The holidays, a time of giving.
But for registrants, that “giving”, goes on all year. Registrants fork over payment for all sorts of fees all year long. Registry fees, polygraphs fees, assessments, “sex offender” treatment fees, etc. These fees are not inexpensive and if you are unfortunate enough to have to register in December and take a polygraph in December and pay for treatment in December, you’re left with empty pockets come Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.
Here’s an approximate total of the yearly “giving” cost for new registrants on probation:
Yearly registration fee: $150
Average twice yearly polygraphs $250 each/$500 per year (some are given polygraphs more frequently).
“Sex offender” treatment sessions average “$20 per session x’s 52 weeks/$1040 per year (depending on location it can be as low as $5 or as high as $35 per session depending where you reside.)
That’s $1640.
Now factor in the cost of gas and parking fees. Then add in the amount of money lost having to take time off from your job to go to these events.
Registrants “give” roughly $2000 per year of their hard earned money to the state/federal government just for being on the registry and that may be a low figure. Depending on how often a registrant is subjected to polygraphs or other assessments, the figure may be a lot higher for some.
Most registrants already know this, but for newer registrants, the year’s end total may come as quite a sticker shock. And if you’re unlucky enough to be hit with the big fees during the holidays it can quickly wipe out any of those warm and fuzzy feelings of cheer and good will you may have had.
Now, there are some folks out there who might say “$2000, that’s nothing.” I’m not one of those folks. Too many registrants are unemployed or under-employed for no reason other than the fact that they are on the registry. For some, $2000 subtracted from their pay check over the course of the year may mean the difference between having food and shelter or being hungry and homeless, not just for themselves but for their family as well.
In a perfect world, the decent thing for the state/federal government to do would be to at least suspend the required “giving” during the month of December. Wouldn’t it be thoughtful and generous and a sign of “good-will” towards men to cut registrants a break and let them spend a little of their money on their families during the holidays.
But it’s not a perfect world and until things change, we live with the imperfect registry and all its traps and trappings.
The Registry.
It’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
Also, for those still on ‘papers’ who have an ankle bracelet add $151.00/month plus probation fees of $33.00 Whew! And if you don’t pay they violate you. Happy Holidays!!
And what is the annual Price Club membership today? $60 to $120 depending on your level. It’s main national competitor is $45 to $100. Yeah, right, just like an annual Price Club membership it is. hooey.
Good breakout, Kat, of the actual cost.
I should no longer be surprised with regard to the amount of scare quotes necessary to write anything regarding the sex offender registry. Whether it be “giving,” “treatment,” “risk,” etc. Those who originally designed the sex offender scheme may have had public safety in mind. But Megan’s Law has evolved to become a useless contraption — adding to homelessness and unemployment — used by politicans to leverage fear-mongered voter support, as well as leveraged by so-called treatment that impose things like “risk assessments” and the “lie detector.” At the end of the day, it’s all about the $$$.
I guess I was just lucky in that the most fees I had to pay were all pre-trial.
I was a federal case out of VA, and took 5 poly’s over the 5 years on paper but didn’t have to pay, and weekly group at the time was paid on a $20/month basis for those with means or no fee at all if you didn’t. Since I was not located in Richmond I had a long drive once a week for those meetings which did add wear and tear on my car, for sure.
If there’s anything good to say about the federal SOTP/probation in general in Richmond, is that they actually tried to improve the way they did things over the years. Still thank God it’s over!
My weekly group cost $40 per person. That was in the 90s. That’s over $2000/year just for group, plus 1:1 sessions. Back then polys were “only” $180. QUARTERLY.
Polygraphs demonstrably do not work. However, if they trick people into being honest, they could be useful. But that benefit is probably completely counteracted many times over by people who are retaliating just because the polygraphs are so offensive. I know that’s what I did and do.
These costs might be acceptable if they were forced on all people who committed any kind of serious crime. But nope, only $EX is dangerous.
And of course, once you start paying people, it’s corrupt and immoral.
