Christopher Zoukis's Blog, page 2

Pricey Video Services Increasingly Supplant In-Person Prison Visits

By Christopher Zoukis

Video visitation services are already available in more than 600 penal institutions, and the upward trend shows few signs of the growing trend slowing down. They’ve also sparked a debate over whether the services are a valuable, lower-cost alternative to in-person visits to distant locations (as the American Correctional Association recommended in 2016) or a threat to the very existence of in-person visits to prisons and jails.

Incarcerated inmates generally can’t access free video connection services like FaceTime or Skype. What they and their families and friends can do, however, is avail themselves to paid services offered by firms like Global Tel-Link and Securus. Such video services aren’t cheap, however; their calls can range from 50 cents to a dollar or more per minute.

While the video-visiting services were just getting started, some tech firms refused to provide their services to institutions that continued allowing in-person visits. While those anti-competitive provisions are rarely seen now, most institutions that move to video services also reduce or eliminate in-person visits.

The institution representatives say the decision to reduce or remove the visitations is based on a variety of reasons: to eliminate the contraband smuggling that can occur during in-person visits and the number of staff required to monitor in-person visits being two examples. But some prisoners’ rights advocates argue it is the commissions these services pay to the penal institutions (generally about 20% to 25%) that give them an incentive to cut back or eliminate traditional in-person visiting hours.

Numerous studies have found that inmates who receive visitors have lower overall rates of re-offending after they’re released, and a provision in the standard on prisoner treatment approved in 2010 by the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association states inmates incarcerated for over 30 days should generally be able to have in-person visits. It further says corrections officials should encourage communication, including video visitation programs, between inmates and their families, but adds the caveat that such technology-based options should not replace in-person visits.

So, do inmates have a constitutional right of some sort to receive in-person visits? Perhaps surprisingly, that question has still not been thoroughly litigated, but the nation’s top court came the closest to doing so in 2003 when it heard the case of Overton v. Bazzetta. There, the Court overruled two lower courts to uphold Michigan prison rules restricting which inmates could receive prison visitors and what types of persons could visit inmates in person.

Inmates had sued the director of Michigan’s Department of Corrections, arguing the state prison restrictions on in-person visitors violated numerous parts of the Federal Constitution, including their rights of association under the First Amendment, the Eighth Amendment’s bar to cruel and unusual punishment, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of due process and equal treatment.

Without a dissenting vote, Justice Kennedy’s decision used a four-part test to uphold such rules as constitutional. If: they serve a valid prison management purpose; inmates have alternative ways (such as messages, telephone or the like) to communicate with those who can’t visit them in person; granting the right of association inmates seek wouldn’t significantly impede guards’ operations, other inmates, or prison safety; and alternatives to the rules exist. So well-drawn restrictions on in-person visits to inmates seem likely to be upheld for some time to come, barring major changes in the Supreme Court’s composition.



Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

Prison Education – Is it a Right or a Privilege?

By Christopher Zoukis

Do you believe that education is right and not a privilege? According to a poll on debate.org, 69 percent of respondents say education is a basic human right, while 31 percent said it is a privilege. Now let’s get a little controversial. Assuming that the majority of Americans see education as a basic right, should it be provided free of charge to prisoners?

The knee-jerk reaction is “yes.” Numerous studies show that prison education programs provide huge benefits for the individual, the taxpayer, and the communities in which the released offender settles.

So why are some pushing back against prison education programs?

America’s middle class makes approximately $59,000 before taxes, and depending on the criteria you use, only 25 – 66 percent of Americans are “middle class.” It’s a broad definition with many scholars defining the class using very different criteria, but it’s easy to see that the majority of Americans are just making it financially or are falling into the working and/or lower class. Regardless of class definition, however, most Americans have one thing in common: debt.

Americans under 35 carry an average of $67,400 in debt, and that number soars to $133,100 between the ages of 35-44. The drivers of the biggest debt loads per household are mortgages and – you guessed it – student loans.

The average cost of a two-year program at a public college is $11,970/year. The average cost of a four-year program at a private four-year college is $46,950/year. Few people can manage these numbers, even for a two-year college diploma, without taking on debt.

So, let’s come full circle. Is education a right or a privilege? If you, like the majority, believe it is a right, you have to ask: why can so few people afford it? Second question again: should prisoners receive free education? Think back to the fact that most Americans are struggling to obtain higher education and do so with the burden of debt on their back, compounded by debt from mortgages. To those that struggle like this, seeing an offender receive a roof over their head and a pricey education can seem unfair.

But that’s just the surface. Look again. Look closely.

An offender’s life is one that lacks freedom. It comes with a stigma of shame that impacts relationships, social interactions, and his or her ability to get a job. It wears on the body and mental health, often permanently and negatively impacting the offender, let alone the burden of carrying the knowledge that one’s actions have harmed another family, the public, or oneself. Jail is not a picnic. Many would prefer the street to the “roof over one’s head” that jail provides, and the aftermath a parolee faces upon release.

It’s hard enough for a released offender to find gainful employment – with America housing the world’s largest population of inmates, that’s a lot of people released each year and being unemployed for large stretches of time. That is a lot of people not contributing to society, relying on social programs, not creating jobs, and not escaping poverty – unless they are educated.

And that, my friends, is where the “it’s a privilege” argument falls completely apart. Like it or not, prison education programs are an absolutely vital part of our society because without them, the very things we try so hard to turn around – poverty, low education, debt, heavy reliance on social programs – will never change. Education for anyone, be it a child with a trust fund or an incarcerated person, does more than give that one person an advantage. The act of educating one person means a positive impact on thousands more through employment, entrepreneurship, lowering recidivism, and tackling poverty. And, for those that see most things in dollars and cents, prison education programs lower taxes. It cost far less to educate a prisoner and have him or her stay out of jail than it does to house them, and house them again if they reoffend.

So, it’s time to put that tired old debate to rest. It doesn’t matter if education is a right or a privilege. When you look at it by the numbers, no matter where or how you get your education; in jail through a free program or in the free world at college or university; and no matter if you are middle class, upper class, lower class, or an offender, when an individual gets an education of any kind, everyone benefits.

Maybe you don’t appreciate free education programs for prisoners, but it’s easy to appreciate lower taxes, safer communities, and hopefully one day, lower prison populations in America.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

Female Inmates in Georgia to Learn Coding and Technology

By Christopher Zoukis

Women in the Georgia prison system are getting a unique learning opportunity, thanks to a partnership between Code/Out and Arke.

Code/Out is a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing recidivism and poverty among incarcerated women in the Georgia penal system. Code/Out addresses this by teaching female inmates how to code, and how technology can give them an edge in the workforce. The organization partners with corporations to build a network of employers who can help to integrate the women into the workforce.

Code/Out has partnered with Arke, a branding company that offers brand experience, journey mapping (helps companies understand the steps consumers make when deciding to purchase products), channel execution (building a brand on multiple digital and social streams) and technology implementation, for this unique project.

According to Indeed.com, coders in Atlanta can make an average of $23.79/hour, which is 9 percent above the national average. The cost of living in Atlanta is reasonable, at 1 percent below the national average, and the average salary is a healthy $59,125. With those figures, it’s easy to see how a coding job for a released female offender could radically improve her quality of life.

It’s not just the job skills that enable women to live and take care of their families better. Along with making a living wage comes all sorts of opportunity for higher education, for access to programs like sports and music for the kids (adults too!), and the ability to connect socially and professionally in the community. Those connections lead to further opportunities for work, social engagements, giving back, entrepreneurship, and relationships.

