Michigan’s ill-advised scheme to pile on punishment for convicted sex offenders failed to get even a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, leaving the Legislature to craft a new law that will restore both sanity and fairness to the state’s sex offender registry.
The High Court said Monday it will not take up Michigan’s appeal of a 6th Circuit Court ruling that struck down its practice of applying new restrictions retroactively to those on the list.
Now, the state has no choice but to draft new rules for monitoring sex offenders, and restricting their activities.
It’s a blessing in disguise for the state.
Good article, but no one is mentioning “ex-post facto” concerns. THAT concerns me!
Again, “risk” based sounds good in theory. But in practice, it’s a lot more difficult to implement. Risk based registries ought to be Constitutionally challenged because it implies that people will be punished for crimes that they *might* do, based on quasi-actuarial “tools” such as the Static 99.
If they are going to use a half ass job by using the Static 99 tests, then how is that truly better than the current system? Bureaucrats love the Static 99 tests because they provide the illusion of simple numbers derived from binary-like answers to “risk factors.” But the risk factors are derived from a mix and match of various non-contact and violent offenders, all of whom with various personal characteristics (education, ethnicity) lumped together. Static takes no account for personal characteristics of the FORMER offender.