed a sexual offense -- not murdered, not decapitated, but committed an offense ranging from the trivial to the serious -- actually was not deterring sexual crimes against children at all. It was in some cases increasing the risk for re-offense, and it was and is creating conditions that seriously interfere with mandated rehabilitative efforts. 

It was and does negatively impact the lives of family members, especially the children of registrants. This is well documented through research studies. 

According to yet another study, "These policies have led to multiple collateral consequences, creating an ominous environment that inhibits successful reintegration and may contribute to an increasing risk for recidivism. In fact, evidence on the effectiveness of these laws suggests that they may not prevent recidivism or sexual violence and result in more harm than good." 

Reform organizations do not defend the actions that have triggered registration, and we recognize appropriate punishment as desirable and necessary, but it is difficult to claim that, in all cases, the children suffer through the actions of the registrant family members rather than the effects of public registration. Many situations exist where the offense was committed when the registrant was a child or juvenile himself. A number of cases involve premarital sex where the offender and "victim" later married and had a family, yet the offender remains on a public registry, often for life, and his children suffer greatly due to it. This continuation of punishment long after a sentence has been completed is but another form of vengeance and amounts to legalized, governmental vigilante action, exacting punishment far beyond what the courts assessed.

The impotency of the public registry to deter re-offense and to protect children is well documented also. Dr. Bill O'Leary is a forensic psychologist and longtime critic of  public notification and tracking. He notes, "95 percent of sexual abuse occurs between a victim and a known acquaintance, not a stranger living down the street. One of the most unethical pieces of the situation has been saying that we need to do this to prevent sexual abuse when we know statistically that this has nothing to do with preventing sexual abuse.”

According to the United States Department of Justice, from 1992 to 2010 there was a steep decline in all major crime. There is no evidence that a decrease in sexual crime is due to our current policies, and that theory is actually negated by research.  

Many people and organizations advocate every day for policies that will keep children safe, but we know that until the focus is put on the victims and the actual facts about child sexual abuse, that is highly unlikely to occur.

No, Senator Grassley, the Adam Walsh Act does NOT need to be re-authorized

Mr. Grassley, like you, we grieve with families of children who are victimized and abused, and we especially grieve that virtually all of this type of crime is committed by the family members and others close to their young victims. Like you, we would like to see a strong commitment to keeping our nation’s children safe.

Unlike you, however, we have seen no evidence of this commitment for the past twenty-five years. Such a commitment must be based on solid research, on facts and evidence, and on the reality of both child sexual abuse and of those who are the abusers.

The Adam Walsh Act is ill-conceived legislation, contraindicated by empirical evidence, which fails to address the crime of child sexual abuse because it does not target those who commit child sexual abuse.

The rhetoric and the reality of the AWA are light years apart. The rhetoric says the AWA “was enacted in response to multiple, notorious cases involving children who had been targeted by adult criminals, many of them repeat sex offenders.” The reality is that the cases that drove the legislation are the rarest of rare crimes. They are crimes of murder. They are crimes that would not have been prevented by the AWA or by a thousand sex offender registries.

The reality is that the crime that set John Walsh upon his crusade, the murder of his son, was not committed by a person on the sex offender registry at all.

The reality is that the 800,000 persons on sex offender registries across the nation -- ranging in age, according to the various registries, from nine years old to well over a hundred – have not killed anyone. The reality is that the vast majority of them are not repeat offenders but one-time offenders who, after completion of their sentences, live in our communities without ever committing another offense.

The reality is that the many, many millions of dollars and many millions of law-enforcement hours expended in public notification and public registration of those who have committed sexual crimes do not advance public safety.  A huge and growing body of evidence attests that they do not affect the rate of first time sexual offenses, of repeat offenses, or of child sexual offenses. 

And so we grieve also, Mr. Grassley.