The simple, selfless acts of Code/Out and its corporate partners have a generational impact that affects the student, that student’s family, and their community. The classes are a great strategy in the long-range plan to reduce recidivism and poverty across the city.

“Most of these women in prison are willing and capable individuals that just need the right education and opportunity to do something different,” said Hanna Hill, executive director, Code/Out. “In the United States, tech opportunities are more than double the national average. In Atlanta alone, there was an increase of 7.7 percent in the technology industry in 2015. The time is now for this initiative.”

It’s true. A look at Glassdoor shows a good variety of entry-level coding jobs in the city of Atlanta with starting salaries as high as $58K – $82K. Many of these positions come with the added benefits of medical insurance, life insurance, and vacation time. Some of the jobs required no prior, or minimal experience – just a willingness to learn and to engage in the corporate culture.

For many incarcerated women in America, their crimes were the result of a disadvantaged situation that saw them turn to drugs, prostitution, or theft to survive. The social inequality (colored/disenfranchised women are more likely to go to jail than Caucasian women, and colored/disenfranchised women have less robust access to the same opportunities as Caucasian women in the workforce) creates a downward spiral for those not born to middle/upper-middle-class families. Companies like Code/Out and its corporate partners help to level the playing field and show that what incarcerated women need, more than anything, is education and a chance to use it. Given that, those women can, and will, change the world.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

Maryland Bail Reform Backfires, Drives Up Number of Inmates

By Christopher Zoukis

A handful of states have eliminated the traditional money bail system, hoping to reduce their inmate population and avoid harming low-income defendants. But one recent study claims bail reform not only don’t always work, but can actually prove counter-productive to its professed goals.

In 2016, five Maryland state legislators, all opposed to the current bail system, which sets pre-trial bail at levels many defendants cannot afford to pay, asked state Attorney General Brian Frosh to provide an opinion on its constitutionality.

Himself a proponent of bail system reform and a former state senator, in an October 2016 opinion letter Frosh opined the money bail system might be an unconstitutional violation of equal protection and due process rights, since it doesn’t take into account what amount persons accused of crimes can afford to pay, thereby forcing a jail stay for those unable to afford the bail set in a pre-trial hearing.

While the legislators planned to offer bills changing the state’s system, Frosh suggested the issue be referred to a group of state judges already working to revise the state bail system. Early the next year, Maryland’s top state court issued new rules for judges to use in setting bail, effective July 1. Under the new rules, judges were directed to set the “least onerous” conditions in setting bail for defendants who aren’t deemed either dangerous or a flight risk. Judges were also required to consider if defendants can afford bail.

At the time, Attorney General Frosh hailed the changes as a “huge step forward,” and predicted they would bring “more justice in Maryland.” The message the new rules sent to judges, he added, was to “keep dangerous people” locked up, and to let “the vast majority who are not a threat” get released until trial. Thus, poor defendants would not be kept in jail before trial simply because they could not make bail.

But a report issued in June by two advocacy groups, Color of Change and Progressive Maryland, finds the bail system reforms Maryland adopted last year have had precisely the opposite effect. Looking at the number of defendants being held in jail before trial in one major county (Prince George’s) in months before and after the new rules took effect, the report found more defendants were in pre-trial detention after the rule changes took effect.

Why? Apparently because while the use of cash bail has declined, judges have decided to hold more defendants without bail, refusing to release them on their own recognizance. The report noted while the percentage of presumably innocent defendants ordered to post money bonds fell from 61% to 50%, persons held without bond climbed by 14.5%.

Similarly, several months before the latest report, the Maryland agency for public defenders summarized what volunteers from nearly a dozen groups found by sitting in on bail hearings in Baltimore and four counties (not including Prince George’s): declining use of money bail, but what it termed “overuse” of detaining people without bail. Several explanations were offered: concern over the political effect if defendants released without bail or on very low bail committed new crimes, and a lack of resources for alternatives (such as monitoring) for persons regarded as potentially dangerous.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

Platform Promises – Nixon’s #SchoolsNotJail Education-Focused Plan

By Christopher Zoukis

Cynthia Nixon is running for Governor of New York. Billed as a “progressive fighter, actor, activist, and lifelong New Yorker,” Nixon has long been known for her advocacy for LGBTQ+ equality, women’s rights, and public education.

A standout issue on her platform is #schoolsnotjail.

Her foray into advocacy for better public-school education started with her oldest child’s first day of school. She had visited the school before, but when the first day of class rolled around, many of the teachers, including those that taught art and music, and the administration, including the assistant principal, were not there. What happened? Budget cuts.

Frustrated, Nixon joined parent groups to organize a stop to the nearly $400 million in cuts planned for New York City schools; a move that was responsible in part for Foundation Aid, a state-funded initiative that increased funding for high need, low-income school districts. However, Foundation Aid was later cut under Governor Cuomo.

As she fought for better public-school education, Nixon also came face to face with another pressing problem that has far-reaching consequences: the school to prison pipeline. Seeing how communities of color were being underserved in education and overserved in policing, she saw the link between overextended law enforcement in schools and how it led to an early entry into the penal system.

Her Education NY platform and the #schoolsnotjail information on her campaign website states: “Together, the underfunding and criminalization of schools that disproportionately serve children of color have created two different education systems in New York State. White, wealthy children are prepared for college, and low-income children of color are disproportionately put into the school to prison pipeline… Our children need schools, not jail.”

How does Nixon plan to address this issue? She wants to enact a birth-to-college approach in the public education system that prepares children and youth from all walks of life, regardless of color or social status, for success.

New York City has a large black, Hispanic and Asian population, but under 40 percent of teachers represent these cultures. With 80 percent of students being non-Caucasian, the lack of diversity in teachers can be an issue culturally, linguistically, and socially. Nixon would like to see $20 million in “culturally responsive education.”

She would also like to see far less reliance on the controversial standardized testing model, which can “reward” affluent schools that have more resources, and ultimately penalize schools in more disenfranchised areas.

Nixon’s plans for education reform are impressive and bold. While others tackle the school to prison pipeline by decrying the presence of police in schools and heavy-handed punishments for minor infractions, Nixon goes further to throw dollars at the root of the problem – racism and social inequality.

America didn’t become the purveyor world’s most infamous and prolific (and one of the world’s most broken) prison systems overnight. It happened over the years due to social, racial, political, and commercial problems. The thing that can override all those factions is the one thing that consistently has been proved to transform lives for the better whenever and wherever deployed: education.

By going to the very root of the issues in the public-school system, Nixon has the potential to dramatically impact the prison to school pipeline, and if she does, that bodes very well for long-range, positive, prison reform overall.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

“Making a Murderer” Defendant Asks Supreme Court to Undo Conviction

By Christopher Zoukis

The younger defendant convicted of crimes covered in the hugely popular 2015 Netflix documentary series, “Making a Murderer,” has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse his conviction, arguing police coerced him into making false confessions.

Dassey’s uncle, Steven Avery, is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach, a young photographer for an auto-trading magazine. Saying he wanted to advertise a car for sale, Avery requested Halbach be sent to his salvage lot in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin to photograph it.

Within days, the woman’s car, Palm Pilot and charred bones were discovered on Avery’s property. With a long police history, including an earlier rape conviction overturned on DNA evidence, Avery was a leading suspect; in 2008, he was convicted of raping and killing Halbach, then burning her body in a bonfire.

Avery’s nephew Brendan Dassey was 16 and had borderline mental and social disabilities. Although no physical evidence linked him to Halbach’s disappearance, he was convicted, based entirely on confessions he made to local police, for participating in her assault and murder. Now ten years into a life sentence, he’ll become eligible for parole in 2048.

