17 thoughts on “Opinion: Sex Offender Registration Doesn’t Help Victims, Hurts Young Offenders

  1. You’re labeled for life, what about the victim who was raped, beaten, murdered? You’re labeled for what you did. Own it.

    • My son called me and begged me to get him away from his mom before he runs away. So I left work and got him. We went across state lines to my mothers house, a 30 minute drive. I dropped him off and drove. back to work. My psycho wife pressed charges for parental kidnapping. Sorna requires anyone charged to register even if you arent convicted. I now have to register as a sex offender for 25 years. Good thing I’m labeled for life and thats keeping all my poor victims safe. Owning it.

  2. Putting children on the sex offender registry is legalized child abuse! There should of never been a sex offender registry to begin with. Yes, there are people who have done horrible things, however once one does their time they should be treated bas equal members of Society. Children do not think nor understand like adults. Sex offender laws are also ableist to refusing to consider an individual’s developmental disability as well. It is things like these why some people say there are parallels between sex offender registration laws here in USA and Nazi Germany when Jews were forced to wear the yellow star of David. I honestly feel USA is as bad as what Nazi Germany was due to the labeling of many things as so called sex offenses even if it’s not an offense and putting little kids and developmentally disabled people on this registry as well with no consideration of age and disability! Even in the midst of COVID-19 and all the ongoing restrictions, it would not surprise me if authorities here in USA would go as far as to arrest and force babies to register as SO!!! I would also not be surprised if during the last 20 years, there could of been abandoned homeless 8 year olds abandoned by their families, communities, schools, foster parents, etc that died in middle of forests with their bodies unclaimed and left to rot by passerbys all due to the 8 year old being on the registry. HIDDEN EVIL AND ABUSE AGAINST A CHILD REGISTRANT GOING UNNOTICED IF THESE KINDS OF THINGS OCCURRED!!!

  3. I am definitely not in favor of allowing children to have sex. But even I find strange to have to say that putting a child on a list of sex offenders is ridiculous. If two children are caught having sex they have to be warned and separated, not arrested and stigmatized.

  4. I had no idea what so ever that a child could be placed on the list. I don’t understand how he was charged an she was not? The whole Juvenile delinquent an juvenile dependntcy courts are a bunch of bullshit ass backwards “under the color of law” non since that in all honesty from what I have witnessed in the past two years, play by their own set of laws an rules…for whatever suits them at the time.. an there is no repercussions for currupt judges, whoever the judge was that passed this registration onto that 14 year old BOY, should have, as a JUDGE known better. we the people need to stand up an stop allowing someone (taking in consideration of their job as a JV. JUDGE whom seems to be even less qualified than any one person whom is component & without prior knowledge of law) to handout judgement an punishment to us. The whole system is shot. There is NO “REFORMING” WE MUST BURN IT DOWN AN START AGAIN.

  5. Convicted sex offenders love to play smoke and mirrors with fake statistics about those who re-offense rates. If anyone bothers to follow news about sex offenders they’ll find a constant flow of those who re-offend multiple times. All sex offenders should be on the registry so those living nearby have the information they need to advise children to stay clear of these monsters.

    • The only smoke and mirrors resides in your backside. Obviously you cannot read or understand sound research.

    • In reality, s*x offense reoffense rates are less than 1% annually. What “Val” claims is merely cognitive biased it has been trained by the mainstram media and victim advocates with an agenda to believe every registered person is a danger to society, and that is simply ludicrous. Val probably clutches it’s purse every time a black person walks by due to the same cognitive distortions.

      The US has had a quarter century to reform this controversial public blacklist and it has failed miserably, and should be completely scrapped.

    • You obviously don’t know anyone this has happened to and just want to judge others when you have no clue wtf your talking about.

  6. This is a great report and I have added a link to the report from my own website.

    Not everyone even knows that even very young juveniles can be added to the public registry. It is hard to fathom placing a child on the registry, yet it happens more than people realize.

  7. Sandy Rozek (below) said it all. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is increasingly believing in an onslaught of disinformation — “They always re-offend” and “They are all paedophiles.” As Ms.Rozek alluded to, there is a wealth of research debunking these myths.

    As for the cost of maintaining and monitoring the registry, the California Sex Offender Management Board found that this country is spending anywhere from 10 to 40 billion dollars per year. The minority of people who have committed a sex offense and are truly dangerous to society can be determined by use of empirically validated risk assessments. But remove the hundreds of thousands of registered citizens in this country with a one-time-only sex offense, who are working hard to reintegrate back into society successfully as law-abiding citizens in spite of the draconian, punitive laws that go with the registry.

    It would be more cost effective if instead of using billions of dollars to monitor people who will never re-offend (commit another sex offense), use the money for preventative programs to be offered in schools, colleges, workplaces, and other public venues to stop the cycle of abuse, raise awareness of the consequences, identify support resources, provide more victims’ services, and ultimately restore families. Diverting funds to preventative programs is recommended by the California Sex Offender Management Board, the Illinois Sex Offender Management Board and the Association of for the Treatment of Sexual Abuses.

  8. I agree with Dustin; juveniles shouldn’t be registered, but neither should anyone else. The registry has been in effect over two decades; many studies, both academic and governmental, have been done evaluating its effectiveness; it has failed miserably. It does not predict who will commit new crimes as 95% of new sexual crime is committed by persons not on the registry. It does not reduce re-offense; reoffense by those punished for an initial crime and then living in the community has held steady at, on average, 5% since long before the registry went into effect and is still at that percentage. It does not reduce new offenses; it does not protect children as virtually all sexual crime against children is committed by persons in their lives, their family members, peers, and authority figures, persons who are not on a registry. Two of the most popular (with the public) restrictions it has produced, residency restrictions and Halloween restriction, have ZERO evidence, based on a plethora of studies, that they make an iota of difference or produce an iota of public safety. If the registry fails to predict, fails to protect, fails to produce any increase in public safety, but instead goes against everything shown to increase public safety, interferes drastically in rehabilitation, and costs states many millions of dollars that could be spent instead on prevention programs that work and rehabilitation programs that work, WHY should the registry exist?

  9. Pingback: Sex Offender Registration Doesn’t Help Victims, Hurts Young Offenders - Women Against Registry

  10. People will find him on the registry and assume he was 30 and the victim was 13 just because it lists the victim’s age as 13. These are seriously misguided laws.
    The sex offender registry in Michigan is under serious assault. With the current litigation, most offenders whose offense date predates 2012 will be removed from the registry. There is developing litigation to find the whole Michigan sex offender registry unconstitutional. Michigan has an attorney general that wants to remove most sex offenders from the registry. Hopefully, Michigan will lead this nation out of the darkness of these laws.
    Good work by the Juvenile Law Center.

  11. Excellent article, though I slightly disagree with the overall conclusion that juveniles shouldn’t be registered. Every single point made is equally applicable to adult offenders as well, therefore I would argue that the registry should be abolished en totem.