We grieve that our priorities have become focused on ineffective punishments rather than prevention programs. Last January, a coalition including both sexual assault prevention and victims’ groups called for the creation of a stable funding stream dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse and exploitation. The group asked for funding to equal at least one percent – ONE percent! -- of the millions currently spent on “after-the-fact” responses like sex registries and civil commitment. They are still waiting.

We, like you, grieve for Jetseta and Dru and Megan. We also grieve for other rare cases of children falling victims to repeat offenders, those in more recent years who were not “saved” by the registry or the AWA, those like Jaycee and Chelsea and Cherish.

And we grieve for the deaths of those who were murdered for no reason other than that they were on a public registry, targeted and slaughtered for an offense long ago paid for, such as were Gary and Jerry and Jeremy and his wife Christine, killed just because she was with him when vigilante murderers found him, and Hugh Edwards, who wasn’t even on the registry but was mistaken for someone who was.

We grieve for the registrants who have paid for their crimes and want nothing more than to be allowed to live law-abiding lives but cannot find a job or even a place to live. We grieve for their families, especially their children, who suffer ostracism and ridicule and abuse due to the crimes of their parents.

We grieve especially for the children of continuing and new sexual abuse who will grow up to know that their society chose to ignore their plight, invisible and easy to ignore, in favor of a very public and popular demand for policies and laws and legislation that wasted millions and accomplished nothing.

And we grieve for that society, which is OUR society, and for what it has become.

The sex offender industry

Follow the money.

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, and following the money trail reveals what lies at the heart and continues to drive this occasionally well-meaning but more often self-serving complexity of businesses, individuals, and motivations that comprise this billion dollar 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 our 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. It includes GPS bracelets and private sex offender registry

sites, many of which run a lucrative side business as blackmail sites, charging fees to remove people who are there “accidentally” or who have been removed from the Megan’s list registries. Like any successful product, these businesses employ those who sell and market them as well as those who design, manufacture, and create them.

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. The first and most insidious is an industry unto itself, and that is the sex offender treatment industry. The polygraph runs a close second, and the demand for the polygraph creates a need for the polygrapher, and of course polygraphs must be manufactured and marketed. 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. 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” are among the most controversial, but in the states that allow civil commitment, they thrive. Other enterprising investors saw an opportunity, not limited to those with sex offenses but certainly aided by their numbers, and private prisons--prisons for profit—are on the increase. Not to be outdone, private probation companies appeared on the scene. Those who provide telephone and medical services to the incarcerated are finding those areas lucrative.

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 and “bait and switch” operations are infamous. Under some circumstances, the officers involved confiscate and keep the property of those they arrest. Special task forces have been created and well funded.  Some federal prisons are filled almost exclusively with those convicted of sexually related crimes.

Finally, rounding off 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 has built a career that has spanned two decades using his son’s murder. Other parents and some victims have to lesser degrees stayed in the limelight with activism, victim advocacy organizations— at least one of which has landed a contract as sex offender compliance monitors —and endorsement of harsher and harsher laws dealing with sex offenders. Additionally, political careers have been carved out of the

sex offender industry. 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.” Finally, as those charged with sexual crimes come to trial, the field of expert witnesses is proving quite profitable.

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 our 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 to keep the status quo; otherwise, nothing will change.

Another Sex Offender Entrapment Experiment? Oh, My!

I may be too angry to write this coherently, but I'm sure gonna give it a try.

Some of you will remember the "How easy it would be to kidnap your child in the park experiment" that I blogged about two years ago. With the parents' permission, a man lured children in a park to his van to "see his puppies." It was phony and contrived but certainly accomplished its purpose of terrifying a You-Tube viewing audience.

