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I've long been very curious about how effective (if at all) sex offender registries and laws are at preventing new crimes. What about residency restrictions that some states and localities have- do those work? Also, do you think we should have other registries as well, or should we just reserve that for sex criminals?
The only advantage I can see with data bases like that are that people will know about them and that should be humiliating for them. I think it served a purpose.
Not sure what good humiliating a sex offender will do, Veeger. Sure, maybe some children have been saved because their parents looked on the registry and saw the convictions of the guy 2 blocks away and the parents told the children to stay away from him. But, what good is humiliating a sex offender going to do?
Do you think murderers or other criminals should be registered as well? You and I both live in Texas, and a domestic violence registry was proposed last year in the legislature- what do you think of that? I might be in favor of registering murderers, but a domestic violence registry would just be a super large and expensive waster of time.
How do you measure the effectiveness of a prevention plan, anyway? You can't rewind and try living a year both with and without the registry to know who evaded assault because of the website. I have a lot of questions about the effectiveness of the registry. Plenty of sex offenders have never been caught and never get on the registry, so having it leaves you no better off there, for instance.
On the other hand, a domestic-violence registry might make a whole lot of sense.
They vary so much from state to state based on what can cause you to land on the registry.. In some states, consensual sex between teens can land someone on the registry.. Teens sexting photos of themselves can land them on the registry.. Peeing on the side of the road can land someone on the registry.
Some states require registration once a year, some every 6 months, some every quarter.. Some have a jumble of all three pending on what 'classification' the offender has.
It is total BS to say that the registries aren't a violation of double jeopardy since they are not punitive. A fair argument can be made that since the registries were created, it can be part of the sentence to appear on the registry, and that is valid.. However, someone who committed a crime in the 60's, before they were created and is placed on the registry.. To me is a clear violation.
I think there should also be time limits. Someone convicted of consensual statutory rape.. After 15 or 20 years without reoffending.. Can be removed from the list. Perhaps not automatically, but should have the ability to petition to be removed. One size fits all certainly does not apply here, but that's how it's being run in most cases.
There's been talk of murderer offender lists, meth-lab offender lists, animal abuser lists.. Few of those get any real traction, however.
Interesting conversation. In Virginia, the "effectiveness" of the registry is measured by the number of hits on the website. That is all. There is no effort to examine if it is actually effective in preventing further offenses. One senator here, who was a proponent and co-sponsor of the public registry, actually was quoted as saying that it wasn't effective in preventing sex offenses since most new offenses are committed by people not on the registry. She called it "just another tool". Seems silly to me to have a "tool" that doesn't work and just prevents former offenders from reintegrating into the community. As Labonte18 said, there are so many different kinds of people on the registry, and so many aren't dangerous at all, that it's hard to use that "tool" with any success. I'd love to know if the serial rapist or serial child molester lives next door, but it's hard to tell if the sex offender peed behind a dumpster (lewd and lascivious behavior) or had sex with his underage girlfriend (statutory rape or carnal knowledge or deviant sexual behavior) or was streaking (indecent exposure) or was sexting (creating and/or distributing child pornography). I think the registry could be useful IF it only included truly dangerous people but, even then, I'm not convinced that it will really be effective in preventing future offenses.
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