CA Sex Offender Management Board Releases Video

The California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) has released a 7-minute video that dispels many myths regarding registrants and replaces those myths with facts. The video includes on-camera statements from CASOMB members including representatives of the California Department of Justice, the Los Angeles Police Department and treatment providers.

According to the video, not all registrants are the same and the majority of registrants are “very unlikely” to commit a subsequent sex offense. In fact, the rate of re-offense for low-level offenders is less than one percent.
The video also highlights the fact California is only 1 of 4 states that requires all individuals convicted of a sex offense to register for a lifetime. This requirement results in barriers to housing, employment and social relationships but does not increase public safety.

According to the video, treating all registrants the same doesn’t work and is too expensive. The video advocates instead the effective use of government resources including individual assessments of registrants.

The video also includes statements from individuals who have survived a sexual offense. According to one of the survivors, she would prefer that government resources focus upon long-term prevention and healing.

Watch on YouTube

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An impressive piece of work by the CASOMB. Now, to drive the point home, I am hopeful that the Board will listen to the ACSOL and comes off its “written in stone” stance and produce a new tiered registry proposal which reflects all that it states in this video.

I don’t understand:

“The video advocates instead the effective use of government resources including individual assessments of registrants.”

Isn’t this contradictory to their tiered proposal? Or are the individual asessments the DA looking at your paperwork?

Apparently, they are trying to prepare the general public for the new tiered registry and reduce the amount of resistance.

W O W, …this might actually help us help EDUCATE the Public and their Fear Mongers and haters.
Reduce Ignorance equals less harm towards RC’s. Hope they make the new Cap Hill Legislators/Senators review.
We will have to wait and see. Step in the right direction CASOMB.
Let’s start with Senator LEYVA down south and have her listen to the LAPD Det.

They should add a different “assessment” than the Static 99R when classifying Tier III. Or at least add an additional dynamic (not static) test to make the categorization into Tier III when using only the Static 99 as classifying someone “high risk.”

It’s great to look at how much Tom Tobin has aged since I had the misfortune of knowing him some twenty-three years ago. A bit of schadenfreude. Of course, I haven’t age a bit 🙂

Very pleased to see MOVEMENT in our direction on so many fronts.

Remember this video and it’s source when you come across those who continue to push the “more than 50%” re-offense rates. I suggest publishing the link to the video and say nothing more.

There are some good parts to this video. But there are also some misleading and disingenuous parts to this video.

Listen to the words very carefully in the following excerpt: https://youtu.be/GBoy2FB27yg?t=135

“High risk offenders have approximately a 29 percent chance of committing a new offense within FIVE-YEARS from release of incarceration.” – Lauren Rauch

Firstly, exactly where did the detective, Lauren Rauch, get a 29 percent figure? Even using CASOMB’s very own study written by Hanson (who, as one of the “developers” of the Static, boasts of the Static-99R’s efficacy in this and many other “studies”), a simple division of the ‘high-risk’ figure on page 12 [29 divided by 143] generates a recidivism rate of about 20.3 percent within a FIVE-YEAR period of release of incarceration. Here is the copy of said conflict-of-interest “study”:

https://all4consolaws.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Recidivism-Report-June-2016.pdf

So the detective in the video inflates the figure for the “high-risk” offenders by about nine percent.

Furthermore, the definition of “recidivism” is not limited to sex or sexually-motivated crimes. As page 7 states: “Any recidivism included all crimes (sexual, violent, non-violent), as well as all technical offenses (e.g., breach of conditional release), regardless of whether they were sexually motivated.”

So the very definition of ‘recidivism’ is exaggerated. And the video omits the very important fact that even so-called “high-risk sex offenders” are no more likely to reoffend than anyone else if they had remained offense-free in the community for at least 17 years. The video also has no mention of the “Static-99R.” I have to wonder: did CASOMB and SARATSO leave mention of the Static test out because they knew that its use is very controversial?