Cut from the same entrapment-type cloth, a new one went on line, as I write this, less than twenty-four hours ago and has had over a million views. Titled "The Dangers Of Social Media (Child Predator Social Experiment)," the brilliant conceiver of this "experiment" set up a Facebook identity as a young high school boy and, with the cooperation of each parent, contacted the 12 or 13 year old daughter on Facebook, claiming to go to her school and having seen her around. By day two or three, he convinced her to meet him at a nearby park, only to have the enraged father jump out from behind a trashcan and start screaming at her when she arrived for the rendezvous. (I only watched the first of what were apparently several events; my stomach was churning.)

But, as tacky as I found the video, that isn't what made me so angry. It was this statement on a Facebook posting accompanying the link to the video: "In the United State[sic] there are over 750,000 registered child predators." Full of righteous anger and statistics, I dashed to the "Report" function of Facebook--only to discover that the sentence wasn't written by Facebook. Off I rushed to Youtube, only to discover the same.

The villian is an online rag called "GoingViralPosts." The closest I came, with admittedly only moderate effort, to finding contact information was that they are headquartered in San Francisco.

Should parents educate children about potential dangers online? Certainly. Should they be terrified of some "registered sex-offender bogeyman" who lurks in cyperspace ready to pounce? Should they be

seduced by false statements and bogus "experiments" into believing that potential luring behavior, if it comes, is likely to be done by someone already on the registry, someone who is a stranger to the child?

Just as research shows that virtually all actual child sexual mistreatment is committed by those who are NOT already on the registry for previous offenses but rather those close to the chosen victims, it strongly suggests that by far the greatest Internet threats to children and teens are the peers of the potential victims.

One of my "sounding boards" suggested this solution to the danger to children posed in the video, and actually any danger at all--save a meteor crashing out of the sky and leveling the house and everyone in it. Anyone who has children commits to keeping them in the home every second of the first 17 years of their lives, with at least one of the parents having eyeball contact with the child each of those seconds. Any parent found negligent shall be imprisoned and the child taken into care where he or she will be assigned a surrogate to fulfill the parental role and expectations.

I hope I haven't given any aspiring politicians any ideas.

Are We Right to Encourage Hatred, Violence, Rape Against Sex Offenders?

Close your eyes and remember the worst thing that ever happened to you. Maybe you lost a loved one in a tragedy. Maybe you suffered a horrible accident that left you paralyzed or disabled. Or maybe you are one of the more fortunate ones, and the loss of an expensive diamond ring or the break-up with a boyfriend or girlfriend is the worst you have experienced.

Or maybe you are like Diena Thompson and suffered the almost unimaginable—the violent death of a precious child at the hands of a rapist and murderer. What kind of revenge would you have wished on her killer? What type of payback would ease your pain a little?

Jarred Harrell is right where he belongs, in prison for life for the brutal murder of little Somer in late 2009. Would that be enough for you, or would you want more payback, more revenge?

The house where Jarred had lived and Somer was murdered had fallen into disrepair and long been condemned. Earlier this month, it was burned to the ground as part of a fire-training exercise by the Orange Park, Florida, fire department—and Diena Thompson. She participated with glee, her smile described as “cathartic” by a journalist, and, according to his interview, she felt delight in the act, proclaiming herself “the big, bad wolf this time.”

I am sure there is not a one of us who does not understand her feelings.

The media is making much of this, and beyond the local level. Is this wrong? If so, why?

One answer is found in the comments posted to the comment board of one article. They range from, “He [Harrell] should have been in it,” to, “Maybe he will be getting raped for life where he is. Wouldn't that make you feel better? And when he is 80 and some young 25 y/o comes in and rapes him and the guards ignore his screams, that will be part of justice.”  

No, that will be part of something that has no place in justice. That is part of vigilantism. That is as much a part of evil as that which Jarred Harrell committed. What irony it is that, in a protest against sexual violence, one wishes for more sexual violence to be committed.

The journalist who wrote that article and played up the joy that Diena experienced in her metaphoric act of vengeance knew that comments would be of that nature, as did the media outlet that published it, as did other journalists and outlets that wrote and published like stories, and they are many.