The videotaped session where Dassey confesses shows him struggling, giving seemingly confused, incorrect or contradictory answers before being urged by police interrogators to try again; they also provide hints to the correct answer, using non-public information. They reassure Dassey they were there as fathers, not primarily as policemen, and would “go to bat” for him if he told the truth.

Arguing unsuccessfully to block the statements at his trial, Dassey’s lawyers argued he tried to guess and confirm the answers the police wanted. State appeals courts allowed Dassey’s statements, but a federal magistrate ruled for him, as did a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th Circuit, agreeing 2-1.

When the full Circuit heard the case, it ruled against Dassey, 4-3. Chief judge Diane Wood and two circuit judges strongly dissented, with Wood termed the majority opinion a “travesty of justice.” The dissenters argued not excluding Dassey’s testimony ignored several Supreme Court decisions on the need to assure juvenile confessions are not psychologically coerced.

An impressive array of “friend of court” briefs supporting Dassey have been filed by groups including the American Psychological Association, the Innocence Project, and organizations of criminal law professors and state and federal prosecutors. His lead advocate is Seth Waxman, a former Clinton administration solicitor general.

Even so, many predict that while gaining a Supreme Court hearing could potentially reshape rulings for juvenile confessions, and it won’t be easy. One major obstacle: the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), the 1996 law which restricts review of state cases involving inmates to those with apparent violations of constitutional rights.

Opposing Dassey’s petition for Supreme Court review (Dassey v. Dittmann), Wisconsin argues the Circuit court correctly applied the AEDPA standard, and even if the Supreme Court wants to announce new rules for juvenile confessions, this is a poor case in which to do that.

Days before its scheduled June 14 discussion of Dassey’s petition, the Supreme Court postponed the meeting, without announcing a new date or explaining the delay. At least four of the Court’s nine justices will have to agree for Dassey’s appeal to be heard.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

Department of Justice Finds Higher Recidivism Rates for State-Released Inmates

By Christopher Zoukis

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has taken a new look at recidivism rates for inmates released from state correctional institutions; the new study found recidivism rates over longer periods of time are higher than previously thought.

Its new analysis, “2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014),” essentially updates earlier BJS estimates of the recidivism rates of prisoners released from state prisons. An earlier study tracked a sample group of over 67,000 inmates from 30 states released in 2005 (out of a total of 401,288), finding 68% were re-arrested within three years.
The updated study continues monitoring arrest records of the sample, finding that after six years, 79% of the sample group had been re-arrested, including nearly half (47%) of those not arrested during the first three years after being released. The first three years after release figure heaviest in recidivism, accounting for 82% of total new crimes during the first nine post-release years.

By nine years after release, about five of every six (83%) state inmates in the sample of releasees from 2005 had been re-arrested. If the sample’s recidivism rate holds true for the approximately 400,000 total state inmates released in 2005, it would mean the overall group saw 2 million arrests, or an average of five re-arrests per released offender.

That average would be somewhat misleading, the report notes, since about a million of the re-arrests could be attributed to just 23% of the releasees, and three-fifths of the total re-arrests occurred between the fourth and ninth years after release. But recidivism seems to have persisted among the sample group: of the those re-arrested in their first year after release, only 5% were not arrested again in the following years.

Another striking finding of the new study was that while the recidivism rate is highest (about 44%) for the first year after release, it remained as high as 24% in the ninth year after release.

The authors of the updated study also found differences in the recidivism rates for inmates released after serving time for offenses against property and those who did time for violent crimes, with the property offenders more likely to be re-arrested than were those who had committed crimes of violence; that held true for each post-release year.
For all releasees, fewer arrested during their first year after being released were likely to have been re-arrested in a different state (just 8%), than were ex-inmates re-arrested nine years after being released (14%).

Inmates who served time for drug crimes and were re-arrested after release did not confine their subsequent crimes to additional drug offenses; 77% were re-arrested for a crime other than a drug offense within nine years.
Recidivism researchers often reach inconsistent conclusions, and earlier BJS studies have drawn criticism for supposedly having disproportionate numbers of frequent offenders in the sample group. But whatever the level, proposals on how to deal with recidivism are likely to be part of the ongoing debate on prison reform: The Trump administration-backed First Step proposal, which handily cleared the House of Representatives and is awaiting Senate action, focuses mainly on measures its sponsors claim would make released federal inmates less likely to offend again.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

University of Iowa goes to Prison – For all the Right Reasons

By Christopher Zoukis

As long as there have been prisons in America, there have been people concerned about educating the inmates. William Rogers, a clergyman, is believed to be the first prison educator, teaching behind bars in the late 1700s. Despite a strong opposition from those that believe prisoners should not be entitled to an education there are still organizations working toward a better life after prison.

It is easy to understand the reasoning behind why the naysayers feel the way they do. Continuing and post-secondary education can be incredibly expensive. Going to college or university is a debt sentence that can drag on for decades. Not every free citizen can afford higher education, no matter how smart or talented they are, and sometimes in spite of their best efforts. So, to see an offender being handed an education? It can seem unfair or undeserved.

What those that oppose the idea may not understand is that prison education programs are vitally important, not just for the prisoner, but for our whole country. There is a massive ripple effect, including the allocation of tax dollars, impact on the community when an offender is released, and the increased chances of recidivism come into play. An uneducated inmate is much more likely to draw on social programs upon release, and to go right back to jail within three years – and the cost of maintaining a prisoner is far greater than the cost of educating one have him or her become a contributing member of society.

Make no mistake, prison education is no free ride. The aim is to improve the lives of everyone, not just the inmate; to reduce the out-of-control prison population across America; to reform prisoners; and to shore up our workforce with ready laborers and entrepreneurs. It’s a big-picture process that relies heavily on educational institutions going into prisons to teach, share, inspire, mentor and lead.

That is exactly what the University of Iowa is doing.

Faculty and volunteers from the University of Iowa are bringing education to inmates in Iowa.

Currently only two-credit-hour courses through the University College program are offered, but there is recognition for potential to move credits towards a degree – one that can be finished in or outside of the prison.

Since the pilot program showed success, the university has since offered two-credit hours for 60 students expanding on a speaker series, and is also offering college credit for inmates that enroll in yoga or sing in the Oakdale Community Choir.

There are already examples of the impact of the program and the impact it has on the possibilities after release. One inmate, Michael Davis-Carson, has been using his time behind bars to take courses through Iowa’s prison education system. When he first entered prison, he didn’t see a lot of options for when his sentence was done. Now, upon parole, he plans to enter the work release program, then earn an associate degree, followed by a bachelor’s degree. To fund this continuing education, he is turning to entrepreneurship, and plans to run a lawn and landscaping service.

Education transforms lives whether you are out in the world or behind bars. No matter where or how you get your education, it can open doors and opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be available and allow individuals build a better life. Prisoner education is a benefit to society not just the inmates receiving it. As more universities and colleges go to prison to educate the inmates, we can expect more success stories, and a brighter future for all.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.

Sex Offender Registries: Common Sense or Nonsense?

by Christopher Zoukis

In October 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped at gunpoint and never seen again.

When the boy’s mother, Patty Wetterling, learned that her home state of Minnesota did not have a database of possible suspects—notably convicted sex offenders—she set out to make a change.

Wetterling’s efforts led to the passage of the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, which was signed into federal law by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Jacob’s Law was the first effort to establish a nationwide registry of convicted sex offenders, but it was not the last.

