Youth in Minnesota who commit sexual offenses can be held on a registry for, at a minimum, 10 years. In nearby North Dakota, the minimum is 15 years. In South Dakota it’s five years.
What qualifies a young person for a sex offense registry varies in those states too, according to a report released today. In Minnesota “all sexual offenses” mean mandatory registration. In North Dakota it’s mandatory for felony sexual offenses and discretionary for juvenile misdeameanor sex offenses. In South Dakota sentencing is “generally'' mandatory, but with some exceptions.
Across the country, a complicated set of state laws that place youth on sex offender registries creates disparities and confusion over how youth are treated, according to the Juvenile Law Center report. Some youth are placed on the registries for felony sex offenses; others for playing doctor or “sexting.” Eight states don’t place youth on sex offender registries. Six states require youth to remain on registries for life.
As criminal and juvenile justice reform is discussed across the country, the center is urging the passage of proposals that would reform juvenile sex offender registration laws. For years, it has pushed to eradicate placing youth on sex offender registries entirely, calling for rehabilitative programs rather than sentencing structures that mirror adult punishments.
Now, because “regional differences and nuances of state youth registration laws preclude a ‘one size fits all’ approach to reform,” the center recommends both legislative advocacy and litigation.
There are currently 200,000 people labeled as sex offenders for crimes they committed at a young age, according to the report. While on the registry, youths are four times more likely to report a recent suicide attempt than those nonregistered who commit sexual harm or illegal acts. Just over 50% reported harassment and physical violence as a result of being on the registry; 44% experienced homelessness as a result of housing restrictions that come with placement on the registry.
And the center said the registry does not increase public safety: 3% of children charged with sexual offenses are repeat offenders.
Instead, placing young people on sex offense registries “fuels cycles of homelessness, incarceration, and trauma, for both the registrant and survivors,” the report says, particularly among youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth.
Fees, compliance, records
Several rounds of research by the center found that the cost of being on the registry, the consequences that come with it and the punishment for noncompliant youth also vary greatly by state.
In Rhode Island, registered youth cannot live closer than a certain number of feet from schools. In Missouri, youth can't participate in Halloween festivities.
Discrepancies also lie in how records are sealed, how much it costs for registration and what happens to youth who cannot pay the necessary fees to stay on the list. Twenty-eight of the 42 states require public notification — through police stations or public websites — of registered youth,
“There's so much nuance in the way the states interpret their registration laws and I think that it's very challenging,” said Riya Saha Shah, managing director of the center and co-author of the report. “If a person moves from one state to another, they must understand what the registration law requires of them in their new state.”
Federal requirements
In 2014 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court deemed mandatory lifetime registration unconstitutional for youth after the center challenged the state.
Eighteen other states abide by that same provision, called the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which groups young people who commit sex offenses with adults who commit similar offenses. Eighteen states directly adhere to SORNA, and will lose 10% of a federal grant if they do not follow the protocol.
When people with records of juvenile registration move to states with SORNA requirements, they’re required to register upon arrival. This applies even if the offense would not put them on a sex offense registry in the state they’re moving to.
The “vast majority” of states abide by SORNA requirements even if federal funding is not at stake, the report says.
“Federal and state sex offender registration laws often equate juvenile and adult behavior,” the report says. “But there is no demonstrated, empirical relationship between youth sex crimes and adult sex crimes.”
Indeed, “juvenile sex” policies and policing remain barbaric, and it’s time for those of us of progressive inclination to belatedly confront why this is. Nearly 30 years ago, I published detailed studies in the Journal of Sex Research, Phi Delta Kappan, etc., showing that our entire concepts of “teenage sex” and “teen pregnancy” were myths. In 1992, 1994, and 1995, Family Planning Perspectives and the Alan Guttmacher Institute published research papers likewise showing adult men, not middle-school and high school boys, were the main partners and rapists involved in what we mislabeled “teenage” sexual outcomes, especially at very young ages. The 1990s establishment pushback, led by Planned Parenthood, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Clinton Administration, and popular news media was swift and often angry. They rallied to dismiss and defend adult men involved with girls while continuing to demonize teenage females whose sexuality and pregnancy were depicted as threatening America’s social order. They had manufactured “teenage sex” and “teen pregnancy” as political and popular brands, and they ruthlessly defended their interests. (Adult male involvement in irresponsible sex, especially embarrassing issues for Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, etc., were taken off the table by the newly established National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which continues to spread popular falsehoods to this day.) The results of decades of mythmaking have been devastating. Note the huge array of “respectable” adult institutions, led by churches, schools, universities, Olympics officials, the Boy Scouts, youth groups, etc., whose leaders shamefully have covered up adult abuses of children and youth that have only come to light when the victimized youths reached adulthood and acquired the power to be heard. Note the vicious demonizations of the poorest, most disadvantaged teenage girls whose pregnancies have been falsely attributed to willful personal misconduct. Note how even liberal leaders completely ignore the 60,000 rapes and sexual abuses Child Maltreatment reports that parents and adult caretakers inflict on children and youth every year. All this lying plays into to the terrible “juvenile sex offense” laws that primarily function to criminalize a poorer 16 year-old who has sex with a 14 year-old rather than protected adults who perpetrate far worse abuses. As long as we progressives refuse to confront the eugenics agendas of groups like Planned Parenthood (which I acknowledge does wonderful work in other areas of reproductive health) and liberal leaders and media who perpetuate sexist, racist “teen pregnancy” lies, then we are complicit in the very sex-policy oppressions of youth we claim to oppose. The right wing, with its hypocritical, unscientific “abstinence-only” agendas for teens that its own leaders can’t even begin to follow, is also a big problem, but the anti-youth notions we liberals and progressives created opened the door for their extremism. The Trump era has finally shown how destructive decades of liberal distortions of young people and our denial of the poverty and abuses they endure have become. It is time for us to change… big time.
20 states have civil commitment “facilities” How many allow unadjudicated juvenile offenders to be sent directly from a juvenile “treatment” facility to a civil commitment facility. New Jersey is one state that allows it but I do not know how many other states allow the same sort of “transfers.” Also can a juvenile in a state like, say, Idaho (with no formal state civil commitment facility) but has has a 60 bed Sequel Youth and Family “secure” “adjudicated and non-adjudicated adolescent males, between the ages of 10-18 with sexually maladaptive behavior problems” send adjudicate and non-adjudicated adolescent males to a civil commitment facility in another state (NJ for example) once the “resident” reaches 19 by for example utilizing the inter-state compact?