For example, Virginia’s legislature has already done an extensive audit/study on the Static-99R. According to Virginia’s audit:

“While actuarial risk assessments have value, they can substantially over- or underestimate the potential that a given individual may reoffend if released, and are not intended to precisely predict an individual’s actual risk of future reoffense. Virginia is the only state that designates a specific actuarial risk assessment instrument and score in statute. This citation of a specific instrument and score in statute results in two substantial flaws. The first is that the threshold score of ‘5’ in statute limits the ability of qualified individuals to use their professional judgment to decide which offenders should be further evaluated, including some offenders who are likely sexually violent predators.” See iii. Here is a copy of the audit:

http://leg2.state.va.us/dls/h&sdocs.nsf/fc86c2b17a1cf388852570f9006f1299/20d0de7a436ff22c85257863004afe71/$FILE/HD5.pdf

Furthermore, highly-esteemed professors from Duke, USC, and UW similarly disagree to the Static. The four professors — including Dr. Allen Frances, MD, the Chair of the DSM (also known as the “Bible of Psychiatry”) — call the Static-99R’s scoring ‘dubious’ (p. 404) and reliant on ‘unpublished’ (p. 402) documentation:

http://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/38/3/400.full.pdf

Here is another good blog article about how the Static-99R has been misused in states like Florida:

http://restoringintegritytovirginiaregistry.blogspot.com/2013/10/overestimating-sex-offender-static-99r.html

I hope California does not make the same mistake. I have personally seen the harm the Static-99R has done in the “treatment” setting. And it does NO good to extent its use to determining Tier 3 offenders in a tiered registry bill.

The question is: How can we get this video in front of Senators/Representatives, Lobbyists, Judges, etc. ?

Any person can agree that this video makes sense, but we need this to be seen by the right people for it to start making a difference.

Is this even something that can be used to argue against the IML law?

It took decades for a video like this to be published. I’m glad that perceptions are changing!

This is a important tool that is to our benefit and it can be used to tear down a bunch of trash and it can be used against CASOMB own purposed tier registry legislation and the IML. This video needs to be sent to ALL law making bodies in California and the nation. The chicken (truth) is coming to roost.

I have a Static Score of 1 whis is virtually the same score 100% of anyone my age would get on that damn things…..how am I of average risk if the dude who did the test would get the same result I did?

After watching this video, I got the impression that the government’s next strategy is to villainize people given the label of “high risk sex offender.” Like user Tobin’s Tools mentioned above, it seems CASOMB/SARATRO are manipulating already questionable Static 99R methodology to create a narrative that people that score “high risk” on the static are somehow more “dangerous” or high risk. Like what Tobin’s Tools said, where did the detective in the video get 29 percent? Note how the figure is ONLY up to a 5-year alleged prediction (and does seem inflated by at least 9%). And as Tobin’s Tools mentions above, CASOMB/SARATSO’s definition of “recidivism” also includes non sex offenses AND probation/parole violations. And what — the Static relies on 10 questions to forecast destiny? So while the video doesn’t outright say it, the tiered bill they want will use 10 dumbed down Static 99R questions to label someone high risk for life. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I call B.S.

Yep this video needs to be shown in every court case that comes before the courts and cited as well…I cant wait to see a real suit come into play and see what happens…It is virtually imposible to determine the registry is justified and fair once the court records have all this empirical evidence laid out in detail…I hate this phrase but Its a no brainer…..

I’m happy they (CASOMB) came out with the video, as now should there ever be a reason to challenge their “doings” we have their conclusions on file–the only thing that could change that is for all convicted SO’s to begin re-offending, which isn’t ever going to be the case unless they put something in the water.

This video is an illusion. See the video vs. what’s in the actual bill. The video portrays things cleanly (aside from the LAPD detective’s misleading 5 yr “high risk” offender statistic). Contrastingly, the draft bill itself is not clean. If the video was made w/ honesty, CASOMB would have been more clear to define what exactly a “high risk” sex offender is (i.e. determined by Static 99/scam and that risk, especially for ‘high risk’ labeled people, declines with offense-free behavior while free in the community). Instead, CASOMB seems so intent to create new enemies: so called ‘high risk sex offenders’. That is why this video is troubling: it helps one group, but it is at the cost of another. Typical government politicizing/fear-mongering to justifiy law oppressing alleged ‘high’ riskers. If politicians are going to be making decisions based off a watered-down video, then we’re in trouble. Also, CASOMB are the same folks who push junk science like the polygraph and Static 99. They are not magically friends!!