A Real Sex Offender Registry Proves Itself Is Worthless

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UPDATE: The Arizona Department of Corrections has released a sex offender fact sheet that further reinforces the low sexual offense recidivism rate of sex offenders. The quoted figure of new felony sex offenses? 3.2% of the 2,444 offenders studied committed a new felony sex offense within ten years of release.

I couldn't believe it at first. There is so much material quoting such a sparkling variety of statistics for how many "sex offenders" will move on to become "recidivists," which in sex offender discussion is someone who, after completing their criminal sentence and post-conviction treatment, commits another sex offense. If it wasn't for the fact that it's a governmental agency reporting these things, I would certainly have a huge amount of skepticism, but if you see it for yourself, how can you question it?

I'm talking about the fact that a tiny portion of convicted sex offenders actually commit another sex crime after "doing their time." Sex offenders committing another sex offense is the only reason that a "Sex Offender Registry" exists at all, and yet more and more the real facts (as opposed to the numbers pulled out of thin air or cherry-picked while ignoring counterevidence by newsrooms and politicians for media and political points) are shooting in one direction:

ALMOST EVERYONE you see in a Sex Offender Registry entry is LESS of a danger than those who AREN'T listed at all.

The proof is overwhelmingly against the long-standing theory that "sex offenders are very likely to commit their crimes again." Previous resources straight from law enforcement and corrections departments themselves have quoted sex offender reoffense rates circling five to six percent. For example, The U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994 section from the "National Recidivism Study of Released Prisoners" study highlights the following four bullet-points (emphasis and commentary added):

• Within 3 years following their release, 5.3% of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime. - In other words, out of every 1,000 sex offenders, the average you'll see "doing it again" is 53. Considering the tiny fraction of the population that sex offenders occupy, any given child or adult is far more likely to be injured or killed in a car wreck than molested, raped, or killed by a "sex offender." As far as the "within 3 years" goes, see the next study below this one.
• On average the 9,691 sex offenders served 3 1/2 years of their 8-year sentence. - It's hard to interpret this, but I'd have to say that my best guess on why this is, is due to good behavior and being worthy of parole. In other words, sex offenders don't act like hoodlums while in prison and rehabilitate rather well.
• Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime. - EVERY TIME that I quote the first item above, THIS ONE is used by people who think they're intelligent and think they've "caught me" making a mistake or skewing the facts. Unfortunately for them, they failed to use common sense in their search for ways to "stick it to me." If a person shows a lower threshold of restraint for committing any given crime, common sense dictates that the chances of being accused or actually committing that crime would be higher. Think of cocaine addicts as an example. Does it not logically follow that a cocaine addict will both (A) be looked at with more suspicion regarding drug-related crimes (and thus be at higher risk of rearrest) AND (B) have less "conscience" about starting up cocaine again? Also, note that they mention ARRESTS AND NOT CONVICTIONS. Being "rearrested" doesn't mean "reconvicted." You'd be surprised how many people choose to ignore these things to further their blind hatred of sex offenders.
• The 9,691 released sex offenders included 4,295 men who were in prison for child molesting. - This doesn't apply directly to this discussion.

The most common complaint I get from the hate-filled forum regulars in the "Comments" sections of news outlets across the country regarding the previous study is that it only mentions recidivism over a three-year period. Obviously, all kinds of baseless, sourceless, emotionally charged assumptions are declared as fact by said people as they continue to try to rationalize their hatred of sex offenders. When I am presented with these types of challenges, I dig deeper, and lo and behold, I found another study about sex offenders that gives results which aren't attackable based on the "short period afterward" that is covered. I would refer you to the study called State of New York Department of Correctional Services: Profile and Follow-up of Sex Offenders Released in 1986, as well as 2001 Releases: Three Year Post-Release Follow-up. The page that has archived these studies and explained them in "Reader's Digest form" tears apart the details for you better than I have time to, and so I would refer you there for more information. The excerpts that are most notable from that page are as follows (emphasis added):

