Mikel Grenzner.com

If this hits the larger media groups out there, this will be bound to cause a good bit of controversy.

From Human Rights Watch:

“Human Rights Watch shares the public’s goal of protecting children from sex abuse,” said Jamie Fellner, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. “But current laws are ill-conceived and poorly crafted. Protecting children requires a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach than politicians have been willing to support.”

In many states, registration covers everyone convicted of a sexual crime, which can range from child rape to consensual teenage sex, and regardless of their potential future threat to children. Unfettered public access to online sex-offender registries with no “need-to-know” restrictions exposes former offenders to the risk that individuals will act on this information in irresponsible and even unlawful ways. There is little evidence that this form of community notification prevents sexual violence. Residency restrictions banish former offenders from entire towns and cities, forcing them to live far from homes, families, jobs and treatment, and hindering law-enforcement supervision. Residency restrictions are counterproductive to public safety and harmful to former offenders.

Sex offender laws reflect public concern that children are at grave risk of sexual abuse by strangers who are repeat offenders. As the report documents, however, the real risks children face are quite different: government statistics indicate that most sexual abuse of children is committed by family members or trusted authority figures, and by someone who has not previously been convicted of a sex offense.

In addition, the laws reflect the widely shared but erroneous belief that “once a sex offender, always a sex offender.” Authoritative studies indicate that three out of four adult offenders do not reoffend. Moreover, treatment can be effective even for people who have committed serious sex crimes.

The full report (all 146 pages) can be found here, in both .pdf and browsable formats.

Here are a few interesting bits I found:

On Recidivism:

The most comprehensive study of sex offender recidivism to date consists of a meta-analysis of numerous studies yielding recidivism rates for a period of up to 15 years post-release for people convicted of such serious offenses as rape and child molesting.44 The analysis, which included over 29,000 sex offenders, found that within four to six years of release, 14 percent of all sex offenders will be arrested or convicted for a new sex crime.45 Over a 15-year period, recidivism rates for all sex offenders averaged 24 percent.46 This is not a trivial rate by any means, given the seriousness of the offenses committed. Yet it also indicates that three out of four sexually violent offenders do not reoffend.

On Residency Restrictions:

There is no evidence, however, that these laws do in fact diminish crimes against children. For registered offenders, the main impact of the laws may be simply to drive them underground or to uproot them from their families and communities. Iowa’s experience with residency restrictions has caused at least one state to resist enacting such laws. In November 2006 lawmakers in Kansas decided not to adopt residency restrictions after reviewing evidence that Iowa’s law had doubled the number of registered offenders unaccounted for since it took effect.412

Residency restriction laws reflect an assumption that former offenders are most likely to commit new offenses against children who gather near where they live—either because the proximity of children tempts them or simply because they are easier to access. But this assumption is not borne out by research. The Colorado Department of Public Safety found that convicted child molesters in Colorado who reoffended while on probation were randomly scattered throughout the geographical area, and did not seem to live closer than non-recidivists to schools or child care centers.413 A small study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections found that the proximity of a former offender’s residence to schools or parks was not a factor in recidivism. In fact it found the opposite: sex offenders who recidivated were more likely to travel to another neighborhood to seek victims. During the study period, the only two recidivist acts of child sexual assault committed in parks on unknown victims occurred several miles away from the offenders’ homes.414

I’m still reading bits and pieces of this report as I have time, but the more I read the more damning this report becomes. I find it sickening that so many claim to want to do something about this issue, yet never study it to find out what the best thing to do is. There is no question that many of these people are dangerous members of society and need to be dealt with in an appropriate manner.

Yet if they are such a risk to the rest of us, why aren’t we enacting ;aws which actually work?