Georgia currently operates a structured, risk-based classification system through the Sexual Offender Risk Review Board. That system evaluates individuals using empirically developed assessment tools and reviews dynamic and historical factors to determine actual risk to the community.

SB 468 shifts away from that model.

Under the bill, individuals convicted of certain offenses would be automatically placed into Level II or classified as “Sexually Dangerous Predator,” regardless of individualized assessment. Offense type alone would determine classification in specified cases.

This legislation replaces risk science with statutory assumption. Two individuals convicted of the same offense can present very different levels of future risk. Georgia’s current system recognizes that reality. SB 468 does not.

Replacing Risk Assessment With Automatic Labels

Modern risk assessment models rely on validated tools that evaluate multiple factors — including age, prior history, treatment participation, and behavioral indicators. Decades of criminological research demonstrate that individualized assessment is more accurate than offense-based assumptions in predicting recidivism.

SB 468 would mandate automatic classifications for certain convictions, bypassing that individualized review process.

If the concern is backlog at the Risk Review Board, the solution is increased resources and staffing — not eliminating individualized evaluation.

Increased Reporting Without Increased Safety

The bill also:

• Imposes heightened reporting requirements on homeless registrants, including a 12-hour window for reporting changes in sleeping location.
• Requires sexual offenders to report international travel 21 days in advance.
• Requires stable housing accountability programs to report accepted applicants who are registered sexual offenders to local sheriffs.

Additional housing reporting requirements may discourage participation in stable housing programs — a factor widely recognized as reducing recidivism.

Housing stability is one of the strongest predictors of successful reentry and reduced reoffending. Policies that destabilize housing undermine long-term public safety.

Protecting Children Requires Accuracy

Protecting children and communities must remain a top priority. The critical question is whether Georgia is using the most accurate and effective tools available to assess and manage risk.

Automatic labeling may appear decisive, but it is not necessarily precise. Georgia’s current risk-based system was designed to evaluate actual risk. SB 468 substitutes that evidence-based framework with offense-triggered classification mandates.

Accuracy strengthens public safety. Overgeneralization weakens it.

Constitutional and Structural Concerns

Expanding automatic lifetime designations such as “Sexually Dangerous Predator” without individualized assessment increases the risk of constitutional challenges, including due process concerns.

As registry schemes become more automatic and more restrictive, they risk being viewed as punitive rather than regulatory in nature, increasing legal vulnerability for the state.

A Better Path Forward

Restore Georgia urges lawmakers to:

• Fund and expand the Risk Review Board to reduce backlog;
• Preserve individualized risk assessment;
• Maintain evidence-based classification practices;
• Strengthen supervision resources without sacrificing accuracy.

Public safety is strengthened by precision. Georgia should reinforce its existing evidence-based system rather than replace it with automatic statutory mandates.

For more information, visit www.restore-georgia.org.

The post Restore Georgia Opposes SB 468: Automatic Risk Classifications Undermine Evidence-Based Public Safety appeared first on Restore Georgia.

However, we strongly oppose HB 1142 and HB 1207, which would create a public registry of “recidivist domestic violence offenders” in Georgia.

Public registries are not evidence-based public safety tools. They are mechanisms of public exposure and extended punishment.

Domestic violence is overwhelmingly relationship-based. Incidents occur within families and intimate partnerships — not through random encounters with strangers. A public website listing names and photographs does not prevent violence inside a household. It does not fund treatment. It does not provide victim housing. It does not expand intervention programs. It does not increase mental health services. It does not address substance abuse.

What it does is publicly label individuals for years after they have completed court-ordered sentences.

Georgia already maintains criminal records accessible through lawful channels. Law enforcement already tracks repeat offenders. Courts already impose enhanced penalties for recidivists. Creating another public list does not add meaningful protection — it adds public shaming.

HB 1142 goes further by treating diversion and reduced charges as “convictions” for registry purposes, undermining the rehabilitative purpose of those programs.

Both bills require mandatory public listing without individualized risk assessment. They create a system where conviction count — not current threat level — determines public exposure.

Public registries also create collateral harm:

• Loss of employment and housing
• Harassment and doxxing
• Harm to spouses and children
• Destabilization that can increase risk factors for future conflict

Restore Georgia opposes the expansion of registry culture in this state. If we create public lists for repeat domestic violence, what prevents future legislatures from creating registries for DUI, drug offenses, financial crimes, or other repeat offenses?

Public safety should be built on prevention, rehabilitation, supervision, and survivor services — not perpetual public branding.

