Kat’s Blog: The Registry: A Valuable Public Safety Tool?

If you have a few minutes, read Florida’s Sex Offender Registration and Monitoring Triennial Review 2018 (www.oppaga.state.fl.us). Even if you don’t live in Florida, it’s an interesting slog thru what governmental bureaucracy thinks is important when it comes to the registry.

The highlight of this auditing monstrosity is the attached letter at the end of the report from Fl. Dept. of Law and Enforcement to the coordinator of the Office of Program Policy Analysis & Governmental Accountability, stating “the registry is a valuable public safety tool”.

I read the report in its entirety. I didn’t find any evidence of a valuable public safety tool.

What I did find was much to the contrary.

Here is an audit that divides folks into categories with labels, either you’re a “sexual offender” or a “sexual predator”. In an age where we are all about political correctness, those labels don’t make registrants feel any safer. We are “the public”, aren’t they concerned for our public safety?

The audit notes that there are more than 73,000 “sex offenders” and “predators” in Fl. but that the majority “don’t live among the public in Fl.” Instead, the audit notes, many live in other states or have gone back to prison. First of all, registrants take umbrage with leper-like statements such as “don’t live among the public.” Certainly, some registrants have been forced into homelessness or living on the fringes of society because they are on the registry, but there are just as many that have reintegrated back into society and are doing a damn fine job of living. And “gone back to prison” is a scare tactic used to encourage the public to believe that a registrant has repeated a “sex offense” when in fact they may be back in prison on a non-related probation violation or some other ridiculous technicality.

No, this isn’t sounding like a public safety tool at all.

Online maps, banishment laws, timelines, demographics and registrants fees are included in the audit. Map legend icons designate locations where registrants live as blue roofed houses for “sex offenders” and red roofed houses for “sexual predators”. And, believe it or not, there are teeny tiny tents for transients. Where’s the public safety tool for registrants that have to live in tents, for those who can’t find housing because of all the registry rules, regulations and boundaries?

One sentence of the report did contradict the audit’s findings. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering & Tracking Office (SMART), “research shows residency restrictions don’t decrease and are not a deterrent for sexual recidivism” and other research also indicates “no significant decreases in sex crimes following implementation of residency restrictions.” OK, we’ll allow that governmental dept. to keep the SMART moniker.

Registrants and their families are “the public”. A public registry that puts registrants, their spouses and their children in danger every day, is not and never will be a “valuable public safety tool.”

 

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Anyone who thinks the Registries are a “valuable public safety tool” is clueless.

I do think it SEEMS like the Registries would be useful. But that is just really, really shallow thinking. A simple illustration of that is say that you have one neighbor who is Registered and one who is not. Who has committed more $EX crimes? And forget that, who has committed more dangerous crimes, period? Who is more dangerous?

You don’t have the first clue. I’m sure people think they do but we have limitless evidence from actual reality that they don’t. So, should you treat either neighbor differently? Be more or less guarded of one neighbor instead of the other? Not if you’re smart.

But what Registry Terrorists/Harassers think is that they will just not talk to the “predator” and they’ve improved their safety. Obvious nonsense. Or they will just keep the “predators” out of their schools and then safety has been improved. Stupid.

If the Registries were only worthless, they would probably be okay. But of course they are much, much worse than worthless. They have demonstrably been the DIRECT cause of innocent children being murdered. Those children are dead because of the Registries. Is that valuable public safety? Not sure how. I guess the terrorists would say that it is because if the Registries did not exist then some multiple of those children would be dead. But that’s more nonsense of course.

It’s a problem when big government tells people that I’m an “offender” or whatever other names they want to call me. And then they don’t provide me with dossiers of my neighbors so I know what names to call them. That’s unacceptable. Anyone who supports that or the Registries is not a fellow American of mine. They are not people for whom I need have concern. They are enemy combatants in war. They must be treated like any other terrorists who cannot mind their own business or leave other families alone.

Beautiful rebuttal, and thank you for pointing out the conclusion that, “No significant decrease in sex offenses has occurred since the implementation of the registry restrictions.” That sums it up.

A file on a database alone can only serve to inform the viewers imagination about what the perp may have done. The individual pages are an incomplete one sided reference. My doc page makes no mention that a jury trial was demanded, nor that DNA or other biological evidence was missing because someone else testified she cleaned the area. It one reference in SMITHVDOE03, is worthy consider WI v Constanteneau. But the advantages of the databases outweighs need for liberty.

The main purpose of this registry is supposedly to help monitor their whereabouts. But because of this registry, no one will rent to an S.O. making the registry pointless. Some of the people on this registry unintentionally or unknowingly committed a crime. Not all of them are predators or violent or pedophiles. This registry allows an S.O to be bullied and repeatedly punished. They have already been judged and sentenced and are trying to live a good life. I am a firm believer that the sex offender laws in this country need to be seriously re-evaluated. Especially with the more recent crimes that are going unpunished because “we don’t want to ruin their lives”. Those recent offenders should be punished and some of the others that are or have been probably shouldn’t have been. As a female, I would much rather know about where the violent and repeat offenders of ANY crimes are located and not just every person who urinated in public or committed a crime unknowingly. I hope I see the day where someone figures out that this is just plain wrong and finds a way to change this.

Can anyone point to one single instance where the registry has prevented or had a role in solving any crime whatsoever? I regularly Google the term “sex offender arrested” and 98% of the hits are only for registry or parole/probation violations. Of the ones that aren’t, the status of the person as a registrant is never known until after arrest. Now and again, I’ll see where a registrant gets hit for CP possession, but always because of those entrapment stings, and often the registrant was specifically targetted either by LE or vigilantes.

Despite what they say in public, any LE officer will tell you in private that it’s worthless. There’s nothing in it not available in NCIC or state counterparts, or easily found through minimal diligence of routine investigation. At most, it gives LE a list of people to harass if looking for an unknown perp and to date, has never resulted in arrest as far as I can tell. Even if there are exceptions, that’s what, one or two cases out of how many MILLION? And can it be said that those exceptions would have been unsolvable but for the registry? I seriously doubt it.

Some clown in Australia is pushing for an American-style registry out there. Interesting are the comments on this article, particularly Middle-aged Mama (absolutely spot-on):

https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-australia-should-not-have-a-public-register-of-child-sex-offenders-20190109-p50qcy.html

Bottom line, the registry is absolutely useless for “public safety.” Amending, tiering, anything done to it to try to make it anything but is like an exercise program to strengthen your appendix – a lot of effort for an organ with no function. The smartest thing to do is just get rid of it altogether so no damage is done if it gets inflamed.

Only way this possible can help anyone is if they put everyone on the Registry.. The entire population of the United States, DNA tested, and tagged. DNA collected at birth..