The registries themselves, which require sex offenders to regularly report their addresses to local law enforcement agencies so that information can be made publicly available in online databases that also include their names, photographs, and physical descriptions, are primarily punitive, exposing registrants to ostracism, harassment, and violence while impeding their rehabilitation by making it difficult to find employment and housing. There is little evidence that the sort of public notification practiced by every state delivers benefits that outweigh those costs. Louisiana’s experiment in ritual humiliation, which branded registrants with orange letters they had to display in every transaction that required producing a government-issued ID, compounded those costs without offering any plausible benefits.

One problem with sex offender registries is that they cover a wide range of crimes, including many that do not involve violence, force, or physical contact. While people tend to imagine rapists or child molesters when they hear the term sex offender, the reality can be quite different, in ways that are important in assessing the danger that a person might pose to the general public or to people in particular age groups. . . .

The second line of each record in the state’s registry shows the offender’s “tier,” which corresponds to various crimes classified by severity, ranging from Tier 1 (least serious, requiring registration for 15 years) to Tier 3 (most serious, requiring lifetime registration). Further down in the record, you can see the statute under which the registrant was convicted (e.g., “carnal knowledge of a juvenile”), which still omits potentially important details.

The driver’s license warning required by Louisiana’s law did not provide even that much information, meaning that anyone who saw it was invited to assume the worst. Tazin Hill, the man who challenged the law, completed his prison sentence in 2013. He was convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old when he was 32, which placed him in Tier 1. But anyone who saw his license had no way of knowing the nature or severity of his offense. Rebelling at this government-imposed badge of shame, Hill excised the “SEX OFFENDER” label from his license and covered the gap with clear tape, which resulted in the criminal charges that gave rise to this case.

Another problem with sex offender registries is the mistaken assumption that people who fall into this broad category are more likely to commit additional crimes than, say, robbers, burglars, or arsonists. When it upheld mandatory “treatment” of sex offenders in prison, for example, the Supreme Court relied on a highly dubious recidivism estimate that was repudiated by its original source but has nevertheless been cited repeatedly by lower courts. The “SEX OFFENDER” stamp on Louisiana driver’s licenses, even more than the registry, promoted such erroneous fears by implying that the bearer posed an ongoing threat, no matter the details of his crime, how long ago it occurred, or how he had behaved since he completed his sentence.

The empirically unjustified belief that sex offenders are highly prone to recidivism is especially inaccurate and damaging when applied to people convicted as minors, who are included in Louisiana’s registry and therefore had to carry “SEX OFFENDER” IDs or driver’s licenses.

Read the complete piece here at Reason.

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We have been criticized for this practice, but we feel it is vital to publicly recognize those whose efforts and contributions have been so valuable to NARSOL and to the advocacy we represent, and to recognize them with more than words. The plaques, which are donated to NARSOL, are a physical, visible symbol of their efforts and our appreciation.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to a person within the NARSOL family who, as the name of the award suggests, has been constant in loyalty and effort and whose service has gone above and beyond for a prolonged period of time. As one of NARSOL’s original founders, Paul Shannon received the first of these awards, and it is now fully named the Paul E. Shannon Lifetime Achievement Award.

This year’s recipient is only the third to be so honored, and NARSOL was proud to present it to Mary Sue Molnar. As she told the audience at the banquet, when she started her journey to where she is now, she knew nothing, and an internet search on the topic produced only two results: SOSEN and NARSOL. She started studying and learning and reaching out to those who could help, and in this quest she connected with Paul Shannon. The rest, as they say, is history. The group she organized, Texas Voices for Reason and Justice, was NARSOL’s first affiliated group.

The Braveheart Award is given to a person who is not within the NARSOL family but has, by his or her actions,  demonstrated courage and fidelity in support of NARSOL’s vision and mission by embracing our advocacy either directly or indirectly as evidenced by the good works they are doing or have done. This year’s winner, Emily Horowitz, has long been a spokesperson for rationality based on factual information in creating law and policy affecting persons required to register and persons with sexual offense issues. As a recognized scholar and researcher, Emily speaks and publishes the truths that NARSOL embraces.

Don Thurber, NARSOL’s 2021 Advocate of the Year recipient, truly exemplifies the meaning behind this award: It is for an individual who  is either a member or donor of NARSOL and has demonstrated remarkable fidelity to our vision and mission. Don is NARSOL’s advocate representative for the state of South Carolina and has for several years served as our conference MC. Without Don’s deep voice and wonderful elocution opening our conferences, making announcements, giving directions, and starting each day, NARSOL’s conferences would not be the same.