If legislators wish to reduce domestic violence recidivism, we urge them to invest in:

• Evidence-based intervention programs
• Risk-based supervision
• Survivor support services
• Mental health and substance abuse treatment
• Data-driven prevention strategies

Georgia deserves policies grounded in evidence, not emotion.

Detailed Comparison: HB 1142 vs HB 1207

Both bills create a public registry, but they differ in scope and structure.

Scope of Who Must Register

HB 1142

• Applies to individuals with:

  • One current domestic violence conviction and

  • At least one prior conviction

• Includes offenses discharged under diversion or reduced to lesser charges as “convictions” for registry purposes

This expands what qualifies as a conviction.

HB 1207

• Requires registration if:

  • Convicted of a felony domestic violence offense; OR

  • Any DV offense with at least one prior DV conviction

• Does not expand diversion language as broadly as HB 1142

HB 1207 captures some first-time felony offenders even without prior convictions.

Registry Information Published

Both bills:

• Publish name

• Photograph

• County of conviction

• Conviction details

• Duration based on prior convictions (2, 5, or 10 years)

• Exclude address and SSN

HB 1207 adds:

• Sentence imposed

• Aliases

 Pretrial Diversion Impact

HB 1142 uniquely:

• Prohibits entry into diversion unless the defendant agrees that future convictions may trigger registry placement

This conditions access to diversion on registry consent.

HB 1207 does not contain this provision.

Removal Process

HB 1207:

• Provides a written removal request process

• Allows judicial review

HB 1142:

• Automatic removal after time period

• No detailed removal appeal structure

Bottom Line:

• HB 1142 is broader in redefining conviction and impacting diversion.

• HB 1207 is broader in including felony first-time offenders.

• Both expand public registry infrastructure in Georgia.

The post Restore Georgia Opposes Creation of a Domestic Violence Public Registry appeared first on Restore Georgia.

Speeches and presentations were of the high quality that is expected at

NARSOL conferences, beginning with Guy Hamilton-Smith’s kick-off speech on Friday morning, through Joshua Hoe’s Saturday night awards banquet speech, concluding with Danielle Bailey’s brilliant presentation Sunday morning.

Conference attendees—both in-person and livestream—may watch any presentation given in the main room again by using your original identification. As soon as possible, those presentations and also many of the others will be available to everyone for viewing on NARSOL’s YouTube channel.

At the awards banquet, the most prestigious award, the Paul Shannon Lifetime Achievement Award, went to Pat Borden of AZRSOL. Pat graciously accepted it on behalf of not only herself but also her family and the Arizona organization.

This successfully completed conference sends a message: We are here; we are still here; we will continue to be here.

NARSOL not only stands for National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws. NARSOL stands for an organization that expects those who have caused harm to accept responsibility for that harm. NARSOL then stands with them as they navigate life on a sex offender registry.   We will fight:

• for their dignity and respectful treatment;
• that their constitutional rights are not violated by law enforcement or legislation;
• for their protection from vigilantism, both physical violence and online intimidation;
• for removal of impediments to their rehabilitation;
• for policy and legislative decisions that are grounded in solid research.

This 2025 conference in Atlanta has been a “second chance” conference, and in summing up what NARSOL stands for and what it fights for on behalf of those we represent, is that not it? Both the ability and the right to seek and to be granted an attainable second chance.

Written by NARSOL

This post was written by someone, or multiple people, within NARSOL.

The post Another Successful NARSOL Conference Completed appeared first on Restore Georgia.

Originally Published October 23, 2024 at FilterMag.com

Law enforcement has done a good job of portraying recidivism as a kind of unfortunate tendency some people just can’t help. Rarely do media and pop culture indicate that a parole violation can mean the state equivalent of the FBI taking you into custody without warning because you were using an adult webcam site while inside your own home.

Christy paroled out of Georgia Department of Corrections custody in September 2023, after about 13 years of incarceration stemming from survival sex work. Being forced to register as a sex offender comes with an onslaught of fees—often hundreds of dollars per month—that are mandatory to pay as a condition of parole. At the same time, the registry disqualifies people from almost every job that isn’t remote or very rural, which makes livestreaming on an adult webcam site a logical option.

Sex work is often one of the few sources of income, if not the only one, that people on a sex offender registry are able to access. Anything prohibited by law, such as prostitution, is an automatic parole violation for anyone—on or off the registry—but there’s nothing illegal about livestreaming by consenting adults. However, parole, probation and sex offender registries go past the law to criminalize people for activity that is legal.

With less than five months left on parole, Christy is now in county jail—ostensibly because she’s not allowed to look at porn.

