Is it time to limit the sex-offender registry?

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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The goals of this country's criminal justice system are to achieve justice, reduce crime and provide equal protection to those subject to the system. As lawmakers consider changes in Maine's sex-offender registry law, they would do well to keep those goals in mind. Placing the names, photographs, and home and work addresses of certain convicted sex-offenders' on the state's Web site has real public safety benefits. But while the pressure is understandably strong to maintain as comprehensive a list as possible in order to reduce potential crimes against the innocent, the rights of those already punished for their crimes -- as well as the severity of those crimes -- must also be taken into consideration.

The Legislature's Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety is conducting a review of the sex-offender registry, in part, because of a tragic event this past spring. In April, two men on Maine's list were found and killed by a Canadian who had gotten their names off of the registry; the Canadian subsequently committed suicide. One of the two murdered men had been found guilty of having sex with a 15-year-old girlfriend when he was 20; the other had served only five years on probation and had not committed an offense in the 25 years since his conviction for the rape of a child.

The people on the state's sex-offender registry are, for the most part, people who have done terrible things. No one can predict with certainty who among them is going to repeat their crime, but we do have some understanding about how those who have committed certain crimes may be more likely than others to be dangerous. It is a subjective, individual judgment supported by some statistics. Thus we would urge committee members to consider limiting the registry to a list of those most likely to re-offend and therefore most dangerous to the public safety. This would not, for example, then condemn a person guilty of having sex with someone a few months under 16 to a life of perpetual stigma on the Web. And in any case, the information about crimes is public, in police logs and daily and weekly newspapers. It's harder to get than from an online registry, but it exists.

There are further issues for lawmakers to address. According to experts who spoke before the committee this week, those with the highest risk of committing a sexual offense again have eluded the list. Almost 20 percent of those who should have registered for the list have not. This is a cause for enormous concern and enforcing the registration requirements more effectively must be a focus of any further legislation.

Finally, we would add that the registration phenomenon should not be considered a one-size-fits-all solution to public safety. Criminal Justice Committee co-chairman Sen. Bill Diamond has asked the Legislature to study the viability of a registration requirement for those convicted of selling drugs to minors. Yet according to one drug enforcement officer in southern Maine, there really isn't a big problem with drug dealers selling to kids; they make a lot more money off of adult customers. Indeed, the efficacy of registration Web sites in general is very difficult to measure -- how do you calculate the number of crimes not committed?

We recognize that alerting residents that there is a sexual predator in their midst who is statistically likely to offend again may serve the public interest by making residents more vigilant about their safety; it serves little interest to go out of our way to alert residents that there's someone in their midst who does not pose a comparable risk.