The harm is more than just giving vigilantes a platform from which to spew their hatred, ignorance, and violence. There are, according to fairly difficult-to-gather figures, somewhere over 700,000 men, women, and children registered as sex offenders in our nation. A scant handful have come near the atrocities that Harrell visited upon Somer, but the vigilante mentality is unable to process that.  To those determined to hate, stories such as this are all of the justification they require to continue the hatred, to refuse to believe the facts, to demand with every opportunity the harshest possible consequences to everyone on the registry because, you see, they all molested children; they are all rapists and destroyers of innocent young lives, and if they haven’t murdered yet, well, just give them time because they will all do it again and will probably kill their next victims.

They are undeterred by the facts that give lie to these spurious statements.

So the questions remain: Are we right to encourage hate and violence against sex offenders? Does it really help those in pain heal? And the biggest question of all, in a paraphrase of an old cliche: Does an eye-for-an-eye make the world a safer, better place to live—or just a blind one? Or, in this case, a raped one? 

Sex Offenders and Halloween--will it ever stop?

What do these four headlines have in common?

"Staying safe and avoiding sex offenders while trick or treating on Halloween"

"Sex Offenders in Colorado Can Open Doors on Halloween" (sub-text: and we've got to put a stop to that)

"Police out in force for Halloween; extra eye on sex offenders in Effingham"

"County sex offenders required to report on Halloween"

Not a very hard question, is it? These are headlines of just four of a multitude of articles that appeared in online and print media in the four weeks before Halloween. Multitude? Yes...multitude. I captured 50 separate articles, coming from 22 separate states. Those are the ones that crossed my desk in the regular course of my work. When I did an actual search, they are less than half the number that one search brought up.

The states that seem to have put forth the most are, like the first one above, from states that have no restrictions in place for registrants on Halloween. One assumes that someone did his or her homework and knows this is a non-problem and no laws are needed. Not satisfied with that, enterprising law enforcement and journalists took it as a challenge and issued warnings left and right about the danger of those on the registry on this night above all. They cautioned every parent to check the registry carefully before letting the kids go trick or treating. Two of those states now have legislators considering bills that will bring their states in line with the ones that have restrictions. And so it spreads, like a fungus or a cancer.

Additionally, after Halloween a plethora of new articles appeared, all with the same theme: "We did it! We protected your children on Halloween from the big, bad sex offenders. No children were molested by anyone on the registry!" Well guess what, California and Florida? Guess what, Nevada? None were molested in Alabama or Kansas, or any of the other states that have no state laws and very few or no jurisdictional ones that affect registrants on Halloween. None were molested anywhere by anyone on the registry while trick or treating--ever, as far as research has been able to determine.

But this is not what the public thinks. How could they when headlines and TV anchors shout at them for weeks about the necessity to take extra precautions on Halloween against "sex offenders"? This was made clear when, in response to an article titled, "Operation Scarecrow helped keep sex offenders away from kids on Halloween," I commented:

"Kept kids safe from sexual predators"--that is such a joke. I don't imagine any kids were attacked by hyenas either, so you might as well take credit for that also. I admit to that being a bit of hyperbole, but the fact is that children are at ZERO increased risk for sexual crime on

Halloween, and all of the law enforcement hype and political hype across the nation is just that--hype that has nothing to do with actually protecting children and much to do with making the public think so. There is no record of a child being molested by a registrant while trick or treating--ever. Now, if increased patrol cars and even foot patrols were out and visible, you may have had an impact on traffic safety and thus have saved a child from being hit by a car. That is what children are at increased risk for on Halloween, and six were killed this year trick or treating. We need facts and truth in laws, in law-enforcement, and in journalism.

I was immediately challenged by a well-meaning reader who wrote:

"the fact is that children are at ZERO increased risk for sexual crime on Halloween" Really, Shelly? And where did you obtain that fact from? From your extensive...several minutes worth of...thinking about the issue? Kudos to the officers for looking out for the kids. I'm glad they take the issue more seriously than Shelly does.

