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The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA)1, which mandates a national registry of people convicted of sex offenses and expands the type of offenses for which a person must register, applies to both adults and children. By July 2009, all states must comply with SORNA or risk losing 10 percent of the state's allocated Byrne Grant money, which states generally use to enforce drug laws and support law enforcement. In the last two years, some states have extensively analyzed the financial costs of complying with SORNA. These states have found that implementing SORNA in their state is far more costly than the penalties for not being in compliance. JPI's analysis finds that in all 50 states, the first-year costs of implementing SORNA outweigh the cost of losing 10 percent of the state's Byrne Grant. Most of the resources available to states would be devoted to the administrative maintenance of the registry and notification, rather than targeting known serious offenders. Registries and notification have not been proven to protect communities from sexual offenses, and may even distract from more effective approaches.

Managing sex offenders effectively is among the key public policy interests and priorities among lawmakers and the constituents they represent.1 State and national lawmaking bodies throughout the country have enacted large numbers of sex offender-specific laws in a relatively short period of time, primarily to increase mandatory prison sentences, provide for closer tracking and monitoring, and increase restrictions and sanctions.2 However, evidence regarding the impact and effectiveness of many of these laws and policies is limited. Furthermore, while these laws presumably reflect public demand and interests, relatively little is known about the public's awareness and attitudes about these policies.

Original ArticleMichael L. Perlin New York Law SchoolNaomi Weinstein New York State Unified Court System - Mental Hygiene Legal Service January 17, 2014Abstract: This paper considers the intersection between law, humiliation and shame, and how t...

This article argues that the new preventive law focus in sex offender laws is largely ineffective and too costly to personal liberty. The application of sex offender laws involving civil commitment, sex offender registration, and residency restrictions is often based on an individualized analysis of future dangerousness, i.e., the risk the defendant will sexually recidivate. In assessing future dangerousness, experts and courts place heavy emphasis on the use of actuarial tools, basically checklists that mental health experts use to derive statistical estimates of risk. This article provides substantiation that actuarial tools, while enjoying the imprimatur of science, suffer from significant empirical faults. Yet courts are largely abandoning their gatekeeping roles in accepting the experts' testimony using actuarial tool predictions of risk without critical review as required by the Daubert and Frye evidentiary standards. The paper theorizes that this is likely a pragmatic strategy considering the current political and public thirst for retribution against sexual predators. But, use of this empirically-challenged science exacerbates the practice of applying sex offender restrictions to inappropriately labeled individuals. Finally, this article takes advantage of the interdisciplinary trend of engaging social science with the law on expert evidence. More specifically, it offers an empirical assessment of future dangerousness opinions within the Daubert/Frye scientific evidence frameworks. The significance of the conclusion reached in this article is clear: if the law continues to rely upon suspect science that results in the wrong individuals being subject to liberty-infringing sex offender laws, then the drain on criminal justice resources will leave the truly dangerous offenders without sufficient supervision at the risk of public safety.

"A recent White House report found one in five female college students are sexually assaulted. Not exactly, says Wendy Kaminer. She takes issue with the language of the report, saying the Obama Administration is apparently, "oblivious to the difference between allegations, estimates and facts." (Elaine Thompson/AP) "Nearly one in five women have been raped in her lifetime," according to the White House Council on Women and Girls. Is that a fact? Or is it allegation or an estimate based on self-reporting surveys? Interestingly, the White House asserts that the same number of women, one in five, "has been sexually assaulted while in college." Is that a fact? Not exactly: It's a statistic derived from "a web-based survey of undergraduates," which means that one in five women has reported suffering a sexual assault. Maybe their reports are absolutely, unassailably accurate. Maybe not."

This page contains many links and covers just about everything you need to know about child porn cases.

The technological phenomenon of "sexting" has seen such a dramatic increase in popularity that it is now defined in the Merriam Webster Dictionary: "the sending of sexually explicit messages or images by cell phone." Moreover, if you ask a high school student to describe sexting, you may be surprised to hear it is a social norm. In a 2009 survey conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy, twenty percent of teens said they had sexted. That number has since increased to over twenty-five percent. What these students and many others do not know is that sexting could land them on a sex offender registry for life. As a result, their names and reputations could forever be ruined by the simple push of a computer key, or touch of an iPhone.

Original ArticleI hope this includes adult prisons where this happens as well?08/15/2013By PATRICK YEAGLE Following a federal report showing high rates of sex abuse in Illinois' youth prisons, the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice is movin...

Original Article11/10/2013 In a recent article posted here, the static-99 (an actuarial assessment instrument) developers are embracing retention and have posted a new report that sex offender risk plunges over time and the community. This is so...

Original ArticleAbstract: Sex offenders have become the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations in recent decades have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, requ...

Title: Sex Offender Risk Assessment - MOSAC Excerpt: Sex Offender Risk Assessment Prepared for: Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission Prepared by: Institute of Public Policy Truman School of Public Affairs

Title: Sex Offender Registries as a Tool for Public Safety: Views ... Excerpt: Sex Offender Registries as a Tool for Public Safety 2 distinct differences. Responsibility for maintaining the registry is held by different state agencies, including ...

Title: Sex Offender Registries as a Tool for Public Safety: Views ... Excerpt: Sex Offender Registries as a Tool for Public Safety 2 distinct differences. Responsibility for maintaining the registry is held by different state agencies, including ...

Title: Five Year Recidivism Follow-Up Of Sex Offender Releases Excerpt: Five Year Recidivism Follow-Up Of Sex Offender Releases George V. Voinovich, Governor Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Reginald A. Wilkinson Thomas J ...

Original Article10/03/2013Risk assessment tools used to predict prisoner re-offending are no more accurate than tossing a coin when it comes to psychopaths, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London. The researchers say the ...

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.

Title: THE IMPACT OF PRISON-BASED TREATMENT ON SEX OFFENDER ... Excerpt: THE IMPACT OF PRISON-BASED TREATMENT ON SEX OFFENDER RECIDIVISM: EVIDENCE FROM MINNESOTA 1450 Energy Park Drive, Suite 200 St. Paul, Minnesota 55108-5219

Sex Offender Recidivism Prior to and Following the Implementation of SORN. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual ...

Original ArticleDoesn't surprise us one bit! This is what happens when corruption and greed infest the "justice" system.08/29/2013By Paul Hamaker Daniel Murrie of the University of Virginia and Marcus Boccaccini at Sam Houston State University p...

Original Article10/13/2013By Keith EdwardsAUGUSTA - Sex offenders are the only type of criminal with their own registry so the public can keep an eye on them, so they must be the most likely to commit more crimes, right?Wrong. Contrary to the se...

Title:"Sex Offender Risk Assessment: Recent Research and Current Controversies Symposium (June 13,2005)" Excerpt: "Sex Offender Risk Assessment: Recent Research and Current Controversies" Symposium Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission June 13, 2005