The registration of criminal offenders in the United States is not a new approach to crime prevention, but since the 1990s, this effort to create and maintain systematic lists of lawbreakers has focused largely on convicted sex offenders and featured public offender registries (PORs). As repositories of information about convicted criminals, PORs are open to anyone who wishes to access such data and are often made available through the online web pages of government entities and other organizations. Upon criminal conviction, individuals subjected to PORs are typically required to provide law enforcement and correctional authorities with their names, photographs, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, fingerprints, offense histories, and dates of convictions. However, the information provided to the public varies widely across jurisdictions. These offenders must also verify the accuracy of this information on a routine basis for the duration of their registration, which may range from a few years to the rest of their lives. This article describes the rationale behind PORs and early attempts at criminal registration in the United States. PORs are then considered in light of their effects on public safety and recidivism, ramifications for offenders and families, and other criticisms. Finally, the newest developments in PORs are discussed.
Rationale Behind PORs
The expressed goals of PORs are to promote public safety and reduce recidivism through deterrence. Proponents assert that PORs allow the public to recognize convicted offenders who may continue to pose a threat to communities. The idea is that PORs may prevent crimes by identifying people with proclivities toward offending (due to their criminal records) and allowing society to respond accordingly. Responses may include protective actions by citizens or barring identified offenders from employment, housing, community engagement, and other forms of social capital that may place other community members at risk of victimization. Thus, PORs allegedly increase awareness of potential danger and allow community members to be better prepared to avoid situations in which identified offenders living among them may reoffend. At the same time, the possibilities for participating in criminal activities again are believed to be restricted, as public identification and exposure of previous crimes supposedly make offenders feel more susceptible to the risks associated with repeating offenses.
Early Criminal Registration
Concerns about organized crime in the 1930s led to the establishment of the earliest criminal offender registries in the United States. In 1933, Los Angeles, CA, passed the first ordinance that mandated registration of individuals who were convicted of certain crimes. The goals of this law were to send a message to gangsters and other lawbreakers that the city was not a desirable place to conduct illegal activities and to provide the police with the ability to track convicted offenders to reduce recidivism. Shortly thereafter, criminal registries became realities in many U.S. jurisdictions, such as Miami, FL, and Seattle, WA, but these laws were anything but uniform. The types of offenders subjected to registration, the information that was maintained, and penalties for failing to register differed. Florida, in 1937, was the first to successfully pass statewide legislation that obligated certain individuals to register as convicted criminals.
In the succeeding decades, several other states created and enforced criminal registration statutes. California implemented such registration in the late 1940s, whereas Arizona, Illinois, and New Jersey did so in the 1950s. Alabama, Nevada, and Ohio followed suit in the 1960s. The laws in California, Arizona, Alabama, Nevada, and Ohio focused solely on convicted sex offenders, and the laws in Illinois and New Jersey were aimed only at drug offenders. In the 1980s, however, Arkansas, Montana, Oklahoma, and Utah established registration procedures for convicted criminals, and these policies often centered on all felons, individuals who engaged in offenses against morality, or both. Although they were popular among lawmakers, early criminal registration efforts were largely undermined and often unenforced by the police and prosecutors who acknowledged their expensive nature, implementation challenges, and lack of effectiveness for stopping crime.
Creation of PORs
It was not until the high-profile sexual attacks on children and moral panic over sex offenders in the 1990s that U.S. criminal registration schemes allowed the public to access information about convicted offenders. The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act (1994) was the first federal law that mandated registration of sex offenders in statewide databases. As a result of the Wetterling Act and subsequent legislation, each state now has a mandatory registration law that obligates sex offenders to provide their information to law enforcement officials and have this information provided to the public, most often through publicly available Internet registries. However, it was Megan’s Law (1996) in New Jersey that created sex offender registration and notification (SORN) legislation that was ultimately replicated nationwide. Responsible for transforming sex offender registries into publicly available online domains, the federal version of this statute (Public Law 104-145) requires state police agencies to make information about sex offenders accessible to the public. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act became law in 2006 and created a comprehensive and national system for sex offender registration.
Effects on Public Safety and Recidivism
Because PORs have historically targeted convicted sex offenders, what is known in the research literature about their utility is limited to SORN. Nonetheless, it appears that PORs do not increase public safety or decrease recidivism. There is an assumption that PORs increase awareness of the presence of convicted offenders in communities. However, a large majority of the public does not actively utilize available information that is disseminated through online sex offender registries. Although residents commonly know that sex offender registries exist, they often do not use them. This may subsequently reduce community members’ awareness of such offenders. Indeed, most residents are ignorant of the presence of sex offenders in their communities, even when they access sex offender registries or live directly adjacent to registered sex offenders. Thus, while community members are largely aware of publicly accessible sex offender registries, such mechanisms do not appear to raise actual public awareness of the presence of local sex offenders. When the public does utilize sex offender registries to become informed about convicted sex offenders in their neighborhoods, this strategy often leads to excessive precautionary behavior and fear of crime that may be harmful.