To his credit, when I nicely replied and gave an excellent research source as my evidence, he apologized and complimented me on my response. He is a rare, rare exception.

When did this start? I remember many articles last year, and the year before that, and....? Time out for research.

I searched "Halloween restrictions for sex offenders." I used the time frame of September 1 through November 15. I started at 2000 and came forward. I looked at every single entry. I did not look at any actual articles. If the entry did not clearly link danger from registered sex offenders with Halloween, I did not count it. Early on and continuing forward, the entries include reports of courts overturning or disallowing these restrictions. Frankly, I was surprised there were so many. Everyone needs to go to court over this. The entries also include material from advocates, experts, and research debunking the entire premise and the laws that are useless because there is no problem for them to address. This is by no means a "real" piece of research, but these are my results:

• 2000  0 articles
• 2001  1 article, written by someone denouncing the rumors of children's deaths by poison in treats; he calls it Halloween sadism; sex offenders are not mentioned, but I found it interesting.
• 2002  0
• 2003  3; California, Louisiana, and a third I was unable to determine announced their creation of laws restricting the activities of registrants on Halloween.
• 2004  1
• 2005  11; Megan's Law was mentioned in two of the entries
• 2006  8
• 2007  15
• 2008  60 ?? My guess is that SORNA was becoming a motivating factor.
• 2009  23
• 2010  40
• 2011  66
• 2012  100
• 2013  117
• 2014  177

With very few exceptions, the pattern is clear--an increase every year. I do not expect a decrease for next year, but maybe more will be announcing the overturning of some of these laws. The evidence is clear and compelling that they are laws that have no purpose and no merit. 

Lions in Cages....

I love metaphors. They help words paint pictures; they make meanings clearer; they are usually beautiful and always descriptive.

I read one this morning that, while very descriptive, misses the mark quite a bit on beautiful. It does, however, get high points for misleading, inflammatory, and downright sickening.

It was used in an on-line article that, not surprisingly, is very well written. The editorial is not attributed, but whoever wrote it was paying attention in journalism school. It has a very effective “hook”—the lead-in. It follows standard usage and punctuation rules. The vocabulary level is above average, and it makes good use of the well-chosen words.

This writer, however, fails in one lesson that surely is still stressed in journalism school: even in editorials and opinion pieces, stick to the truth. This writer, again not surprisingly, is clever. The untruth is presented in the metaphor. It is therefore implied, not directly stated and is all the more effective—and misleading, inflammatory, and sickening--due to that fact.

The metaphor, in words and graphic, implies that all who are listed on a sex offender registry are dangerous—and not merely dangerous but wild-animal dangerous, raging wild lions that need to be caged and constantly monitored, even in the cages, to keep them from terrorizing the community.

This is a lie, and it is no less a lie for being clothed in figurative language and vicious-appearing cartoon-figure graphics.

I know it is a lie from personal experience. I know many on the registry. They are good husbands and fathers, good neighbors and employees and employers and fellow church members. They are good citizens and good people. They are as far from being dangerous as I am from qualifying for the Olympics.

A large volume of literature says it is a lie.

The Federal Probation Journal, Volume 74, Number 3, in an analysis of the Kentucky Prison System specifically, a study titled, “Evaluation of Kentucky's Early Inmate Release Initiative: Sentence Commutations, Public Safety and Recidivism,” has this to say:

THE PRISON SYSTEM is one of the most expensive and largest public systems in the nation….

…41.2 percent of drug offenders returned to prison are reincarcerated for a subsequent drug offense, 31.2 percent of reincarcerated public order offenders are reincarcerated for another public order offense, 21.6 percent of violent offenders returned to prison are returned for a subsequent violent offense, and only 2.5 percent of reincarcerated rapists are returned to prison for a subsequent rape….

 Hmmm; only 2.5% of rapists are convicted for a rape re-offense.