Soon after Jacob’s Law was enacted, 7-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by a neighbor with a previous conviction for sexual assault of a child. This heinous crime led the state of New Jersey to pass Megan’s Law, which required anyone “convicted, adjudicated delinquent or found not guilty by reason of insanity for commission of a sex offense” to register with local law enforcement upon release from prison, relocation into the state, or after a conviction that did not include incarceration.

Two years later, Congress enacted a federal Megan’s Law. The bill, which passed in the House by a 418-0 vote and in the Senate by unanimous consent, required that states provide community notification of sex offender registry information “that is necessary to protect the public.” By the end of 1996, every state in the nation had some form of public notification law for sex offenders in place.

In 2006, Congress adopted the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, named in honor of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, who was abducted and murdered in Florida. The Adam Walsh Act repealed and replaced both Jacob’s Law and Megan’s Law. The comprehensive Adam Walsh Act created a national sex offender registry and mandated that every state comply with Title I of the Act, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”) or risk losing 10 percent of federal law enforcement funding. SORNA requires, among other things, that states establish a three-tiered sex offender registry system, with “Tier 3” offenders required to update their registry information every three months, for life. SORNA also created the National Sex Offender public website, which had nearly 5 million visits and 772 million hits by 2008.

Full compliance with SORNA has proven costly, and many states have opted out. As of 2014, only 17 states were in full compliance; the remaining 33 states have foregone their full federal law enforcement funding while remaining partially compliant.

Despite many states choosing not to comply with SORNA, a tremendous amount of sex-offender registry legislation has been enacted across the country since the 1990s. These laws have gone well beyond keeping a registry of convicted sex offenders, and now regulate where sex offenders may live and work, with whom they may have contact, and even where they may be present. Illinois, for example, created a law enforcement registry in 1986. Since it was created, the Illinois Legislature has amended the registry 23 times, each time adding new offenses, restrictions, or requirements.

False Premises, Faulty Numbers, and Unintended Consequences

There is a laudable and virtually unassailable goal associated with sex-offender registration and restriction laws: protection of the public, especially children. Congress passed SORNA, for example, “[i]n order to protect the public from sex offenders and offenses against children. . . .” 34 U.S.C. § 20901.

But the “protections” provided by sex offender registration and restriction laws are based on faulty information and more than one false premise. In passing registry laws, legislators frequently cite the high rates of recidivism among sex offenders. Judges do the same. In the 2002 opinion McKune v. Lile, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy cited a “frightening and high” sex-offender recidivism rate of up to 80 percent.

If it were true, that would, indeed, be “frightening and high.” However, that figure is flat-out wrong. Justice Kennedy based that assertion on an unverified claim in a 1986 Psychology Today article written by a therapist who has since repudiated it. In fact, the therapist has stated that the 80 percent figure is “absolutely incorrect” and that he is appalled that it is still being used to influence public policy and judges.

Similarly, a core belief underlying the value of sex offender registries is flat-out wrong—that crimes against children are most often committed by strangers with lengthy criminal histories. Actual recidivism rates are just about the lowest of any offender category—somewhere between 5 percent and 25 percent; sex offenses are, by a very large margin, committed by people known to the victim who have no criminal history, data show.

As crime prevention tools, sex offender registries are a near universal failure. What’s more, they work to create a kind of second-class citizen for whom living a normal life is impossible. Residency, “presence,” and employment restrictions regularly render registrants homeless, jobless, and cast out of public spaces. Public notification sometimes leads to vigilante action; Human Rights Watch has documented the assault and murder of sex offenders who were located on public registries.

But there is no legislation easier to pass than a restriction on a sex offender. As a group, sex offenders are greatly despised and are thus easy targets for “tough on crime” politicians needing to score points. If the goal of sex offender registration and restriction laws is to actually prevent crime in a constitutional and humane manner, however, it is well past time to take a hard look at the mounting evidence indicating that these laws have gone horribly wrong.

Overview of Registries Nationwide

Laws regulating registered sex offenders vary by state. While every state now requires that sex offenders register, the length of time that a particular sex offender must remain registered ranges from five years to life. Which individual sex offenders are listed on publicly available websites also depends on state law. Most states restrict where registered sex offenders may live, and some states restrict where registrants may work, or be present.

According to a chart created by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offender Laws, at least eight states require sex offenders to register for life. Most other states require registration for 10 to 15 years to life, depending on the registrant’s crime. Periodic updates are required in most cases, either quarterly or yearly—unless the registrant is homeless.

Homeless sex offenders face additional registration hurdles. For example, in North Dakota, a homeless or transient resident must re-register every three days. Most other states require homeless sex offenders to re-register every seven to 30 days. Massachusetts requires every homeless registered sex offender to wear a GPS device at all times.

Sex offender registration and restriction laws are frequently what lead a registrant to homelessness. In Florida, state law prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, child-care facility, park, or playground. In addition, as of 2011, the Florida Department of Corrections reported a total of 140 sex offender-related local ordinances, enacted in 44 of Florida’s 67 counties. Typically, these ordinances prohibit registrants from residing within 2,500 feet of various venues, including schools, parks, playgrounds, libraries, churches, public pools, sports fields, and school bus stops.

As a result of these onerous residency restrictions, a 2013 study found that more than 3 percent of Florida’s registered sex offenders are homeless. In Miami, the situation reached crisis levels in 2010, when residency restrictions forced many registered sex offenders to live under a bridge. Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, referred to sex offenders as “monsters,” and seems not to have lost any sleep over the rising population of homeless registrants.

“I don’t care if they have to live under a bridge or if they have to live somewhere outside Florida,” Book said.

In other states, laws prohibit registrants from residing between 300 and 2,500 feet from a litany of locations, including schools, child-care facilities, playgrounds, parks, bus stops, youth centers, resident camp facilities, churches, ballparks, pools, athletic fields, “facilities where minors gather,” and the on-campus housing of any institution of higher learning. Some communities leverage these laws to banish sex offenders entirely. Strategically placed “pocket parks” can render entire cities off limits to registrants.

Many states also restrict where a registered sex offender may be present at any given time. In Arkansas, “Level Three” and “Level Four” registrants may not step foot into any swimming area, water park, or state park playground. Florida prohibits registrants with a conviction involving a minor from being within 300 feet of “a place where children are congregating.” In Iowa, a similar registrant may not loiter or be present within 300 feet of a public library.

State and federal law further restricts registered sex offenders from receiving certain government benefits and, in some cases, from taking shelter in state-run facilities during an emergency. The Agricultural Act of 2014 prohibits select registrants from receiving food stamps. Some jurisdictions in Florida prohibit sex offenders from seeking safety at public shelters during hurricanes. Homeless shelters and soup kitchens nationwide routinely refuse entry to registered sex offenders.

Sex offenders are subject to most state registry laws even when they are on vacation. In Ohio, South Dakota, and Wyoming, sex offenders must register if they are in the state for more than three days. California and Colorado require a visiting sex offender to register within five days. The registration process itself generally involves spending several hours at the local sheriff’s office, or the state DMV.

Registries in every state are available for public viewing. Some states also give affirmative notification to the public when a sex offender registers. In Alabama, Arizona, Alaska, Louisiana, Texas, and West Virginia, law enforcement or sex offenders themselves must notify the public of their status. Several other states, including Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Washington, provide for discretionary public notification.

Some states also require that registered sex offenders obtain and carry with them special cards or endorsed driver’s licenses. Both Louisiana and Mississippi mandate that registered sex offenders obtain a “sex offender card” from the DMV. In Florida, all sex offenders must appear at the DMV within 48 hours of registration in order to pick up an ID card labeled either “SEXUAL PREDATOR” or “943.0435, F.S.” No states require registered sex offenders to wear identifying marks on the outside of their clothing—yet.

