Registry for Drug Dealers? A Mandatory Life Sentence for Lewdness?

Now there's talk about a drug dealer registry in MA. I wonder why our law enforcement people can't track these dangerous criminals without putting them on a registry? But because nobody is really serious about stopping the drug trade it's all just more hot air.

Now mandatory minimum sentences have gone too far, as this post shows.

And here is a notable new paper titled

Public Safety, Individual Liberty, and Suspect Science: Future Dangerousness Assessments and Sex Offender Laws by Melissa Hamilton , University of Toledo College of Law,Temple Law Review, Forthcoming.

Abstract:
This article argues that the new preventive law focus in sex offender laws is largely ineffective and too costly to personal liberty. The application of sex offender laws involving civil commitment, sex offender registration, and residency restrictions is often based on an individualized analysis of future dangerousness, i.e., the risk the defendant will sexually recidivate. In assessing future dangerousness, experts and courts place heavy emphasis on the use of actuarial tools, basically checklists that mental health experts use to derive statistical estimates of risk. This article provides substantiation that actuarial tools, while enjoying the imprimatur of science, suffer from significant empirical faults. Yet courts are largely abandoning their gatekeeping roles in accepting the experts’ testimony using actuarial tool predictions of risk without critical review as required by the Daubert and Frye evidentiary standards. The paper theorizes that this is likely a pragmatic strategy considering the current political and public thirst for retribution against sexual predators. But, use of this empirically-challenged science exacerbates the practice of applying sex offender restrictions to inappropriately labeled individuals. Finally, this article takes advantage of the interdisciplinary trend of engaging social science with the law on expert evidence. More specifically, it offers an empirical assessment of future dangerousness opinions within the Daubert/Frye scientific evidence frameworks. The significance of the conclusion reached in this article is clear: if the law continues to rely upon suspect science that results in the wrong individuals being subject to liberty-infringing sex offender laws, then the drain on criminal justice resources will leave the truly dangerous offenders without sufficient supervision at the risk of public safety.

Can Sex Offenders be Banned From Church?

Most recently, Profs Berman and Dorf weigh in. If churches are anything like schools, I am surprised that the law does not provide for limited exceptions for attending church services. Perhaps the state could have thought of that, or will they add a provision to avoid going to court?

Or, with the constitutional analysis pending, will sex offenders be further separated into legal categories, such as dangerous, dangerous to children, and not dangerous, not violent, and no risk? Many, from what I understand, present absolutely no risk of reoffending whatsoever. And that's the point of these laws, correct? Let's get them off the registries! It will make it easier to track the ones requiring the attention.

What might that do to the notion of tracking, registries, and bans from residence in proximity to schools, school bus stops and such?

SMART is not so smart at making you safer

All RECENT studies taking up the question whether sex offender registries are effective at what they purport to achieve, reducing sex crimes and making us and our children safer, do not in fact accomplish this purpose. Don't take my word for it. Do the homework yourself, search my site or consult Professors Corey Young's Sex Crimes Blog, Doug Berman's Sentencing Law and Policy blogs for newsy and scholarly articles on topic. Also visit SOSEN's website, now posting news and primary sources of information every day. You may wish to conveniently locate them on my sidebar.

Nonetheless here is a press release from SMART announcing that Ohio and the Umatilla Tribe are the first two jurisdictions to implement the SORNA (sex offender registration act passed under Pres. Bush) under the Adam Walsh Act.

Claim and Counterclaim

Lets examine Dr. Anna Salter’s "prize-winning work in which she cites studies finding that the average sex offender assaults more than 100 different victims during a lifetime." Because I am not aware of a single such study I had to take a few moments to review, briefly.

Dr. Salter's website is here. Does "average" mean most, about half? In what context ...?

Sex offender by definition means someone on the registry. You don't know who is a sex offender until they land on the registry. Dangerous pathological criminal is not the definition a rational mind would use to define sex offender based upon the information available at this time despite what we see on the registries, which is "criminal history" of conviction, and despite what Dr. Salter and Webster imply. I have not examined the registries carefully, but my gut tells me it is rare to see individuals with multiple convictions listed.

The claim re "average sex offender" and 100 victims was passed on by this professor, as if citing a fact:

Dr. Wendy Murphy, an Adjunct Professor at New England Law School, has an opinion piece entitled Sex offender laws flawed but critical. The editorial criticizes the recent Economist article (previously mentioned here), which Professor Murphy describes as a "puff piece about how sex offenders are treated unfairly and sex offender registries are barbaric."

Said response to the Economist piece were found here, Sex Crimes, in which Corey responds, in the context of sex offender registries:

Studies that show the incredible number of victims certain offenders have are irrelevant to the efficacy of sex offender registries except insofar as those instances of victimization occur after arrest, conviction, and release. Yet, in the article Murphy dismisses the use of post-release statistics (which are the only numbers we should care about in assessing the value of collateral restrictions). Pre-arrest numbers simply have no bearing on the subject. Further, the claim that, "the average sex offender assaults more than 100 different victims during a lifetime" is simply indefensible. There is no such evidence.