And, from Sex offense recidivism, risk assessment, and the Adam Walsh Act, a study published by Dr. Jill Levenson at Lynn University in Florida:

According to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice, 5.3% of American sex offenders are rearrested for a new sex crime within three years (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003).

Sex offenders are among the least likely criminals to kill their victims (Sample, 2006).

Harris and Hanson (2004) concluded: “Most sexual offenders do not re-offend sexually over time … this finding is contrary to some strongly held beliefs.

Sex offense recidivism rates are much lower than commonly believed. The best estimates suggest that 5-14% of known sex offenders will commit a subsequent sex crime within three to six years, and after 15 years, three-quarters will not have recidivated. These recidivism rates are far lower than those for other types of criminals.

Media attention to child abduction and sexually motivated murder creates a sense of alarm and urgency among parents and often inspires sex crime legislation. Such cases are actually extremely rare; it is estimated that about 100 such events occur in the United States each year (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2005). By comparison,…over 1100 children died in 2002 as a result of physical abuse or neglect at the hands of their own parents or caretakers (Child Welfare League of America, 2003).

Those are the extreme cases. Certainly more than 100 on the registry rise to the level of dangerous and in need of law-enforcement monitoring, but surely that point can be made without resorting to images and comparisons with wild animals in cages. And many, many more than 1,100 children each year suffer abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents or caregivers but stop short of being murdered. In fact, we know for a certainty that virtually all sexually abused children are victims of those parents and caregivers and others close to them in their lives, not of anyone already on a sex offender registry.

However, no one would compare all parents, as a group, to dangerous, ravenous lions that must be caged in order to protect society. It is even less appropriate to suggest that all on the public registry must be so treated.

"We have to say you can't go out and kill sex offenders, but .... you really should"

This opinion piece masquerading as a public safety announcement has mastered the art of double-speak to a high degree.

The stated purpose of the piece is to inform their reading public that they will be publishing names and information on all registrants who move into the community. Yeah, they know that the info is available online and through the DPS and even to people's computers if they sign up, but they want to be sure they cover any gap, all in the interest of public safety, of course.

Really? After quoting the standard warning from the website about not using the information to injure or harass, this is their take on it: "In other words, just because you might know there is a convicted sexual offender in your neighborhood, it doesn’t mean you have the right to take the law into your own hands."

Take the law into your own hands---why? Because someone lives in your neighborhood?

And now the seed is planted. Being a convicted sexual offender, regardless of how rehabilitated, regardless of how law abiding a life is being lived now, regardless of how long ago the offense was, regardless of potential danger to children or other family members, is a reason for someone to "take the law" into his hands. What does that even mean, "take the law"? Surely we can hope that the law doesn't bully the children of registrants or egg their houses or beat them up or shoot at their cars for no reason whatsoever or ambush them and kill them.

Emboldened now, the article continues, "Many people wonder how the justice system can release predators and pedophiles back into society. Many of us wish they could be locked up forever or sent to an island somewhere ... or even more drastic measures be taken." Even more drastic measures...like bullying children, egging houses....committing murder?

Then, in an attempt to justify their thinly disguised attempts to encourage vigilantism, they continue: "We don’t condone any extralegal actions, though we don’t believe the judicial system is designed to adequately address the problems of sex offenders in society," and, "Despite how heinous the nature of their crimes might be, they have to be given the chance to prove they can hew to the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, many people with these deviant predilections never reform..."

Even a child could translate this: "The law just turns them loose and doesn't know how to deal with them, so it's up to us...they aren't ever going to change."

Even if that were true, even if statistical evidence did not abound that, once charged and punished, only a very small percentage of former sexual offenders will commit another sexual offense, the nastiness that seeps through every word of this article is the same sort of nastiness that left two little boys in Washington State without a father and took the life of a wife along with her registered husband in South Carolina and has swept and is still sweeping our nation like a blight, aided and facilitated by a hit list called the public sex offender registry.