In addition to requiring that registered sex offenders have their papers in order, Louisiana prohibits registrants from wearing “masks or hoods” in public. Missouri requires registrants to post signs advising of their status on Halloween. And Minnesota calls its registry the “Predatory Offender Registry” database in order to, according to the state legislature, “more accurately reflect the offenses that trigger registration.” This is despite the fact that there are still people required to register who were convicted of sodomy prior to the Supreme Court declaring such laws unconstitutional.

In sum, sex offenders subject to registration are not welcome to reside or be present in huge swaths of the United States. Sometimes, legislators state their intentions explicitly. A 2008 report in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly cited the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives as plainly admitting that the state’s registry laws were aimed at driving sex offenders into neighboring states.

Public safety

Sex offender registration and restriction laws are routinely imposed and defended in the name of public safety. Controlling where an individual who has been previously convicted of a sex offense lives, works, or is present is ostensibly meant to limit the likelihood of re-offense, which at first blush seems reasonable. Jason Chambers, a prosecutor and member of the Illinois Sex Offenses and Sex Offender Registration Task Force (“SOSOR”), summed up the common sense behind sex-offender registry and restriction laws.

“I have never seen a study that says that if I hit my hand with a hammer, it will hurt,” said Chambers. “But I still know it will hurt. I do not need a study to know that allowing a child sex offender with multiple convictions to live across the street from a grade school is a bad idea.”

There may be good reasons for casting aside common sense beliefs about sex offenders and the effectiveness of registries, however. Empirical evidence and objective data are beginning to confirm what experts have said for many years: Sex-offender registration and restriction laws do not reduce recidivism, and they do not make communities safer. In fact, these laws may actually increase recidivism and decrease public safety.

Common Sense vs. Reality: Sex Offenders Rarely Reoffend

Historically, sex offender registration and restriction laws have come in rapid response to public and legislative outrage over rare, high-profile crimes. The kidnapping and murder of a child evokes primal fears, and legislative responses to such evil tend to be swift and dramatic. Such responses also tend to be absent of careful study and deliberation that are the hallmarks of quality legislation. As such, when drafting sex offender registration and restriction laws, legislators often fail to understand the problems they intend to solve, as well as the tools employed to solve them.

In Illinois, for example, the SOSOR Task Force noted in its 2018 report that the state’s registry system was formed “as part of a national response not only to a particular set of circumstances, but often to specific cases that were legislated at a time when crime control was the dominant political philosophy.” The task force also pointed out that the high-profile incidents that led to calls for tighter control of sex offenders were “in many ways atypical of most sexual offenses.”

‘Little if any debate’

In his 2011 book, Justice Perverted: Sex Offender Law, Psychology, and Public Policy, forensic psychologist and SUNY-Buffalo Law School professor Charles Patrick Ewing elaborated on this point, writing that “sex offender registration, notification, and community restriction laws arose out of an understandable visceral response to a small number of outrageous sex crimes, coupled with false beliefs that sex offenses were increasing and that sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism.”

“[T]hese laws have often, if not usually, passed with no concern for either cost or likelihood that they will, in fact, reduce either sex offender recidivism or the number of sex offenses in general,” wrote Ewing. “Indeed, some of these laws have been passed with no public input and little if any debate.”

In crafting legislation in the wake of atypical crimes committed by atypical offenders, states have ensnared over 850,000 individuals in a system meant to prevent the type of crimes that they almost certainly did not commit in the first place and likely will not commit in the future. Common sense may indeed dictate that the registration and micromanagement of sex offenders is a good idea. But as author W. Somerset Maugham once said, “Common sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspaper.”

In Justice Perverted, professor Ewing set out to examine the efficacy of sex offender registration and restriction laws in a decidedly non-common sense manner. In order to answer what Ewing says “is, of course, an empirical question,” he did what legislative bodies and policy makers have historically failed to do when enacting sex offender registration and restriction laws: he considered the evidence.

A significant assumption underpinning sex offender laws is that the recidivism rates for this population are, as Justice Kennedy said, “frightening and high.” Ewing points out what researchers and experts have been shouting from the mountaintops for years: Recidivism rates for sex offenders are, in fact, “quite low, especially as compared to that for other offenses.”

This is not news. Michigan Citizens for Justice, a group that advocates for reform of sex offender registration and restriction laws, looked at a recent Department of Justice report on new convictions and found that, filtering the data for new convictions (a commonly used definition of recidivism) and crimes against children, sex offenders have a recidivism rate of around 11/2 percent. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the general recidivism rate for released prisoners nationwide is 68 percent. Contrary to common misconception, the inclusion of sex offenders in this general number actually lowers the percentage due to sex offenders recidivating at such a low rate.

Other non-partisan sources have come to similar conclusions. The Illinois SOSOR Task Force, which was established by the Illinois Legislature and was composed of practitioners, law enforcement representatives, and advocates, found that the literature suggests a 5 percent sex offender recidivism rate after three years, and a 24 percent recidivism rate after 15 years. The task force also noted that researchers have consistently found that sex offenders are more likely to be rearrested, reconvicted, or reincarcerated for non-sex offenses than sex offenses.

Melissa Hamilton, a professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and recognized expert on sex-offender recidivism issues, put the actual number in the “low single digits” in a recent court filing. Professor Hamilton is one of the nationally known experts who has been trying to set the record straight about sex-offender recidivism rates for many years.

“[T]he assumption that sex offenders are at high risk of recidivism has always been false and continues to be false,” Hamilton told Slate in 2014. “It’s a myth.”

Empirical evidence and objective data undermine the common-sense understanding of sex-offender recidivism rates. However, assuming that recidivism rates are lower than commonly believed, common sense still dictates that sex offender registration and restriction laws further reduce recidivism, which is a good thing regardless of how low the rates actually are.

Except that they don’t.

Sex Offender Registration Laws May Impede Public Safety

Professor Ewing examined several studies and meta-analyses and concluded that sex offender registration and restriction laws “have not reduced the number of sex offenses in the United States or even that among previously convicted sex offenders who have been the direct targets of these laws.” Interestingly, Ewing reviewed several studies that did find minimal reductions in recidivism rates for sex offenders subject to registration and restriction laws, but those studies were offset by others that found the opposite—that registration and restriction laws actually worked to increase sex offender recidivism rates. Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) explained in a nutshell how sex-offender registration and restriction laws fail to reduce recidivism, and may actually increase recidivism, in a 2007 report, “No Easy Answers for Sex Offenders.”

“Current registration, community notification, and residency restriction laws may be counterproductive, impeding rather than promoting public safety,” wrote the report authors. “For example, the proliferation of people required to register even though their crimes were not serious makes it harder for law enforcement to determine which sex offenders warrant careful monitoring. Unfettered online access to registry information facilitates—if not encourages—neighbors, employers, colleagues, and others to shun and ostracize former offenders—diminishing the likelihood of their successful reintegration into communities. Residency restrictions push former offenders away from supervision, treatment, stability, and supportive networks they may need to build and maintain successful, law abiding lives.”

The first point made in the HRW report has also been emphasized by experts and even state-level sex offender management agencies. For example, the California Sex Offender Management Board, which includes law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and prison officials, said in a 2013 report that “[the] registry has, in some ways, become counter-productive to improving public safety” because “[w]hen everyone is viewed as posing a significant risk, the ability to differentiate between who is truly high risk and more likely to reoffend becomes impossible.”

