Retool sex offender registry to reflect real risks

The lasting anguish of being victimized by a sex crime is so damaging and so indisputable that such crimes receive unique handling in court cases and in journalistic reporting. By the 1990s, that didn’t seem to be enough.

Based on the commonly held idea that a perpetrator of any type of sex crime would almost inevitably do it again to someone else, the federal and state governments created online registries of incarcerated offenders and those released from prison. Judges began to include a requirement to register in sentencing. The internet of 1994, still fairly new, seemed to promise that a cyber-eye on the comings and goings of convicted perpetrators would increase public safety by taking away their cover.

The shortcoming of the online registry is that its premise was off base, according to a 2017 report from the state Sentencing Commission. Statistics don’t bear out the belief that the majority of the 5,000-plus sex offenders currently registered will repeat. The rate of recidivism in Connecticut has been measured at about 4 percent. The registry may even lend a false sense of security while distracting from other methods of prevention that could spot potential new offenders before they act.

Connecticut actually has two registries — the online one, accessible to anyone with a computer, and a shorter law-enforcement registry that maintains victim privacy. No one is advocating giving up either one. Rather, the commission and testimony before the legislature’s Judiciary Committee offer evidence that it would be wiser, safer and more just to effectively track the different levels of offenders and their proclivity to victimize again. In other words, build a registry system based on the level of risk to public safety.

A bill that would have amended the sex offender registry statutes in line with the findings of the Sentencing Commission got no further than the committee in the recent session. That was reasonable, as the committee co-chair, Sen. Paul Doyle, recently told The Connecticut Mirror, because the so-called short session did not offer enough time for a thorough review.

But politics are also at play. Any legislator voting to remove any sex offender criminals from the existing registry, even if the changes make sense from a public-safety perspective, could face attack ads painting them as soft on crime.

Good policy should not be held hostage to politics. The legislature should make a priority of registry reform in its next session, which begins in January with a newly elected assembly. Victims, experts, law enforcement and those left with the task of helping registered offenders when they can’t get homes or jobs, all need to be heard.

As written for 2018, the bill would have created a Sexual Offender Registration Board within the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Its eight appointed members would be apportioned among various expert disciplines in victim advocacy or in assessment, treatment, or supervision of sexual offenders. For the purpose of the law it defined sexual offenses as including any criminal offense against a victim who is a minor; nonviolent sexual offense; sexually violent offense; or a felony committed for a sexual purpose. Most significant for future reform, it would have the board assign an “actuarial risk” of re-offending to each person convicted: highest-risk, moderate-risk and lowest risk. An often-cited example of low risk and lifetime penalty is the young person who must register because of consensual sexual relations with a partner the law deems too young to consent.

Using both the online and the law-enforcement registries as tools, the board would determine on which registry an offender must register and for how long — 10 years, 20 years or up to a lifetime for those of high risk to the public.

The task of weighing all factors per offender would impose a great responsibility on members of the board; no one wants a mistake to result in a crime being committed. And no one has yet put a price tag on an expert review of offenders, one by one.

Nonetheless, the registry can’t protect as intended unless it is based on the best information available. The commission cited as “myths” some of the very ideas that underlie the registry’s design: that sex offenders have a high degree of recidivism; that treatment doesn’t work; that most perpetrators are strangers to their victims. Those who testified at hearings also argued that municipal ordinances isolating offenders from public gathering places can even be counterproductive, if they can’t find stable housing and employment.

This won’t be a simple debate, but it will be good lawmaking. Bring the Sentencing Commission recommendations before the next session of the legislature.