Placement on PORs generally does not influence the behavior of individuals who are listed on such databases. Whether or not convicted sex offenders were subjected to SORN failed to predict which sex offenders would sexually recidivate in Arkansas, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington. This indicates that publicly identifying convicted offenders does not effectively deter them from repeating crimes. What is more, there is some evidence that SORN increased recidivism rates among convicted sex offenders. In short, research on convicted sex offenders across two decades and several U.S. jurisdictions indicates that PORs fail to improve public safety.
Ramifications for Offenders and Their Families
Once individuals are listed on PORs, they often report negative experiences that stem from their public exposure. As the targets of SORN laws, sex offenders often directly encounter harmful obstacles that prevent them from easily reintegrating into society after sex offense convictions. These collateral consequences are the unfavorable and often unintended outcomes that may exist in association with criminal penalties. Convicted sex offenders who are placed on PORs commonly encounter numerous forms of social damage. Specifically, many registered sex offenders experience stigmatization, which can lead to ostracism by community members. As a result of active demonstrations of contempt by community members, many publicly identified sex offenders report persistent feelings of vulnerability, undergo heightened levels of stress, and witness harm to their family members. It is common for individuals who are publicly identified as sex offenders to struggle with maintaining relationships and developing new associations. Once individuals are put on publicly accessible registries, many of their friendships are lost altogether, and the quality of the few relationships that persist may be greatly diminished. Registered sex offenders tend to internalize their spoiled identities as a result of their social exclusion and intentionally withdraw from community involvement, which further reduces their social support. Moreover, it is not uncommon for convicted sex offenders to lose their jobs when coworkers and employers discover their status from PORs. The loss of housing and need to locate to a new residence are also common experiences for sex offenders who have been discovered through PORs.
PORs may also negatively impact individuals other than convicted offenders who are placed on such databases. People who reside in neighborhoods where convicted sex offenders live can lose monetary value in their homes when PORs show that such offenders reside nearby. Police departments, probation and parole agencies, and other government entities may be deprived of time, money, energy, and other resources when they are responsible for implementing and maintaining PORs. In addition, family members of individuals who are publicly identified as sex offenders may experience negative repercussions, including chronic hopelessness, depression, frustration, stress, shame and embarrassment that prevent them from participating in community activities, and deterioration and loss of social relationships. Children of convicted sex offenders on PORs may be treated differently by teachers and other children at school and frequently cannot have their POR parents attend school events.
Other Criticisms
Examinations of SORN laws also show other limitations of PORs. In theory, PORs are supposed to help stop victimizations by strangers through the release of their identities and whereabouts. However, individuals known to victims are generally most likely to commit offenses against them. As a result, PORs may give community members a false sense of confidence regarding their safety. At the same time, PORs may contain inaccurate or misleading information, due to errors, incomplete data, outdated records, or other issues. A significant number of profiles on the Florida Sexual Offenders and Predators Registry and Kentucky Sex Offender Registry were found to have contained incorrect or missing information. Such incomplete or invalid data make the identification of convicted offenders and their whereabouts nearly impossible. Furthermore, PORs are not comprehensive lists of criminal offenders. Many offenders are neither detected nor successfully prosecuted. Some may avoid public exposure through plea agreements or because their criminal offenses do not obligate them to register. Others simply may not adhere to registration requirements. Moreover, there is evidence that PORs may be incredibly expensive to establish, implement, and maintain.
Newest Developments
Although PORs in the past several decades almost exclusively centered on convicted sex offenders, they are becoming increasingly focused on additional types of lawbreakers. Suffolk County, New York, in 2010, enacted what is believed to be the first publicly accessible registry aimed at animal abuse offenders. In January 2016, Tennessee went live with the first statewide animal abuser registry. In addition, the Drug Offender Registry Database in Tennessee and the Convicted Methamphetamine Manufacturer Registry in Illinois are recent examples of PORs that target convicted drug offenders. Despite their flawed premise, lack of effectiveness, and harmful nature, PORs will likely persist as the public and lawmakers continue to call for and perceive them as important ways to address criminal behavior.
References:
- Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587 (2006). Codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. §§ 16901–91 (2014).
- Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 2038, 2042 (1994). Codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 14071 (2014).
- Logan, W. A. (2009). Knowledge as power: Criminal registration and community notification laws in America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Megan’s Law, N.J. Stat. Ann. §§ 2C:7-1-2C:7-11 (1994).
- Megan’s Law, Pub. L. No. 104-145, 110 Stat. 1345 (1996). Codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 13701 (2014).
- Tewksbury, R., & Connor, D. P. (2014). From troubling actions to troubled lives: Sex offender registration and notification. In J. F. Gubrium & M. Jarvinen (Eds.), Turning troubles into problems: Clientization in human services (pp. 211–227). London, UK: Routledge.