• Within 9 years of their release, 49% were returned to prison. Not reported is the fact that only 6% of these (34 out of 556) were returned to prison for a new sex crime. Most were returned for parole violations (27%) or for committing other crimes such as drug offenses.
• The study includes the clear statement: "These findings suggest that sex offenders are a diverse population and that when looking at sex offender recidivism it is important to distinguish total criminal activity from sexual reoffending." (p. 34) Unfortunately, politicians and the media rarely do this.
• Between 1985 and 2001 a total of 11,898 sex offenders were released. Only 253 of these (2.1%) were returned to prison for new sex crimes within three years of their release.
• "Political parties are using sex offenders to demonstrate that they are tougher on law and order than the other state," said John La Fond, a retired law professor and author on sex offender treatment in Washington state. "No one really wants to know the facts anymore."
• The face of danger is more likely to appear in a family snapshot than in a mug shot on a sex offender registry. The kidnapping or sexual abuse of a child by a stranger is very rare. According to a report from the U.S. Dept. of Justice, of the sexual offenses committed against children in 2000, 34.2% of the perpetrators were family members and 58.7% were friends of the family (or other adults the children knew well). In the age range for sex-related crime victims of 6 to 11 year olds, only 4.7% of their molesters were strangers and in the age range of 0 to 5 years of age, only 3.1% of the perpetrators were strangers.
• In the NBC Dateline "To Catch a Predator" series, over 200 men have been lured to meet with whom they thought were underage youth to engage in sex. Out of these over 200 men, only 4 were registered sex offenders.

The net result of all of the information I had collected before authoring this article shows a MAXIMUM sexual reoffense rate of SIX PERCENT over a NINE YEAR PERIOD, with everything else aiming lower. While there is apparently a series of studies by Langevin, et al citing an 88.3% recidivism rate (and Langevin's previous "studies" have yielded higher numbers in the past), these false "studies" by Langevin et al have been torn apart and revealed as grossly misrepresentative of the facts by the Canadian Journal of Crimonology and Criminal Justice, in an article titled "Results By Design: Artefactual Construction Of High Recidivism Rates For Sex Offenders" (a short summary exists at the provided link). Departments of Justice and Corrections are the agencies directly charged with the handling of sexual offenders, so these figures are "straight from the horse's mouth." There's no cherry-picking, bias, skewing, or anything else for those in denial to hang onto--the truth isn't what you're told every day, nor what you see in the paper: sex offenders are overwhelmingly not going to perform a second sex crime, PERIOD, which undermines the justification for a Sex Offender Registry in the first place.

You've read all the information up until now, but it's time for you to see the stark reality: sex offender registries can prove that they themselves are useless. Head on over to ncfindoffender.com, the North Carolina Sex Offender and Public Protection Registry. Search the Registry. You want to pick a populated county (i.e. Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg, Guilford) and run two "Status" searches. One will be "Registered" and the other will be "Recidivist". Note each number. Calculate the percentage of recidivists in each county.

For almost every single one of the one hundred counties in North Carolina, the real-time percentage of actual sex crime recidivists is LESS THAN ONE PERCENT!

I don't have to list the stats. You can run the search and see for yourself. Remember, this isn't the results of a study, this is the ACTUAL COUNT of sex offenders that live in that county RIGHT NOW that have "done it again" as compared to the ACTUAL NUMBER of TOTAL sex offenders in the county. This is here and now, not ten or twenty years ago. For the counties I listed, here are the "Recidivist" percentages (INCLUDING offenders in prison):

WAKE COUNTY: 0.49%
GUILFORD COUNTY: 0.37%
MECKLENBURG COUNTY: 0.34%
DURHAM COUNTY: 0.76%

The only spike I could find in this trend was in Rockingham county, where the percentage comes out to 3.50% because there are 143 Registered offenders and 5 Recidivists. While the Registry doesn't allow a search for the entire state's "Registered" count, the entire state has a Recidivist count of 71, which isn't even enough recidivist sex offenders to distribute at a rate of one per county! Even if all of the recidivists were in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, the two most populated counties in North Carolina, there would only be a real recidivist percentage of 5.88%. This blows every statement about how sex offenders are such a high risk of reoffense completely out of the water, despite what Maureen Kanka, Mark Lunsford, and John Walsh would have you believe. The first two cases are highly rare yet highly covered types of cases, and the third hasn't even landed a conviction, sex offender or otherwise.

You are being lied to by the media, by politicians, by some advocacy groups, and even by your friends. Sex offenders are not as dangerous as you are told. Forcing sex offenders out of their homes with residency restrictions and lawsuits, removing their ability to find work via paranoid background checks, causing their families to be harassed and attacked because of the offender's status, and punishing them for a future crime they will likely never commit are precisely the things that cause a sex offender to give up and commit a sex offense anyway. The most dangerous person in existence is the person that has nothing to lose, and once you take everything from a sex offender to satisfy some hidden deep desire to get revenge on the sex offender, you could be the thing that makes a new sex offense take place. Tell your politicians to attack the root causes of new sex offenses instead of punishing innocent people. Demand therapy programs be created with the money currently routed to Registries, and stop sex crimes BEFORE THEY HAPPEN. You have the power to "protect the children," so why aren't you doing that right now?

Administrative note: All Registry data used here was correct as of May 25, 2007, the date of authorship of this article.

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