The Illinois SOSOR Task Force addressed this issue, in part, by recommending much more limited use of the term “sexual predator” when drafting sex-offender laws and regulations. Sex-offender registration and restriction laws are notoriously over-inclusive, and applying the label “sexual predator” to a person convicted of public urination (which can lead to registration in at least 12 states), a teenager convicted of consensual sex with another teenager (which can lead to registration in at least 29 states), or a 10-year-old convicted of a sex crime (which could lead to registration in Texas as of 2013) leads to understandable confusion about what a “sexual predator” is.

California recently enacted a law intended to address this problem while reining in the state’s unwieldy sex offender registry. Senate Bill 3484, sponsored by State Sen. Scott Weiner and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, created a three-tiered registry meant to differentiate between offenders, while also providing most registrants the opportunity to petition to be removed from the registry between 10 and 20 years after release from prison. Law enforcement agencies supported the effort to reform California’s bloated registry, which includes more than 100,000 individuals. Weiner said the new system will improve public safety.

“With this reform, our law enforcement agencies will be able to better protect people from violent sex offenders rather than wasting resources tracking low-level offenders who pose little or no risk of repeat offense,” Weiner said in a statement. “Our sex offender registry is a tool used to prevent and investigate crimes, and these changes will make it a better and more effective tool for keeping our communities safe.”

Notifications Counterproductive

The HRW report also highlighted the counterproductive nature of sex-offender registry notification requirements. Common sense dictates that public awareness of the location of a convicted sex offender must improve public safety. Directly addressing this question, professor Ewing found that “[u]nfortunately, the data indicates otherwise.” Publicly viewable sex offender registries do not lower recidivism, nor do they improve the safety of the community.

Sex offenses are committed, in almost every case, by first-time offenders who know their victim. The Bureau of Justice Statistics established in 2010 that family, friends, and acquaintances are responsible for more than 90 percent of all sexual abuse of children. The Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers similarly found that 93 percent of sex offenses are committed by first-time offenders. A public registry does not necessarily make the community a safer place when the most likely victim of a sex offender knows the offender and, in the case of a repeat offense, probably already knows that the offender is a registered sex offender.

Attorney Alison Ruttenberg, who represents registrants challenging Colorado’s registry laws, said public misunderstanding of the “typical” sex offender contributes to the failure of registries as public safety tools. People tend to think that a sex offender is “a violent repeat molester who’s coming to get their children, which isn’t true in the vast majority of cases,” she said.

Dr. Toby Bolsen, associate professor of political science at Georgia State University, said the crimes committed by sex offenders “vary widely,” and as such, “there is no average sex offender.”

As a result, sex offender registries “generate misplaced fears about the risks that the vast majority of people convicted of a sex offense pose to their communities.” Ruttenberg agrees, and said that public misperceptions of registered sex offenders lead to trouble for registrants themselves.

“That’s why the men and women on the registry experience so much harassment and vigilante action against them,” said Ruttenberg.

Registrants Attacked by Vigilantes

Vigilante activity is a significant and underappreciated collateral consequence of sex-offender registration and restriction laws. In at least 14 states, there have been enough attacks on registrants to cause legislators to pass laws making it a crime to use registry information to harass, intimidate, or assault a registrant. The 2007 HRW report highlighted some examples of vigilante justice visited upon registered sex offenders.

“Registrants [spoke] of having glass bottles thrown through their windows; being ‘jumped from behind’ and physically assaulted while the assailants yelled ‘You like little children, right?’; having garbage thrown on their lawn; people repeatedly ringing the doorbell and pounding on the sides of the house late at night; being struck from behind with a crowbar after being yelled at by the assailant that ‘People like you who are under Megan’s Law should be kept in jail. They should never let you out. People like you should die. When you leave tonight, I am gonna kill you’. . . .”

Perhaps the most egregious example of common sense gone wrong, however, is the significant push across the nation to restrict where registered sex offenders may live, work, or be present. The presumption underlying all of these restrictions is that the physical location of a given sex offender has some relation to the likelihood that he or she will commit a crime. Similar to other aspects of the registry, however, the evidence suggests that residence, employment, and presence restrictions do not reduce recidivism or enhance public safety at all.

Consider residency restrictions, which prohibit registered sex offenders from living some arbitrary number of feet from specified locations, such as schools, parks, daycares, and other public places. Professor Ewing suggests that such restrictions are “inherently unlikely to do much if anything to reduce the number of sex crimes in any given geographical location.” Ewing points out a major flaw in the logic of residency restrictions: “[T]hese laws do not restrict convicted sex offenders from living near children, only from living near schools, day care centers, parks, playgrounds, and other places where children congregate.”

“Thus, for example, a child sex offender might be barred from living within 2,500 feet of one of these ‘protected’ areas but still be allowed to live in a large apartment complex brimming with children,” wrote Ewing.

The best available evidence suggests that restricting where registered sex offenders may reside has no impact on recidivism or public safety. The Illinois SOSOR Task Force notes that while “no research was available on whether [residency restrictions] would prevent sexual offending prior to implementation” of such laws, the research is available now. And it does not support the common-sense belief that residency restrictions work.

“[R]esearch has shown residency restrictions neither lead to reductions in sexual crime or recidivism, nor do they act as a deterrent,” wrote the task force.

A significant (false) premise underlying residency restrictions may explain why they don’t work. The task force notes that “residency restrictions were premised on preventing sexual abuse by strangers, [but] research has shown most offenders are not strangers to their victim and abuse tends to happen in a private residence rather than identified public locations.”

The nightmare scenario of stranger abduction of a child has a strong hold on the American psyche. Professor Hamilton said that “[i]t’s become a part of our culture that there are predators waiting around corners.” But the empirical evidence—the Bureau of Justice Statistics finding that over 90 percent of victims of sexual abuse know their abuser—puts an end to the myth that sex offenders frequent schools, parks, and daycares trolling for victims. Outside of the rare, high profile incident, stranger abduction from public places wasn’t happening 20 years ago, and it isn’t happening now.

Employment restrictions

What is happening, however, is a continued push to further isolate registered sex offenders by way of additional restrictions, such as those on where a registrant may work or be present. Registered offenders are barred from holding certain licenses and engaging in select occupations across the country. These restrictions generally focus on jobs that might involve contact with children. In Massachusetts, for example, a registered sex offender may not operate an ice cream truck.

Some states take employment restrictions to the extreme. In Alabama, for example, registrants may not be employed anywhere within 2,000 feet of a school or childcare facility or within 500 feet of a playground, park, athletic field or facility, or child-focused business or facility. In Delaware, a registered sex offender cannot be a plumber; Alaska prohibits sex offenders from dealing in hearing aids. New Hampshire prohibits registrants from working in an “end stage renal disease dialysis center,” and Kentucky does not allow a sex offender to be a land surveyor during the first 10 years of registration.

Presence restrictions are becoming commonplace in sex offender registry regimes as well. At least 26 states now restrict where a registered sex offender may be present. In some states, registered sex offenders may not go to a public pool. In others, they are prohibited from patronizing a mall or library.

Employment and presence restrictions are as beneficial to public safety as residency restrictions. That is, they are not beneficial; they neither lower recidivism nor improve community safety. In fact, these restrictions may actually inhibit public safety and increase recidivism.

Across the board, experts agree that a key to limiting the likelihood of recidivism in any releasing population is successful reintegration into the community. The onerous restrictions placed on registered sex offenders do not engender a sense of community, and they severely limit the ability of an offender to reintegrate. Professor Ewing said sex-offender restrictions might actually increase recidivism and decrease public safety.

“[L]aws that restrict the residences, workplaces, and movements of sex offenders also appear to do little if anything to reduce recidivism and may have the unintended negative consequence of making sex offender recidivism more likely because they engender hopelessness and homelessness in some offenders, impede their contact with social support networks in the community, and create disincentives for pro-social behavior,” wrote Ewing.

