Minnesota’s Predatory Offender Registry was first passed in 1991. It was intended to assist law enforcement in quickly locating and clearing suspects in child predator and kidnapping cases. 28 years later, the registry covers 21,000+ individuals and requires registration for many more crimes, including “crimes against the person” — 27 of them. It costs over $1m to implement every year.
Stacy Bettison recently published an article in Minnesota Bench and Bar entitled “The New Scarlet Letter – Is Minnesota’s Predatory Offender Registry Hurting or Hurting?” Bettison has a strong interest in criminal sexual conduct laws, how they are prosecuted, the policies behind them, and the real-life, day-to-day impact of those laws on people accused and convicted of a sex crime. Abstract
The full article is available here.
The Registry from day one has been nothing more than the government giving false reassurances to the masses that they are doing something about society’s ills.
They are providing a “security blanket” of useless data that doesn’t benefit society but just enough to threaten a certain segment of the population.
Registrants are the sacrificial lambs the government throw out to the hysterical masses to satisfy their bloodlust which is no different than the days of Mayan civilization.
Politicians lick their lips everytime $ex offenders come into their arena because it is easy money. They use these issues to get votes from the gullible. Kinda like taking candy from a baby.
Nobody cares what happens to Registrants as long people remain ignorant and politicians are hungry for power.
In California, our Registry is more than five times larger than Minnesota’s Registry. So I assume Cali’s annual cost is more than $5 million.
God willing, it will be ten times that much and increasing daily! I’d like it to be so painfully expensive and bureaucratically cumbersome that we begin seeing frequent news articles questioning it’s efficacy, value, and viability.