The “special conditions” Georgia imposes on registrants who are also on parole are notorious for ambiguity. For example, could a condition that supervisees “shall not use or consume any controlled substance or mind altering drug including alcohol, except pursuant to a legal doctor’s prescription” be interpreted to allow low-THC oil, but prohibit nicotine? No parole officer is likely to apply this to cigarettes, but it’s not out of the question it could be applied to vapes.

In Christy’s case, consider the following examples from that list of special conditions:

—The individual under supervision shall not purchase or possess any pornographic or sexually explicit materials.

—The individual under supervision shall not frequent or be employed by any business exhibiting pornographic materials or activities.

—[The individual] will not visit/access pornography sites or chat rooms on the Internet.

—The individual under supervision shall remain fully and appropriately clothed and will not engage in lewd behavior when in public or when potential for public view exists.

—The individual under supervision shall not associate with prostitutes and will avoid areas known to have prostitution activity.

—The individual under supervision shall work only at places pre-approved by his/her community supervision officer.

Is livestreaming from inside your home “public view”? Is a third-party platform a business, and is using one to livestream a job? Are you allowed to have nudes of your own body on your own phone? What prevents any area from being “known to have prostitution activity” if a parole officer decides it is? And, ultimately, is legal sex work clearly prohibited?

The condition directly applicable to this situation is the ban on “accessing pornography sites or chat rooms on the Internet,” but here there’s an argument to be made about intent—which the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles has indicated does matter. Per one of the other conditions, supervisees may not “attend any place, business, amusement, social event or gathering of any type for the purpose of coming into contact with minors.” In other words, the Board acknowledges that it’s possible that someone on the registry might go somewhere in public for some reason other than preying on children, and doesn’t seek to restrict that. If someone visits an online version of these places (like a chat room) for a purpose that is clearly not coming into contact with minors (like visiting a chat room for people 18 and up), wouldn’t the approach to those situations be consistent?

Livestreaming adult content potentially allows someone to keep up with their registry fees without going into any public places, through legal work, in a space that does not allow minors and does not serve alcohol. Few options seem better suited to the Board’s conditions, and as the registry continues to grow, it’s reasonable to assume that more people will access adult websites with the specific intent of remaining in compliance with conditions that the Board imposes and simultaneously takes away the means to fulfill. It’s unclear what the public-safety benefit of revoking parole would be in these cases. The Board did not respond to Filter‘s request for comment.

In our judicial system we don’t apply blanket restrictions to particular groups, but almost nothing about sex offender registries is individualized.

The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) uses a tier system for classifying registrants based on their conviction. States are incentivized to model their own systems after SORNA, but most, including Georgia, do not. While Christy’s conviction would let her off the registry after 15 years under SORNA, in Georgia it’s a lifelong requirement for everyone. In July, the state enacted legislation allowing people to petition for removal at age 80. As of August, there were 38,339 people registered as sex offenders in Georgia—a more than 50-percent increase over the past decade.

Though the state refers to registry classification in a way that invites the public to believe everyone gets evaluated and classified as Level I, Level II or “Sexually Dangerous Predator,” about two-thirds of registrants, including Christy, are never assigned a level. This indicates that they aren’t considered a risk by the volunteer members of the Sex Offender Registration Review Board, but also that they just aren’t considered. Everyone, regardless of conviction or mitigating circumstances, is painted with the same broad brush, which is how the state justifies monitoring everyone’s internet access as if they’re equally motivated to distribute child pornography.

In our judicial system we don’t apply blanket restrictions to particular groups, but almost nothing about sex offender registries is individualized. This is particularly egregious considering that these registries are drag nets for a variety of groups already targeted for state violence, including transgender women, people who engage in sex work, people who use drugs and people living with HIV.

“The appropriate recommendations and enforcement of intermediate sanctions, such as treatment referral, administrative hearings, electronic monitoring, GPS monitoring, day reporting centers and parole detention centers result in the low percentage of technical parole violators being revoked and returned to prison,” the Board stated in its most recent annual report. “The purpose of intermediate sanctions is to bring the offenders who are not a threat to public safety back into compliance with their parole conditions.”

Technical violations exist to keep people in poverty. They serve no other function.

Each year since 2017, technical violations have represented less than 1 percent of cases where the Board sent someone back to prison. That would mean that of the 1,552 parole revocations in 2023, for instance, only a handful could have been prompted by missing curfew or falling behind on fines and fees. But these numbers do not include people who were arrested for technical violations and spent days or weeks or months in county jail before they were ultimately allowed to continue serving their parole in the community.

