Comments

1
I think you have a typo: "But if the sex offender is released from an adult facility," should be "But if the sex offender is released from a juvenile facility,"
2
I'm all for this in theory.

But in practice, I'm skeptical. The sex offender registry is rendered almost completely meaningless when kids get registered as sex offenders for sexting on their cellphones, dating someone a year or two too old or young, and other relatively harmless offenses. These types of kids really aren't sex offenders; they're just silly kids.
3
Totally agree with #2. Too much is caught in the huge net of the sex crimes system.

For those dangerous repeat offenders that the sex offender registry was actually designed for—which probably make up the vast minority of people on the registry—they often just end up homeless because of the criteria laid out by registry laws, where they'll pose a larger threat to the community.

I'm skeptical the sex offender registry has done a single bit of good. It's a slam-dunk to go with these sorts of laws, politically, and career suicide to question them.
4
If I remember correctly, WSIPP found that community notification (slightly different than this) increased fear by half, reduced recidivism by zero. What's our goal? Reduce recidivism.

Yeah, homeless, unemployed sex offenders are the opposite of what we want.
5
What @2 said. The inclusion of thoughtless teenagers (and really, is there any other kind?) and other innocuous people on the sex offendor registry commits a triple sin:

- It totally ruins the life of people who have done nothing to deserve it by equating them with the worst child predators.

- The sheer deluge of names makes it impossible for families and teachers to actually be alert for actual predators, something they possibly could do if the list only contained the tiny minority of true monsters.

- It misdirects the energy and attention towards "stranger danger" when the vast majority of child sexual abuse happens within the home or inmediate circle of a child.

Yet in the infantile political landscape you can't make these points because all those things take time to say and "My opponent wants to protect pedophiles!" takes no time at all.
6
We really should only be doing notification of Level III sex offenders - the most violent, the most likely to reoffend. And there are definitely Level III offenders in the teenage population, too - the schools have a real need to know about that, so they can take that into account when that particular teenager enrolls in their school.

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