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Sex Offender Registry

Can We Banish Our Way to Public Safety?

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. This month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a plan to curb public lewdness, groping, and other unwanted touching on New York City’s public transit: a three-year […]

What Is The Purpose of Sex Offense Registries?

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Two days ago, the Union-Recorder in Georgia published a bizarre editorial. The editorial board noted that the state’s sex offender registry system drives people into homelessness and deprived […]

In Leaked Audio, Prosecutor Admits Locking People Up Is Not About Public Safety

“Hundreds of registered sex offenders will gather on Halloween to spend several hours under supervision in an effort to make the community feel safer,” reports Taylor Pettaway for the San Antonio Express-News. For the last decade, the probation department in San Antonio, Texas, has been holding what they call “Project S.A.F.E. Halloween,” requiring sex offenders from across […]

Sex Registries as Modern-Day Witch Pyres: Why Criminal Justice Reform Advocates Need to Address the Treatment of People on the Sex Offender Registry

Perhaps the most irrefutable statement that can be made about modern day America is this: we have a penchant for putting people in cages. More than any other nation on the planet, we rely on incarceration as the fix for our social ills. America’s unprecedented prison boom spawned advocates who work tirelessly to put the police state […]

Court holds that retroactive extension of sex offender registration is punitive

Last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that some applications of the state’s sex offender registration law violate the state constitution. The decision represents an important step toward increasing constitutional scrutiny of sweeping laws that make it nearly impossible for convicted sex offenders to reintegrate into society after serving time in prison.