We are pleased this year to present two new awards.

The title for the first of these, Excellence in Leadership, speaks for itself. There is no one equivalent to this year’s recipient who should be so honored. As executive director, Brenda Jones has been our leader for ten years, beginning when NARSOL was still RSOL. Under her leadership NARSOL has grown and flourished into what it is today, the largest national organization dedicated solely to service on behalf of those adversely affected by harsh, ineffective sexual offense laws, policies, and registries.

Also awarded for the first time this year is the Excellence in Service Award. Again, the title speaks for itself. Andy Stein, the award’s first recipient, is a “techie,” and his skill with his craft is seen, behind the scenes, in NARSOL’s various websites and online platforms and, in a more visible setting, as the sound and film engineer at our conferences. He has been faithful in his service and is well deserving of this award.

NARSOL is very proud of all our recipients and so thankful for their service and their achievements.

However, our greatest thanks and appreciation goes to those of you who attended our conference. In this time of health concerns and travel difficulties, those who came to Houston are stars, and mere words cannot fully convey our gratitude. We regret that we were unable to engage personally with everyone who attended. If you wished to speak with any board member and did not have that opportunity, please contact us through email or through the website.

And remember Raleigh; our next conference will be there in June, 2022 — only nine months away.

The post NARSOL’s 2021 award winners and a big Thank You to conference attendees appeared first on Restore Georgia.

By Emily Horowitz . . . Alice Sebold’s bestselling 1999 memoir Lucky tells the story of a young woman raped by a stranger while attending Syracuse University. In the book, the rapist is caught and convicted. After writing about the experience, Sebold went on to write the bestseller The Lovely Bones, a fictional account of a teenage girl raped and killed. But last week Anthony Broadwater, the man who served 16 years in prison for raping Sebold, was exonerated.

Timothy Mucciante, a producer working on a film adaptation of Lucky, was fired after raising questions about inconsistencies in Sebold’s story. Mucciante, who has a legal background, started reviewing the police files; he became even more troubled by discrepancies between the memoir and the facts of the case, to the point where he “couldn’t sleep.” Mucciante ended up hiring a private investigator to investigate further, and the P.I. broke the case. Broadwater’s conviction turns out to have rested on shaky evidence: Sebold had had trouble identifying her assailant—she had initially picked a different man out of a lineup—and the only forensic evidence was a form of hair analysis that the government now considers junk science. Even at the time, the expert witness could only say that the attacker’s hair was “consistent” with Broadwater’s, not that it definitively was his hair.

Broadwater was placed on the New York Sex Offender Registry after his 1999 release, and he remained on it until a few days ago. His case starkly highlights the needless cruelty of sex offense registries.

Broadwater married after prison, but he never had children; he recently told the Syracuse Post-Standard that this was because he didn’t want them growing up with a father with a rape conviction. Meanwhile, the newspaper notes, he was “turned away from countless jobs and educational opportunities over the years for one simple fact: he’s a convicted rapist on the sex offender registry.” This story is familiar to the nearly one million Americans on such registries, who are well-aware that the stigma extends beyond them to their families and all those close to them. Every registrant’s photo, address, and crime are publicly posted, creating inescapable infamy and extremely limited job opportunities.

So Broadwater essentially served two sentences: one in prison, and one on the registry after his release. In New York, where Broadwater was convicted and still resides, a pending Clean Slate bill would automatically expunge criminal records after three years for misdemeanors and seven for felonies, to help those with prior convictions pass background checks to access more housing and employment opportunities. Yet it excludes sex offenses, a fact the literature promoting the bill prominently highlights.

But even the guilty don’t deserve this treatment. The consequences of these registries, detailed painfully by Broadwater and so many others, all kick in after those convicted have completed their sentences. The registries also include people convicted as minors, people convicted of statutory and noncontact offenses, and people with developmental disabilities, mental health struggles, or substance use disorders.

In his Syracuse.com interview, Broadwater said that he tried to take vocational classes after his release but was kicked off campus when administrators learned he was on the registry. Broadwater happened to be innocent, but even if he wasn’t, shouldn’t continuing education be available to those seeking stability and employment after being incarcerated?

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