With all of the available evidence pointing to the decidedly non-common sense conclusion that sex offender registries and restrictions do not reduce recidivism or improve public safety, one would be forgiven for wondering why legislatures nationwide continue to pile on the requirements and restrictions. The Council for State Governments, a nonpartisan group funded in part by the states, posits that “common myths about sex offenders continue to influence laws” despite the fact that “there is little empirical proof that sex offender registries and notification make communities safer.”

“High-profile cases involving sex offenders continue to dominate the news,” said the Council. “[These cases] understandably shape the public perception of sex offenders.”

Whatever the myths or perceptions, Professor Ewing notes that “it appears that the emperor has no (or very few) clothes.”

“The consensus of empirical research is that these sex offender registration and notification laws have no statistically significant effect on sex offender recidivism and thus fail to provide the protection upon which they are premised and which they promise the public,” wrote Ewing.

Sex Offender Registries and Restrictions: A Costly Failure

States spend hundreds of millions of dollars implementing and operating sex-offender registries that don’t work. The restrictions that accompany registries also come at a great social cost. And registries cost the community significantly, because they provide a false sense of safety.

The economic cost of sex-offender registration nationwide is, according to professor Ewing, “immense.” SORNA, which is intended to force states into compliance with federal registry law, was estimated by the Justice Policy Institute to cost states $488 million to implement in its first year. This cost dwarfed the federal crime fighting dollars lost for noncompliance, and most states have chosen not to comply with the federal law. Compliant or not, however, states spend enormous sums operating sex offender registries.

New Jersey, for example, spent an estimated $5.1 million maintaining Megan’s Law in one year alone. California spent $88 million in 2011 solely to electronically monitor about 7,000 paroled sex offenders. Given that California has more than 100,000 registered sex offenders on its rolls, the total cost to operate the state’s registry is in the hundreds of millions.

Sex-offender registries also come with indirect economic costs. Real estate markets, for example, are impacted by the presence of a registered sex offender. One study found that houses within one-tenth of a mile from a registrant’s residence sold for 17.4 percent less than similar homes located farther away. According to the study’s author, “If you have a person who committed a sex offense next door to you, or even a block away, or two-tenths of a mile away, you pay a price.”

The social costs of sex offender registries are wide ranging and significant. Professor Ewing points out that the public may be taking false comfort in the “safety” provided by the registration and restriction of sex offenders.

“[T]he sense of added safety and security that [registration, notification, and restriction laws] convey to the public, while often misleading if not altogether false, may lead some citizens, especially parents and other caretakers of children, to become less mindful of the dangers of sexual victimization,” wrote Ewing. Moreover, “armed with the knowledge that convicted sex offenders are not allowed to live within 2,500, 1,000, or even 500 feet of a school, day care center, playground, park, or other place where children regularly congregate, parents and other caretakers may conclude that their children are thus safer and less in need of care and supervision when they are in these ‘protected’ places. Sadly, the facts do not bear out any such conclusions.”

In addition to social and economic costs to the community, sex-offender registries come at great personal and social costs to the families of sex offenders. Women Against the Registry (“WAR”), an organization dedicated to the abolition of sex offender registries, was founded primarily due to the “punishing effect of the registry on innocent family members.”

According to WAR, one study showed that family members of registered offenders are regularly subjected to threats and harassment by neighbors, physical assault, and property damage. The same study found that innocent family members have been evicted or forced to move out of their own home due to a registrant’s status.

“The effect of the public registry on the family of registered offenders cannot be overlooked,” states a WAR pamphlet. “From shaming to banishment to outright violence, these family members are facing harsh treatment daily simply because they are the family member of registered offenders.”

The Human Rights Watch profile of Gavin D. illustrates this point. Gavin was a softball coach who was convicted of misdemeanor indecent contact with a child after he grabbed and twisted the buttocks of a 12-year-old girl in a fit of anger over the outcome of a softball game. He served two years on probation and completed anger management courses but was also required to register as a sex offender in Iowa. As a result of his registration status, Gavin was forced to move out of the home he shared with his wife and two children.

Because he couldn’t find compliant housing in Dubuque, where his family resided, he crossed the border to Wisconsin, where he moved into a friend’s basement. Gavin can’t sleep in the same home as his family, but he can “visit” as often as he likes.

“I can be there 23 hours if I stay awake,” Gavin said. “On the weekends, I stay there as long as I can keep my eyes open. I just want to be with my kids as long as possible. I at least always wait to leave until they have gone to bed, and I try to leave Wisconsin to get back home to them before the kids wake up. I don’t get much sleep, but I need to be a father to my children.”

Registries and restrictions also come at a great cost to sex offenders themselves, of course. Many registrants find themselves homeless due to a lack of affordable and compliant housing. Unemployment among registrants is rampant. Registrants are cast out of most social situations and suffer shame without end. In a 2003 concurring opinion, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote of the consequences of registration suffered by sex offenders.

“Widespread dissemination of offenders’ names, photographs, addresses, and criminal history serves not only to inform the public but also to humiliate and ostracize the convicts,” wrote Justice Souter. “It thus bears some resemblance to shaming punishments that were used early in our history to disable offenders from living normally in the community. While the [majority] accepts the state’s explanation that [Alaska’s registration law] simply makes public information available in a new way, the scheme does much more. Its point, after all, is to send a message that probably would not otherwise be heard, by selecting some conviction information out of its corpus of penal records and broadcasting it without warning. Selection makes a statement, one that affects common reputation and sometimes carries harsher consequences, such as exclusion from jobs or housing, harassment, and physical harm.”

The registration and restriction of sex offenders also portends other heavy-handed moves by government, according to some experts. Noted criminologist Marie Gottschalk wrote that the required registration of one particular group (i.e., sex offenders) could easily be extended to other groups.

“[T]he war on sex offenders is setting important punitive precedents for expanding the prison beyond the prison not just for released sex offenders but also for a whole range of other groups and individuals deemed undesirable by law enforcement officers, government officials, and the broader public,” wrote Gottschalk in her 2015 book Caught.

Sex-offender registries and restrictions are not effective in reducing recidivism or improving public safety. Instead, professor Ewing argues that the actual effects of these laws are: “(1) creating the impression that government is doing something to reduce the number of sex offenses; (2) giving the public a greater sense of safety and security in the face of what is erroneously perceived as a growing threat of sexual victimization; and (3) adding another layer of punishment to the criminal justice system’s response to sex offenders.”

Ewing allows for the possibility that there is some value in the true effects of sex-offender registry and restriction laws, however dubious it may be. But the costs, in both dollars and lives, far outweigh the limited and highly suspect “value” of a system that does not accomplish its one and only task: improvement of public safety.

Registry Reform: Casting Aside (Erroneous) Common Sense

Sex-offender registration and restriction laws are products of irrational (but understandable) fear and political calculation. They do not improve public safety or decrease the likelihood that a sex offender will reoffend, but states continue to add requirements and restrictions with great abandon. In the current social and political climate, it is fair to question whether registry reform is possible, regardless of whether the system is broken.

In Missouri, for example, a registration reform bill made it out of the legislature, but was vetoed by the governor. The bill would have removed juvenile offenders—those who committed sex crimes before they were 18—from the state’s public registry, and would have allowed them to petition to be removed from the law enforcement-only version. Gov. Jay Nixon took the opportunity to engage in political grandstanding and vetoed the bill.