Community supervision, especially for anyone on a registry, is not designed to be a second chance. It is designed to be an obstacle course that can’t necessarily be completed through hard work alone. Without generational wealth or luck all roads ultimately lead back to prison or jail.

Technical violations exist to keep people in poverty. They serve no other function. No evidence supports the premise that extra-judicial registry conditions make children safer; child sexual abuse is overwhelmingly perpetrated by relatives and acquaintances. Children are more likely to be harmed by registries themselves than by people on them; 25 percent of people placed on sex offender registries are juveniles.

After a year of scrambling for any work she was allowed to accept, Christy had just gotten a promising job interview with a nonprofit, and missed it because she was in county jail. She was recently appointed to the advisory board of a university pilot program exploring health care during re-entry, and will miss the inaugural meeting if she’s still in county jail, or in prison. Next she’ll miss a panel where she’s due to speak on incarceration and the clergy. Then her keynote speech at a trans health care symposium. Then her first Christmas with her husband.

Even a couple of days in jail is enough for someone to lose their job. To fall behind on rent; lose their car; lose their pets; ruin their credit score. Enough for someone to get evicted and have nothing to come back to except debt by the time a supervision officer tells them, Never mind; you’re free to go.

The post FILTER MAG: Enough With the Sex Offender Registry appeared first on Restore Georgia.

Since 2008, people on sex offender registries in Missouri have been required to post a sign at their home each year on October 31: No candy or treats at this residence.

In a ruling issued October 2, a federal judge found the signs unconstitutional because they’re a form of “compelled speech”—when the state forces you to express a viewpoint you don’t agree with. Judge John A. Ross noted two other courts to previously address similar Halloween signs, both of which found them unconstitutional for the same reason. California overturned the requirement in 2012. Georgia did so in 2022, a year before I paroled out from Georgia Department of Corrections custody to begin navigating life on the registry.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has already vowed to challenge the recent ruling. But the rest of Missouri’s “Halloween Statute” remains legally in effect, including the curfew that basically anyone on a sex offender registry anywhere in the country faces. In Missouri, for example, it’s still a misdemeanor to go outside on Halloween after 5:30 pm.

On October 31, myself and registrants across the country will be essentially be placed on house arrest. You’re required to make it look like no one’s home, which means not being allowed to answer your door or turn your outdoor lights on—in Georgia, this includes indoor lights. Parole or probation officers may intermittently come by to make sure you’re still sitting at home alone with the lights off.

For many that’s the best-case scenario. In Georgia, depending on your county or your parole officer, you might be required on October 31 to report to a designated location like a convention center, where they corral you with all the other registrants until morning. Or you might be required to turn yourself into the county jail.

The Georgia case cited by Judge Ross, Cory McClendon v. Gary Long, began in October 2018 when the Butts County Sheriff’s Office placed yard signs at the address of everyone registered in that county. Registrants were forbidden from covering or removing the signs before officers came around on November 1 to collect them. It was not the only Georgia county to do this.

Previously, registrants had been given flyers they were instructed to post on their doors. Butts County Sheriff Gary Long decided that wasn’t enough. Yet there was no evidence that yard signs protected trick-or-treaters from being assaulted by people on the registry. Not because the signs failed to be effective, but because the threat did not exist.

“[Long] even admitted that, since he took office in 2013, he had never had an issue with a registrant having unauthorized contact or reoffending with a minor on Halloween or at any other time,” district court judges stated in the 2022 ruling. “The Sheriff has not provided any record evidence that the registrants in Butts County actually pose a danger to trick-or-treating children or that these signs would serve to prevent such danger.”

Sex offender registries have little to nothing to do with keeping the nation’s children safe. Despite the state propaganda that encourages the public to associate registries with a stereotype of violent pedophiles, many people including myself are automatically required to register based on convictions that didn’t involve sexual assault—of children or anyone else—at all. Children are more likely to be on a registry themselves than to be assaulted by someone on a registry.

Sheriff Long falsely claimed that “Georgia law forbids registered sex offenders from participating in Halloween, to include decorations on their property.”

In 2018, Sheriff Long had claimed that “Georgia law forbids registered sex offenders from participating in Halloween, to include decorations on their property.” The circuit judges in McClendon v. Long found it “undisputed” that that claim was false; there is no such law. But for some people on the registry, there might as well be.

If you’re on parole or probation in Georgia, then whatever the law might say, your life is governed by the Department of Community Supervision. Each year, the department instructs us to not decorate or otherwise participate in Halloween. I was even recently denied permission to attend an adult costume party that will take place a full week before Halloween.

