A high school prank nearly landed an Arizona teenager in deep trouble recently.
On a teammate’s dare, the 19-year-old football player exposed himself when the team photo was shot for the yearbook. No one, other than those in on the prank, was aware of what happened until the yearbook was published and circulated to students.
That’s when law enforcement swooped in. The teen faced 69 counts of indecent exposure, one count for every student and staff member present when the photo was taken.
After a public backlash, cooler heads prevailed and the case was dropped when all 69 “victims” declined to press charges.
Clearly, this was a prime case of poor judgment on the part of the teenager.
But it’s also an example of how easily someone could be labeled a sex offender and potentially face a lifetime of ramifications that could affect where they live, where they can work and whether anyone would be willing to hire them at all.
Every state has a sex-offender registry. The federal government requires it and has since 1994, when the Jacob Wetterling Act was passed. The act was named for an 11-year-old Minnesota boy who was abducted in 1989 and never seen again.
But the registries, which are available to the public in many states, can be problematic and it may be time to re-examine whether they should continue, at least in the way they are currently handled.
Why re-think how the lists are compiled?
For one thing, in some states so many people are registered as sex offenders that it’s hard to imagine law enforcement is helped in any way. Nationwide, 843,260 people were registered sex offenders in 2015, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
These registries also usually have been created under the assumption that sex offenders are strangers, but Department of Justice statistics show that’s true only in a small percentage of cases.
A few years ago, researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology found that in 93% of U.S. cases where minors were sexually abused, the perpetrator was a relative or an acquaintance.
Sex-offender registry laws also emerged based on the view that once a sex offender, always a sex offender. The assumption was that, since they are potential repeat offenders, they need to be monitored closely.
The Florida Institute of Technology study indicates that’s just not so. Quoting Department of Justice figures, the study said just 5% of sex offenders released from prison were rearrested for sex crimes within three years. The percentage of all prisoners re-arrested within three years is 67.8%, according to the National Institute of Justice.
To be fair, over time, that percentage of repeat sex offenders does grow. The study said previous work by other researchers had shown that about 24% of sex offenders were charged with a new sex crime over a 15-year period.
But still, that’s clearly well below what the public often expects — that everyone on the registry is dangerous as a potential repeat offender.
Finally, the biggest problem is that — depending on the specifics of each state law — many people end up on sex-offender registries who simply aren’t a danger to the public and never were.
Minors who have consensual sex with other minors can make the list. So can people who were caught urinating in public. The same might even go for college students who decide that streaking across campus would be hilarious — without realizing that the consequences could be much more severe than a chewing out by the dean.
That’s one of the reasons a movement is already afoot to reform how the sex-offender registries are handled. A group called Reform Sex Offender Laws Inc. is among those leading the charge for better laws and policies that promote public safety while at the same time protecting civil liberties and honoring human dignity. Another group called Women Against Registry takes a similar stand.
Change won’t come easily. Many prosecutors and victim advocates are determined to keep the registries as they are.
But there are ways to handle this in a more reasonable fashion that would still protect the public without ensnaring generally law-abiding people in a net designed for someone more devious.
For example, there could be registries that would be seen only by law enforcement officials that would include lower-level offenders. Higher-level offenders could be listed in registries that everyone could see.
Making modifications to how the registries are compiled isn’t about letting dangerous sex offenders off the hook. It also isn’t about hiding information from the public that truly impacts their safety.
What it is about is making sure people aren’t branded with a label that creates a false impression and leaves them punished for life over an error in judgment that happened years or decades ago.
Christopher Zoukis, author of “College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons” (McFarland & Co., 2014) and the “Prison Education Guide” (Prison Legal News Publishing, 2016), is the founder of PrisonEducation.com and PrisonLawBlog.com. He is incarcerated at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg in Virginia.
Christopher Zoukis, author of “College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons” (McFarland & Co., 2014) and the “Prison Education Guide” (Prison Legal News Publishing, 2016), is the founder of PrisonEducation.com and PrisonLawBlog.com. He is incarcerated at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg in Virginia.
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