Thank goodness there are no registration fees in California. However, the polygraph is $350, which I only needed to take once. The “sex offender treatment” was $60/week, and my therapist took me off that program after 4 months saying that it was not appropriate for me since I clearly wasn’t a sex offender. It’s too bad the state doesn’t feel the same way by keeping me registered even though my record is already expunged along with the therapist stating that I have less than 1% chance of committing any kind of offense let alone a sex offense. Ridiculous.
By the way, one more thing that you can add to the expense list is the loss of income of RCs who have to take time off from work to register.
Those fees seem a bit cheaper than what I had to pay in Michigan. When i was there it was a 1 time fee of $45 for the initial registration., go figure you get out of jail owing money. (My “housing bill” they sent me came out to $45,000 dollars which needed to be paid within 30 days of release or they sent debt collectors after you. Gotta love Grand Haven where the jail is owned by the judges that sentence you)
Probation fee was $400/month for 2 1/2 years, attourney fee for the court appointed was $4,000 if i remember correctly for him sitting on his ass doing nothing, not getting my evidence or anything, had my friend mail it all to me when i was in.
The “treatment” fee was $30 per session, twice per week for 2 1/2 years and was run by self admitted sex addict bikers. The only way to “graduate” was to “admit” to your crime IE what you plead to. Which now that i think about it explains the details on the registry as i had plead no contest to assault woth intent because consensual had a 45 year tail.
Almost didnt get off paper because the probation office only accepted cashiers checks and money orders and they “misplaced” three of my payments. I had to come up with $1200 before noon of that day (it was 9am wheb he told me) and drive it 300 miles to the damn original sentencing court. Lucky i didnt get a speeding ticket on top of it.
Almost forgot, they charged $50 dollars per drug test per week. Which always came back negative. Like what did they expect from someone who didnt do drugs beside free money?
Anyway, the mayh without the jail bill and gas to go do all this shit is roughly $27545 if you dont count when i had to hire a lawyer because they had tried to give me a failure to register because i didnt attend college in the summer but was going to return in the fall like most normal students would and even told them that was the plan.
Their understanding of the law regarding attending college was that each semester where you didnt attend classes you were to unenroll from the college and then go through the whole enrollment process again in the fall, which would make it impossoble to register for classes as most of them are booked the previous semester.
Anyway that was another $4000 dollars to take care of like a month after getting off of paper..
I had heard that they began doing yearly fees now or something but not sure. After their tier system went into effect gave up paying attention to anything but my 3 month check ins and reporting to them in person anytime i changed anything. Since all felonies were automatically tier 3
Anyway enough ranting i need to sleep so i can go to work in the morning
In Washington treatment is a average 100 per session and 50 per group. Slightly higher or lower depending on the area.
My husband has to pay $80.00 per session at the required counseling 4 times per month. There are extra group sessions that cost an additional $40.00 per session. I had to take a supervisor course that cost $240 and has resulted in nothing positive for either of us as he isn’t allowed to visit anyone anyway or work in his profession with or without me. The therapist also tried to get us to go to couples counseling for another $80.00 per session. After 2 of those it was apparent that it was just another way to extract money from us. I have refused to go again and my husband agrees that it was anything but therapeutic. The counselor spent the sessions “getting to know me”. Add on $250 for polygraphs (3 per year), registration fees, loss of his job, $4500 to cover the probation and court costs, $10 for UA analysis twice per month (that’s a joke since he’s a teetotler), attorney fees, pysch evaluation ($1200), time and gas and we are in for well over $30,000 at this point which does not include his loss of pay. His crime was clicking through from an adult site and viewing 16 photos of underage females. Probation for 2 years which is really just isolation and paying to keep the system going in my opinion. We were told how lucky he is to not have been sent to prison. To me, this is incomprehensible and the punishment in no way fits the crime. We will never recover financially or medically. The stress has been horrible and has taken its toll on both of us. We are not young and we both have chronic health issues which have been made worse by all of this. He admitted he was wrong to do what he did, but frankly I think this kind of punishment that ruins lives is wrong too. My husband is considered very low risk. In fact, his probation officer often just calls and tells him to poke his head out the door so he can see that he’s home and then drives off. He also has a new fee that we have to pay for him to have a lock put on his computer. That will run us $300 per month including installation. It’s his only hope to get any work so what choice was there but to bite the bullet?