I know someone on the registry who, while still on probation, was living with his mom, a practicing Celtic Wiccan. As a witch, Halloween is a sacred day for her and traditions like jack-o’-lanterns carry spiritual meaning, and she wasn’t allowed to participate in them even inside her own home.

In theory, a parole office could enact a policy mandating the “No Candy” signs and one of us would have to take it to court. Which many people on the registry, but particularly those still under supervision, would be terrified to do. Courts are often loathe to depart from precedent, and no one wants to bring legal challenges that would just make the situation worse.

Top image via United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Inset image via Arkansas Department of Corrections.

Originally posted at Nothing Sums Up the Sex Offender Registry Quite Like Halloween

C Dreams

C is a writer and advocate interested in prison/criminal justice reform, LGBTQ rights, harm reduction and government/cultural criticism. She has studied history/theology with the Third Order of Carmelites and completed degrees in Systematic Theology. She is currently studying law.

The post FILTER MAG: Nothing Sums Up the Sex Offender Registry Quite Like Halloween appeared first on Restore Georgia.

“Communities explore other Halloween plans after sex offender law abolished,” announces a Missouri news outlet. This is in regard to the Missouri Supreme Court’s recent ruling that requiring those on the state sex offender registry to post “No candy here” signs at their homes is unconstitutional.

Even if the signage requirement were not only one part of a comprehensive set of restrictions, would this require that Halloween plans be changed?

Another media outlet says, “California’s tiered sex offender registry law allowed two convicted sex offenders to remain off list.” This is a reference to changes in the registry law in California that allows registrants to be removed after a certain length of time. This is part of a legal process, and a process followed in many states, not, as the article implies, some “loophole” that is used to skirt the law.

In spite of the online outlet Patch abandoning its “red dot” Halloween safety maps in virtually every state and location, a few Illinois editors are running them, “warning” parents where registrants in their communities live. NARSOL has done battle with Patch for years and are pleased that so few editors remain who are willing to defy all empirical evidence by printing this information.

Changing Halloween plans, dismay over legal registry procedures, and trick-or-treat “safety” maps—why would these have me shaking my head in wonder? Perhaps because I am old enough to remember the time when the registry and all it has spawned did not exist.

What was life like then? Were children molested while they were trick-or-treating? Did community members feel panic over who might live down the street? Were sexual crime and reoffenses rampant? Were children grabbed daily—or weekly—or monthly–out of school playgrounds and parks?

No.

Empirical evidence shows the rate of reoffense by those convicted of sexual offenses has remained steady over many years, both before the registry existed and since. As shown in an AI overview, “According to research, there is little evidence to suggest that sexual crime recidivism was significantly worse before the existence of sex offender registries, with most studies indicating that sex offenders generally have a low recidivism rate regardless of the registry system; in fact, some studies even suggest that public registration could potentially increase recidivism rates by making it harder for offenders to reintegrate into society and find employment, potentially leading to further criminal behavior.”

And as far as Halloween, this has been said many times, and it remains true: research reveals no instance of a child being abducted or molested by a person on the registry while trick-or-treating. As far as can be determined, the only time this has happened was pre-registry, in 1973—51 years ago—in Wisconsin. The victim was a little girl named Lisa French, and the perpetrator was someone who, even if there had been registries, would not have been registered.

This is a good place to remember that virtually all sexual crime against children is committed by those who are not already registered. What does this mean for Halloween?

Quoting myself from the Lisa French piece:

According to research, approximately 96% [of the perpetrators of sexual crime] have no previous history of this type of crime and therefore are on no registries. They aren’t locked up or confined to their homes with all lights off on Halloween. They aren’t checked on by law enforcement to assure that they are keeping themselves away from all child-related activities. They don’t show up as red dots on a map warning parents away from those addresses.

They are in your homes, at your parties, in your neighborhoods. They answer the doors and hand out candy to your children. They are where they have always been. And all of the Halloween restrictions on all of the people on sexual offense registries across America mean absolutely nothing.

Originally posted from NARSOL: https://www.narsol.org/2024/10/halloween-50-years-ago-and-now/

Written by Sandy Rozek

Sandy, a NARSOL board member, is communications director for NARSOL, editor-in-chief of the Digest, and a writer for the Digest and the NARSOL website. Additionally, she participates in updating and managing the website and assisting with a variety of organizational tasks.

The post NARSOL: Halloween 50 years ago and now appeared first on Restore Georgia.