{"id":2493,"date":"2017-08-13T16:32:23","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T20:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/?p=2493"},"modified":"2017-08-13T16:32:23","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T20:32:23","slug":"are-sex-offender-registries-reinforcing-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/are-sex-offender-registries-reinforcing-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Are sex offender registries reinforcing inequality?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Are sex offender registries reinforcing inequality?<\/h1>\n

by\u00a0Florida Action Committee<\/a><\/span>\u00a0|<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The following are excerpts from\u00a0this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Offenders convicted of sex crimes are now\u00a0singled out<\/a>\u00a0for surveillance and restrictions far more punitive than those who commit other types of crime. More than\u00a0800,000<\/a>\u00a0Americans are now registered\u00a0sex offenders<\/a>. Tracking them has created a booming surveillance industry.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

Studies have\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that rates in sex offender registration have ballooned more than 24 percent between 2005 and 2013. I wondered, is this in line with other trends in American corrections? Data show it is not.<\/p>\n

Although the U.S. still incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, correctional supervision rates in the U.S. (including people in jail or prison as well as those on parole or probation)\u00a0peaked in 2007<\/a>\u00a0and have been declining since, albeit at a molasses pace. That means sex offender registries have grown while the prison population has shrunk.<\/p>\n

Imagine being punished for something you did three decades ago. You served your time and thought it was in the past. Under American\u00a0sex offender laws<\/a>, moving on is nearly impossible: Most state policies are retroactive, meaning they apply to offenders who committed offenses before these laws were put in place. While these laws are the subject of several ongoing\u00a0court battles<\/a>, most remain in effect.<\/p>\n

\n

Offenders are subject to extensive public notification requirements, which include state-run search engine listings that feature their address, mugshot, criminal history and demographic information. In some cases, offenders are also required to publicly post flyers with their pictures or run newspaper notices advertising their residency. Some states, such as Louisiana,\u00a0stamp<\/a>\u00a0\u201cSEX OFFENDER\u201d in large red script on driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n

Having a mugshot disseminated across internet search engines is only the tip of the iceberg; once registered, offenders are subject to a wide array of housing and employment restrictions.<\/p>\n

In many places in the U.S., sex offenders are effectively zoned out of cities and towns because there are no residential areas that satisfy all of the numerous regulations. For example, offenders may be prohibited from living within a certain number of feet from a playground.<\/p>\n

They are often left with no choice but to live\u00a0under highways<\/a>\u00a0or in\u00a0improvised communities<\/a>, such as the one in Pahokee, Florida depicted in the New York Times 2013 short film, \u201cSex Offender Village<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
A\u00a0recent study<\/a>\u00a0found that sex offenders released in Florida between 1990 and 2010 had lower rates of recidivism than offenders of other types of crime \u2013 6.5 percent for sex offenses, as compared to 8.3 percent for nonsexual assaults and 29.8 percent for drug offenses. Moreover, that study found that recidivism rates increased after the state legislature implemented sex offender registration requirements in 1997.While the evidence is mixed that these policies are effective at deterring crime, the evidence of their collateral consequences is more consistent.\u00a0Several<\/a>\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0of registered sex offenders have\u00a0revealed<\/a>how registries reinforce class inequality by creating patterned experiences of unemployment, harassment and homelessness.From a public safety perspective, scholars note that registries provide the public with a false sense of security: While the existence of\u00a0sex offender registries<\/a>\u00a0reinforces a myth of \u201cstranger danger<\/a>,\u201d most offenders in reality are acquaintances or family members. Balancing the thin support of the registries\u2019 effectiveness against the more robust evidence of their negative effects, one scholar recently\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0these policies do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

Read more at:\u00a0https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2017-08-sex-registries-inequality.html#jCp<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are sex offender registries reinforcing inequality? by\u00a0Florida Action Committee\u00a0| The following are excerpts from\u00a0this article. Offenders convicted of sex crimes are now\u00a0singled out\u00a0for surveillance and restrictions far more punitive than those who commit other types of crime. More than\u00a0800,000\u00a0Americans are now registered\u00a0sex offenders. Tracking them has created a booming surveillance industry. Studies have\u00a0found\u00a0that rates in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,119],"tags":[131],"class_list":["post-2493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-news","category-sex-offender-laws-updates","tag-are-sex-offender-registries-reinforcing-inequality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2545,"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions\/2545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexoffenderonestopresource.com\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}