“The leadership of the House may be ready to help violent sex offenders hide from the public and law enforcement, but their victims, and the millions of Missourians who use these websites to keep their families safe, are not,” said Nixon.

But fear mongering and public hysteria will only go so far in the face of empirical evidence and a hefty financial burden. Professor Ewing argues that states may eventually “be forced to conduct honest and realistic cost-benefit analysis in deciding whether sex offender registration, notification, and restriction laws are worth the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars they cost taxpayers each year.”

The Illinois SOSOR Task Force report is a good example of the kind of legislative reform efforts that are needed. The task force spent one year examining research, conducting public hearings, and formulating sensible reform recommendations. Like the California Sex Offender Management Board, the Illinois Task Force strongly recommended committing resources to effectively differentiating between sex offenders, both for treatment purposes and for registration purposes. As the registry currently stands in Illinois, and in most states, sex offenders are treated generically, which does not “reflect their actual risk-to-reoffend.”

The Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers (“ATSA”) underscored the importance of treating sex offenders heterogeneously for purposes of registration and restriction in a recent Supreme Court filing.

“There is universal agreement among professionals that restrictions on registrants must have some basis in empirical reality to be effective,” wrote the ATSA brief’s authors. “One such reality is the fact that registrants are not a homogenous group of ‘sex offenders’ that should be monolithically managed. Rather registrants comprise a diverse group of individuals, each different from the next in terms of past criminal history, behavioral patterns, and risk of recidivism. On top of the fact that the observed recidivism rates for ‘sex offenders’ in aggregate are far lower than what conventional folk wisdom suggests, differences in recidivism risks among the diverse registrant population requires a tailored rather than a uniform approach to crime prevention.”

United States District Court Judge Richard Matsch made a similar observation in a recent ruling in which he found Colorado’s sex-offender registry unconstitutionally cruel and unusual.

“The fear that pervades the public reaction to sex offenses—particularly as to children—generates reactions that are cruel and in disregard of any objective assessment of the individual’s proclivity to commit new sex offenses,” wrote Judge Matsch. “The failure to make any individual assessment is a fundamental flaw in the system.”

Professor Ewing concludes that a public registry will never promote public safety, regardless of any reforms. This is because a public registry has no impact on whether a given sex offender will recidivate. If registered sex offenders choose to recidivate, they can simply “seek victims in areas where they are unknown and not likely to be recognized.” As such, Ewing proposes limiting registration to a small number of cases on a law enforcement-only database.

Patty Wetterling laments what has happened to sex-offender registries in the years since she championed Jacob’s Law and now advocates for sex-offender registry reform. “These registries were a well-intentioned tool to help law enforcement find children more quickly,” Wetterling told Slate in 2014. “But the world has changed since then.”

Wetterling believes that better understanding and acceptance of sex offenders is crucial to actually improving public safety.

“These are human beings who made a mistake,” said Wetterling. “If we want them to succeed, we’re going to need to build a place for integrating them into our culture. Right now, you couldn’t walk into a church or community meeting and say ‘I was a sex offender, but I’ve gone through treatment. I now have this lovely family, and I am so grateful to be a part of this community.’ There is no place for success stories. Nobody believes them.”

Sources: slate.com, inthesetimes.com, washingtonpost.com, hrw.org, floridaactioncommittee.org, stopitnow.org, saeninc.org, calcasa.org, latimes.com, sfgate.com, womenagainstregistry.org, montrosepress.com, ilvoices.org, micitizensforjustice.wordpress.com, cnn.com, westword.com, thefederalist.com, nytimes.com, reason.com, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly

Additional sources: Justice Perverted: Sex Offense Law, Psychology, & Public Policy by Charles Patrick Ewing (Oxford University Press, 2011); “Sex Offenses and Sex Offender Registration Task Force Final Report” (http://www.icjia.state.il.us, January 2018); “Improving Illinois’ Response to Sexual Offenses Committed by Youth: Recommendations for Law, Policy, and Practice” by Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission (March 2014); Caught by Marie Gottschalk (Princeton University Press, 2015); “No Easy Answers for Sex Offenders” by Human Rights Watch (September 2007); “Adults on Probation Supervision in California for a Sexual Offense: Report to the California Sex Offender Management Board” by Danielle Arlanda Harris and Edith Kinney (March 2017); Personal interview with Dr. Toby Bolsen, associate professor of political science, Georgia State University (April 18, 2018)

Christopher Zoukis, the author of Federal Prison Handbook (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), Prison Education Guide (PLN Publishing, 2016), and College for Convicts (McFarland & Co., 2014), is a contributing writer to Prison Legal News, Criminal Legal News, Huffington Post, New York Daily News, and New York Journal of Books. He can be found online at www.PrisonerResource.com.

Harvard Students Demonstrate Against Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons

By Christopher Zoukis

In April 2018, students from Harvard University held a 24-hour demonstration protesting the conditions of solitary confinement in prisons.

The protest consisted of a student sitting inside an area boxed off with tape. The 7 x 9 foot square showed how small solitary confinement cells are. Four locations on the Harvard campus were selected for the demonstration. Other students stood outside the box to answer passersby questions and provide education about the conditions of solitary confinement.

According to the America Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization founded in 1917 that works to promote peace and justice, the sensory depravation and inadequate access to rehabilitation or education programs while in long-term solitary confinement are a form of “torture and control.”

AFSC further claims, “If a person isn’t mentally ill when entering an isolation unit, by the time they are released, their mental health has been severely compromised. Many prisoners are released directly to the streets after spending years in isolation. Because of this, long-term solitary confinement goes beyond a problem of prison conditions, to pose a formidable public safety and community health problem.”

The students involved in the Harvard protest also used their performance art platform to collect signatures for a petition in hopes of pushing Harvard to create a prison education program for inmates.

This is not the first time Harvard has been looked at for prison education. In March, members of the Harvard Organization for Prison Education, or HOPE group, which is part of the Phillips Brooks House Association that runs a tutoring program for inmates, were involved in an advocacy event designed to spur Harvard to create a program for inmates, and to soften the admission barriers for applicants with criminal records.

Michelle Jones, who was famously rejected from attending Harvard, due in part to her criminal record, was a speaker at the March event.

“Leaving us out with exclusionary practices based on race, sex, class, and criminality, you are lost. You’re missing that extra examination that comes from my experience having been incarcerated,” said Jones. “There are thousands of incarcerated people who’ve been lucky enough to have access to a higher education that allowed them to display what they already had within them. I think we need to remember that, because we are people who happened to be incarcerated as opposed to some monster that has been transformed by the magic of education.”

HOPE member Soyna Karabel is in favor of a prison education program from Harvard, noting that it would not only be good for the inmates, but for Harvard’s students as well. “I think that learning alongside each other is something that would have really profound educational impacts for everyone involved, and be really transformative, and also build positive social networks that I think people on both sides often don’t have the chance to create,” says Karabel.

Much has been said about the Millennials, painting them as the ultimate “me, me, me” generation with a runaway and costly love of avocado toast. However, time and time again we have seen that it is this younger generation of out-of-the box thinkers that are not afraid to take action, not afraid to stand up for what is right, and not afraid to speak their minds. This is a powerful generation bent on changing our society for the better. The young people of Harvard that sat in “solitary” in the hopes that others would not have to are a fine example of how real progress and change is made.

Article originally published in Medium.com.

Christopher Zoukis is the author of Federal Prison Handbook: The Definitive Guide to Surviving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, (Middle Street Publishing, 2017), and College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons (McFarland & Co., 2014). He regularly contributes to New York Daily News, Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. He can be found online at ChristopherZoukis.com, PrisonEducation.com and PrisonerResource.com.