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Six years ago, the federal government set out to indefinitely detain some of the nation's most dangerous sex offenders, keeping them locked up even after their prison sentences had ended. But despite years of effort, the government has so far won court approval for detaining just 15 men. Far more often, men the U.S.Justice Department branded as "sexually dangerous" predators remained imprisoned here for years without a mandatory court hearing before the government was forced to let them go, a USA TODAY investigation has found. The Justice Department has either lost or dropped its cases against 61 of the 136 men it sought to detain. Some were imprisoned for more than four years without a trial before they were freed.

To most people, the sex offender registry seems to be a valiant government effort. Popular assumptions are made about registered people without really knowing anything about who they are and how they got on the list. But as a man who grew up reading about men being sent to prison for consensual sex with each other (until the 2003 Lawrence decision decriminalized it1), I find myself skeptical that things are more noble this time around. Since 2007, I've been doing research on the registry and related laws. With hundreds of thousands of people advertised as "sex offenders" on government websites across the country, I looked into the laws and procedures that landed them there. A lot of the results were frightening. Thousands of people are on the registry for the rest of their lives as a result of behavior when they were children or adolescents, as young as eleven years old.2 A woman is on the registry for breastfeeding her baby and several men are on it for public urination.3 Perhaps most incredible, US federal sentencing laws make the penalty for taking a picture of a 17-year-old boy with an erection worse than the penalty for killing him!4 These findings became the core of this website, SOL Research.

PDF: http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/084747p1.pdf This case returns to us after the Supreme Court's review in Reynolds v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 975 (2012). Remand requires that we reach the merits of Reynolds's claim that the regulatory rule upon which his indictment was based was promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"). This claim gives rise to three questions: (1) What is the appropriate standard of review of an agency's assertion of good cause in waiving the APA's notice and comment requirements? (2) Did the Attorney General have good cause to waive these requirements in promulgating a rule governing the retroactivity of the Sex Offender and Registration Notification Act's ("SORNA") registration requirements? (3) If the Attorney General lacked good cause to waive the requirements, was Reynolds prejudiced by the failure to comply with the APA's notice and comment requirements? The courts of appeals are divided on each of these questions. On the first question, the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits have determined that the arbitrary and capricious standard is the appropriate standard for reviewing the Attorney General's actions, the Fourth and Sixth Circuits have not stated a standard but appear to use de novo review, and the Ninth Circuit has explicitly avoided the question. On the second question, the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits have held that the Attorney General had good cause to waive notice and comment, while the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits have held that he did not. On the final question, the Fifth Circuit has held that the Attorney General's lack of good cause does not prejudice defendants, while the Sixth Circuit has held that it is prejudicial. We conclude that we need not decide the appropriate standard of review today because the Attorney General's assertion of good cause cannot withstand review even under the most deferential standard available. We also conclude that the At

Individuals classified as sexual predators are the pariahs of the community. Sex offenders are arguably the most despised members of our society and therefore warrant our harshest condemnation. Twenty individual states and the federal government have enacted laws confining individuals who have been adjudicated as "sexually violent predators" to civil commitment facilities post incarceration and/or conviction. Additionally, in many jurisdictions, offenders who are returned to the community are restricted and monitored under community notification, registration and residency limitations. Targeting, punishing and ostracizing these individuals has become an obsession in society, clearly evidenced in the constant push to enact even more restrictive legislation that breaches the boundaries of constitutional protections.

Original Article05/14/2013By Andrew M. SeamanNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of U.S. children who were exposed to violence, crime and abuse in 2011 was essentially unchanged from 2008, according to a new government survey. Researchers who...

The following is a collection of recidivism studies comparing the failure rate of all felony offenders to the failure rate of sex offenders who have committed a new sex crime. All of the studies presented on this page are carefully selected state-sponsored studies, authorized by either the federal Government (US Department of Justice) or the several state legislatures and their respective state agencies. Every effort has been made to eliminate purely academic or politically motivated research.

As of August 2006, at least 21 states and over 400 local governments had adopted sex offender residency restriction laws and ordinances, respectively, according to the California Research Bureau in an August 2006 report entitled The Impact of Residency Restrictions on Sex Offenders and Correctional Management Practices: A Literature Review. These laws are modeled after nuisance codes, creating sex offender-free zones like drug-free zones. They typically prohibit sex offenders from living, and sometimes working or loitering, within a specified distance of designated places where children congregate. Like all states, Connecticut requires sex offenders to register. And like most states, police must notify residents when a sex offender moves or returns to their neighborhoods. But, the state has not enacted a law restricting sex offenders' residency. This could change soon, however. A bill, sHB 5503, currently before the General Assembly requires the Risk Assessment Board to use the risk assessment scale it develops to determine the sex offenders who should be prohibited from living within 1,000 feet of the property comprising an elementary or secondary school or a licensed center- or home-based child day care facility.

Despite the fact that the federal and many state governments have enacted registration and community notification laws as a means to better protect communities from sexual offending, limited empirical research has been conducted to examine the impact of such legislation on public safety. Therefore, utilizing time-series analyses, this study examined differences in sexual offense arrest rates before and after the enactment of New York State's Sex Offender Registration Act. Results provide no support for the effectiveness of registration and community notification laws in reducing sexual offending by: (a) rapists, (b) child molesters, (c) sexual recidivists, or (d) first-time sex offenders. Analyses also showed that over 95% of all sexual offense arrests were committed by first-time sex offenders, casting doubt on the ability of laws that target repeat offenders to meaningfully reduce sexual offending.

Overborne by a mob mentality for justice, officials at every level of government are enacting laws that effectively exile convicted sex offenders from their midst with little contemplation as to the appropriateness or constitutionality of their actions. These laws fundamentally alter the liberties and freedom of convicted sex offenders to satisfy the ignorant fear of the masses. As a result, residence and employment restrictions which in theory are to protect society, in practice only exacerbate the perceived recidivism problem. When such laws are passed and the political process is broken, it is necessary for the judicial branch to step forward and protect those who are politically impotent.

Title: Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) Excerpt: Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) Background Governing Laws ... recidivism rates between sex offenders who underwent treatment and those who had not.

Original Article12/22/2013This is by far the most extensive article ever written about registries. Worth reading. (PDF) Contrary to popular belief, offender registries are not a recent phenomenon. Offender registries are government-controlled sy...

A brilliant experiment has proven that adversarial pressures skew forensic psychologists' scoring of supposedly objective risk assessment tests, and that this "adversarial allegiance" is not due to selection bias, or preexisting differences among evaluators. The researchers duped about 100 experienced forensic psychologists into believing they were part of a large-scale forensic case consultation at the behest of either a public defender service or a specialized prosecution unit. After two days of formal training by recognized experts on two widely used forensic instruments -- the Psychopathy Checklist-R (PCL-R) and the Static-99R -- the psychologists were paid $400 to spend a third day reviewing cases and scoring subjects. The National Science Foundation picked up the $40,000 tab.

This just goes to show you that corruption is indeed part of the "justice" system.

In response to widespread public concern about the release of sex offenders from prison, the Federal Government and all 50 States and the District of Columbia have passed laws collectively referred to as "community notification statutes" that authorize or require communities where such offenders will live to be notified of their arrival. The common goal of these statutes is to prevent sexual victimization by notifying potential victims that a convicted sex offender lives nearby.