Peliminary Conclusion: So Murphy and Salter, two well educated pillars of the community are passing along misinformation for what purpose, by accident or mistake, or merely ignorance? It is hard to underestimate the damage these sorts of people cause among the rest of us, the unwitting accepting public.

Maryland Legal Update

Whats new in Maryland concerning laws pertaining to sex offenders?

Bills that passed in the 2009 session of the General Assembly are retroactivity, minors, photographs and one more I will have to review, all housekeeping sorts of things. An onerous bill to ban from public parks where children regularly gather reported unfavorably. In all there were 36 bills of which 4 became law. Curiously, re minors, retroactive registration is required, a topic addressed in the recent 9th Cir. panel decision discussed in this post.

Maryland currently does not have residency restrictions. These, and additional bans from public property (Md currently bans so from schools and day care property) would make it even more difficult for the ex felon to reenter society, create sex offender ghettos, and headache and expense to enforce. We see this from experience in Georgia, Iowa, Florida and other states that do this restriction.

Residency restrictions typically restrict within various distances from schools, day cares, bus stops and parks. In places this effectively bans so from large portions of the city, in some instances the entire metro area. Rural locale become the only place so may live. In Miami, a bridge causeway has become home to many. Homelessness is the only option for many.

Registration
Registration is not effective and should be reviewed. At a minimum the three tier risk category regime needs work. Too many on the registry do not belong there, do not require monitoring, and pose no danger to the community. The risk regime fails to account for this.

Registration is costly and tax payers do not see any benefits.

Registration has collateral consequences for ex offender's families, many of whom face stigma simply by being related to a registered person. This is unjustifiable given that most registered persons are either wrongly convicted, pose no danger, or are convicted of minor off-the-wall offenses as solicitation, aiding and abetting, public urination, possession of child porn, romeo and juliet and statutory sex that present no danger of recidivism, crimes that non puritan societies do not consider crimes. Most do not recidivate according to DOJ and all credible studies (95 percent).

Registration does not separate predators from the non dangerous variety.

Registration cannot forecast future crimes, or the geographical location of crime as thought to be related to the public disclosure of so residence addresses, and not even if the perp is a registered person as the recent Garrido case shows. The case spotlights the failure of registration to perform the intended function, which is prevention and public safety.

California is considering a registry for arsonists.

Registries create an underclass and movement toward tyranny, toward government sanctioned badges of poverty and slavery, an underclass of have-nots. Registries are a tool of oppression useful only to fear mongers and business seeking to maintain a cheap labor pool. As history tells it from ancient times to Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, this is the beginning of the end of free society. The right wing, neo-con, southern churches and oil lobby have concocted this as part of a scheme to roll back the freedoms of the New Deal and liberal allies have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. These are the same lobbies that seek to cut medicare and medicaid, children's health insurance, fight bitterly against a public health insurance option, seek to abolish the department of education and roll back a minimum wage law. Look at your neighbor, your elected representative, your mayor, your congressm or senator, and see if that is him or her.

It would be nice to know who is going to commit the next crime or sex crime but this is impossible to predict. Those convicted of sex crime are not so different from the general population of ex offender as to warrant the special attention they have received. Registries are a threat to freedom everywhere. Everyone deserves a second chance to make a first impression.

A Blue Chip Empirical Study of Registries Finds no Support that they are effective

Here is a Dec. 2008 piece from Amanda Agan at the University of Chicago Dept. of Economics, thanks again to Prof. Berman's unparalleled research. Available from SSRN.

Sex Offender Hysteria

I noticed recently that I received nice comments and might have picked up a few more readers, not that I'm counting. But it's encouraging to see that other people find this of interest.

More and more we're seeing media articles cutting into sex offender hysteria and wondering where it will lead, such as these collected from Sex Crimes (WBAY Channel 2 Wisconsin) blog, Residency Restrictions don't work (Syracuse dot com); Rights Must be Observed, (Tufts Daily student paper); No Homes (Wall Street Journal); and Massachusetts Struggling (Herald: federal AWA requirements difficult to implement); this is change in the sense that more attention is being given to the ineffectiveness of residency restrictions, banishment, and throw away the key mentality. This is change in the sense that more in the media seem to be showing an interest in this issue, and seem less willing to just go along with stupid legislative proposals designed to serve one purpose, that of seeming to be tough on crime in order to further the politicians political career. Who could be that cynical?

I see that Rep. Sensenbrenner wants to impeach Judge Kent to keep him from receiving his 169 thou and change retirement pay now that he's pleaded to obstruction after being charged with sex crimes.

Good Reference Commentary

Letsgetreal has posted comments on my last post concerning the Adam Walsh Act and related concerns.

Don't want to come into contact with a registered sex offender?

Use the website to locate them more easily. But don't use the sidewalks, they don't wear the yellow stars, or the red A, just yet.

At the same time, more and more serious studies are showing that registration such as this is a waste of time and money, tax payer money, to be more precise.

I cannot help commenting on this post by Corey at SexCrimes. The new and improved federal sex offender website is getting a ton of hits every day, apparently. According to the press release, posted by Mr. Young on his blog, the purpose is now not the protection of our children, but to protect "communities from coming into contact with" the target population. Here's Assistant AG Sedgewick:

"NSOPW provides the public with information to protect themselves, their families and their communities from coming into contact with registered sex offenders," said Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, Assistant Attorney General for OJP.

