This week in the sex offender world

Re the current Pokemon Go craze and concern this could put children and youth in "proximity" to registrants:

This is shaping up to be the new "Halloween boogie-man" scare. Now that enough people have said often enough and loudly enough that there is no statistical increased sexual risk to children in connection with Halloween and trick-or-treat activities, along comes Pokemon Go to keep the fear-pot boiling. And of course the sensationalism-creators and fear-mongers can point to an actual

incident: a registered citizen was "caught" playing Pokemon with a 16 year old teenager--outside of a downtown courthouse, a location that probably boasts as many law enforcement officers per square foot as any other in town. Television anchors, a-la-weather map style, are displaying maps of local areas with Pokemon stops marked in one color and the homes of registered citizens marked in another and pointing out, with horrified faces but barely concealed glee, the places where one is within proximity to the other. Well, that does it! Put a kid on the same block with someone on the registry, and Katie, bar the door. I wonder what the statistical risk of harm is to a minor while playing Pokemon Go within shouting distance of where a registrant lives?

Re online "stings" and headlines shouting that parents are terrified over the potential risk of harm to their children:

Of course parents are terrified; that is the purpose; terrify the parents and assure future funding for continued stings and special forces. It has very little to do with actually protecting children. There were no children. Those men were idiots as well as potential criminals. Virtually everyone arrested for being online child predators are arrested in these kinds of made-up situations. Where are the cases

of real children being lured from their homes by some stranger online? Surely there are police reports...parents whose children have just disappeared? Where are the real ads from parents offering up their children like items on a menu? If this were the problem that law enforcement and the media make it out to be, there would be enough real cases to keep law enforcement busy. There would be no need to resort to entrapment and 50 year old cops pretending to be 12 year old kids.

Re the necessity of residency restrictions for protection of property values among other reasons:

Many millions in public resources are spent in the U.S. on keeping and maintaining a public registry. Research has shown little to no public safety value in public notification and most definitely no reduction in child molestation. Little to nothing in public resources is spent on education,

prevention, victim services, and meaningful reentry initiatives for former offenders. Research shows that all of these enhance public safety and work toward reduction of child molestation. Property values, which do not come close to importance in comparison with child molestation and general public safety, are reduced only due to public notification. If no one knew that the guy next door who committed a crime 20 years ago, has led an exemplary life since, is raising his kids and supporting his family, had committed a sexual crime, there would be no increased risk to anyone and no loss of surrounding property value. If his crime had been murder or arson or armed robbery or killing someone while driving intoxicated or any other offense, all with higher reoffense rates than sexual crimes, no one would know. As far as the disproportionate number of registrants "clustering" in areas without restrictions, registrants of necessity live where they are allowed rather than where they are not. If there were no residency restrictions anywhere--and nothing is so devoid of any proof of effectiveness or public safety value as residency restrictions--the disbursement would be even-handed, driven primarily by what the individuals could afford. Nothing supports the efficacy of a public registry. The many millions would be much better spent on the things are are shown to work. A law-enforcement only registry under the conditions supported by empirical data is the only logical answer.

What do you do when everything you do is predicated on fallacies?

A sheriff in Graham County, North Carolina, has made national headlines by sending letters to the twenty registered sex offenders in his jurisdiction telling them they were not allowed to attend worship services at any of the counties’ houses of worship and citing a state law having to do with places where children were supervised.

Fallacy number one: “To all sex offenders…” [letter from sheriff; emphasis mine].

Fact: All designated as sex offenders, based on a requirement to register, did not offend against children. This is overkill; with only twenty registrants, could not case-by-case individualization be managed? A blanket restriction against “all” will encompass sexually active and sexting teens, those with adult victims, and those whose behavior falls in the "public nuisance" or "college-boy stupidity" categories--and of course those who are innocent and were wrongly convicted.

Fallacy number two: “I don’t like them around little children…” [a local minister]. In addition to violating fallacy number one, it assumes that anyone who has previously offended, even against children, will not be able to resist pouncing on any child who comes into his range of vision.

Fact: Almost all child sexual offense is against children with whom the offender has a close relationship and takes place in either the victim’s or the offender’s home, not with random children in public places. Additionally, very few registrants living in the community will commit an additional offense. In fact, specific to North Carolina and according to the North Carolina Sex Offender and Public Protection Registry, based on searches performed as of May 6, 2007, “Manual searches (by county) using the new criteria yield some of the lowest recidivism rates ever disseminated by any law-enforcement establishment. In the entire state of North Carolina there are only 71 recidivists shown on the registry, if incarcerated offenders are included. Per-county results for "registered"-status offenders (compared with "recidivist"-status offenders) on the North Carolina registry yield actual convicted recidivist percentages ranging from zero to a fraction of one percent.”

Fallacy number three: “ ‘You are not permitted to attend church services,’ the letter read, citing a law that prevents offenders from being within 300 feet of premises where minors are supervised” [letter from sheriff].

Fact: Proximity restrictions, along with residency restriction, are totally unsupported by any study or any empirical evidence. The idea that a 300-foot barrier creates a “child-safe zone” is ludicrous. If a child safe zone that was effective were to be created, it would have to separate the family members, the peers, and the authority figures from the child to be protected.

Fact: Until we are willing, as a society, to demand that all legislation is grounded in facts and evidence, we will continue to be bombarded with ineffective laws that eat up our resources but do nothing to work toward public safety or toward the betterment of our society.