And finally, for those of their readers who may have a few compunctions about picking on kids or vandalizing houses or attacking neighbors with baseball bats: "While you are legally restricted from harassing them, we don’t think a friendly reminder that we are watching is out of the question."

Other than really, really wanting their definition of "friendly," I wish they would at least look at the research showing that, along with housing and employment, community support for former offenders is essential in creating conditions that keep re-offense at its lowest and public safety at its highest. I mean, after all, this whole thing is about public safety....right?

Ironically, the title of this piece of writing is "Remaining Vigilant." Thanks to it, registrants struggling to build law-abiding lives and keep themselves and their children and families fed and with roofs over their heads now have another reason to be constantly vigilant for those who would harm them, their property, or their lives.

Well, there's lies, and there's damn lies, and then there's statistics

Please read this opinion piece/political advertisment before continuing.

If I were writing a flippant or sardonic piece here, I would commend the author for his jamming a record number of misleading and misused "facts" and quasi-statistics into his article, and I guess that can be my sub-text, but the growing tendency to do this and the public’s glazed-over acceptance of anything that slams those on the sex offender registry deserve a more serious analysis.

From the op/ed: “Although the New Jersey Appellate Court and Supreme Court acknowledge the relatively high recidivism rate of sex offenders….” If they do, they are fools. So much has been written, posted, and published by legitimate, peer-reviewed studies, starting in New Jersey, debunking this most favored of myths, that I don’t see how anyone who can read still “…acknowledges the relatively high recidivism rate of sex offenders….” Even if they are calling recidivism anything that results in a re-arrest and not just re-offense of a sexual crime, it is a ridiculous statement to make.

Representative Bateman maintains that, “Between 2000 and 2006, there was a 21 percent increase in arrests of offenders who solicited youth online for sex, according to a 2009 study….” However, he does not see fit to emulate the late Paul Harvey and tell the rest of the story. A more recent study shows that the perception of danger from Internet predators is largely influenced by the media; it further shows that the majority of juveniles receiving sexually explicit communications online are receiving them from other juveniles and those close to them in age, not from the older, trench-coat draped predator. And even if that were not a consideration, the study makes no connect at all between the 21% increase in online solicitation arrests and the registered sex offender, who is the only target group for this legislation. Mr. Bateman, not surprisingly, fails to make it also.

According to Sex Offender Research and News, this is "slight-of-hand handling of statistics: The study mentioned DOES NOT say the increase in online sex crimes was by FORMER SEX OFFENDERS...non sex offenders released committed six new sex crimes to every one by former sex offenders. Who is more dangerous to the community?"

And finally the good Mr. Bateman throws in the old “four times more likely” finding from the Department of Justice—or at least he throws in part of it. Yes, the finding was that within the first three years after release, 5.3% of sex offenders were rearrested for another sex offense. He omits that the percentage being re-convicted was 3.5.

He also omits the fact that the released non-sex offenders' rate of 1.3 percent resulted in many, many thousands more sexual crimes than did those being committed by the released sex offenders, even at the higher percentage. "While 1.3% appears to be less than 5.3%, the statistic fails to point out that actual numbers show non sex offenders commit six sex crimes to every one by a sex offender." (1)

We are certainly aware that many politicians are highly unlikely to pass a polygraph, especially if the topic is in support of legislation they are sponsoring. We are also aware that virtually anything negative can be said about or proposed that will negatively affect registered sex offenders, and the general public will perceive it as good, based largely on the rhetoric from those making the laws and the dissemination of that rhetoric via most media sources.

Isn’t it time that we stopped accepting the lies and half-lies and demand accountability and transparency and plain, old-fashioned facts and truth from everyone and everything that has a hand in shaping public policy?

(1) http://sexoffenderresearch.blogspot.com/2014/01/opinion-require-nj-sex-offenders-to.html