Curious Registry Stuff: Real Offender is the Law

Here is the intro to this good piece (ht, Doc), called "Real Offender,"

In its relentless efforts to expel Wendy Whitaker from her Columbia County home, the state of Georgia has crossed the line from protector to persecutor of its citizens. The state isn’t inciting torch-wielding mobs to chase Whitaker from her home 20 miles west of Augusta. But it is using a gaggle of state attorneys and a politically driven, poorly written sex offender law to wreck her life.

Against the Grain on Registries

Finally, this constitutional erosion seems to be gaining attention. Excerpt from ABAJ,

at least two courts this year have sided with the critics and invalidated some or all of the registry law. In both rulings, the courts referred back to a line of U.S. Supreme Court cases from the 1990s that limited the federal government’s reach into state law.

Meanwhile, a third federal court temporarily halted the new law until it had a chance to hear arguments on the issue.

More is at stake than just the sex offender registries, observers say. Americans have become accustomed to national crime registries, and courts could throw them into doubt.

“Not surprisingly, given our increasing sense of informational entitlement and disdain for criminal offenders, we are seeing registration and notification laws spread to other subgroups, such as domestic abusers,” says Florida State University law professor Wayne A. Logan, author of the forthcoming book Knowledge as Power: A History of Criminal Registration Laws in America.

SORNA and the Constitution

Here, at SexCrimes blog by Prof. Corey Young, are an article draft and the first Circuit (8th) decision interpreting the new sex offender federal registration act (SORNA). Prof. Young notes serious commerce clause constitutionality questions with the law and the recent ruling as well.

And here, (at CJLF's Crime and Consequences) we find the following excerpt, describing an examplary incident that demonstrates precisely why the registration laws are nothing more than a feel good, politically correct, ineffective, (and unconstitutional if not un-American) pieces of paper containing worthless ink.

Convicted Sex Offender Strikes Again, Victim Only 16: Angel A. Perez Jr., a 32-year-old convicted sex offender, failed to register his new address with police. He also had several outstanding warrants for larceny, which would have qualified him for diversion programs for "nonviolent" offenders. Now, he's charged with raping a 16-year-old girl in a park near her home, an ordeal that lasted for around an hour, according to Brian Fraga's story for the Standard-Times. Repeat offenders are just that, and the only way to protect society from them is for them to be incarcerated for increasingly longer periods of time.

Texas Justice Re-redux

One more instance of a Texas exoneration, and how bad laws make everybody less safe, and life more miserable for the accused and wrongly convicted by making it easier to be wrongly convicted, at the link. Having identified the problem, let's put a stop to it. Thanks, Grits.

Maryland HB 2

Just in case you were wondering about the 2006 Emergency Maryland legislative session, sex offender registration laws, and collected criminal, public safety, corrections, probation and parole stuff, here is what the legislature accomplished in the emergency 2006 session (HB 2).

You can also read what the legislature proposed and did not pass, which is lined out, in the Unofficial Copy of the enrolled bill (at the link above).

Here you can read my earlier post on problems unique to registrants and the registry.

If you check out the following tags from the list available on the sidebar, you can pick up some additional info: Banishment, sex offenses.

(You may have to hunt a little within the postings that come up under the tag, because I have lumped brief references and newsy shorts into those posts that I now refer to as the Crows Nest, contrasted with more substantive comments that I try more or less to maintain as beefier individual entries.)

Corey Young at Sex Crimes and Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy (See Best Prison and Crime Law at the right) also have up to the minute info on these and related topics.

The Sex Offender Homelessness Problem & the New Class of State Slave

From Corey Yung at Sex Crimes yesterday -- A Maryland court was forced to confront the issue of how homeless sex offenders can comply with the requirements of that state's registry requirements. Their answer? Homeless sex offenders are exempt:

Sex offenders who are homeless are exempt from laws requiring them to register a change of address with state officials, Maryland’s high court ruled Wednesday. The Maryland Court of Appeals said in a pair of unanimous rulings that it would be impossible for the homeless to comply with provisions of the state sex offender registry.

Corey Yung (Sex Crimes) wonders how this problem is addressed in the probation context and credits eAdvocate for letting him know about this case. For more on this topic, and how restrictions do not actually protect children and society, and developments from the states of KS, UT, IA, WA go blog at Sex Crimes.

Let's really make the world safer and not just say we are. Registries and restrictions in Z's view create an entirely new and growing underclass, branded and shamed, unable to pursue careers, upon whom a disproportionate share of a scarce budget must be spent on policing and registering, and investigating and administering.

After several years of results, the statistics are coming in and beginning to show how completely useless this “feel good” solution has been.

The real solution should be to construct solid re-entry and reintegration community-based programs, and not on segregation, policing and fingerprinting, in essence creating state and federal catalogs of sex offenders. That's how communities should get involved, and that's how communities can become engaged in true prevention as well. That's not perverted.

That's called helping your neighbor.