Protecting Our Kids?: How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us

by Emily Horowitz

This thought-provoking work raises important questions about sex offender laws, drawing from personal stories, research, and data to prove the policies promote fear, destroy lives, and fail to protect children.

Do sex offender laws protect children, or are they inherently unfair practices that, at their worst, promote vigilante justice? The latter, this book argues. By analyzing the social, political, historical, and cultural context surrounding the emergence of current sex offender policies and laws, the work shows how sex offenders have come to loom as greater-than-life monsters when, in many cases, that is not true at all. Looking at its subject from a fresh viewpoint, the book shares research and new analyses of data and qualitative evidence to show how sex-offender laws are not only ineffective, but engender destructive fear and anxiety.

To help readers understand the impact of these laws, the author presents interviews with sex offenders and their families as they describe the day-to-day reality of living on the sex offender registry. Citing research and statistics, the book challenges the idea that sex offenders must be continually monitored and publicly identified because they are incurably predatory. Most important, the study shows that undue sex offender panic is preventing policymakers from addressing the true threats to children―poverty and growing inequality.

Genres: Nonfiction, Law

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2015

Reviews

[Elizabeth]

The author's overall argument is that we want to feel like we're protecting children, and being "tough on crime" helps us feel good but isn't actually effective. The sex offender registry protects against "stranger danger" and re-offenders, but most children are assaulted by adults they know and trust, and most sexual assault convictions are first time offenses (and they have much lower rates of reoffense than almost all other types of offenders [p. 52] -- though I would note that the ways in which the registry Others people could arguably contribute to driving up that reoffense rate, since it's so hard for them to reintegrate into community; or at least drive them into other criminal behavior since it's so difficult to get housing, a job, etc.).

Horowitz also spends a bunch of time on the history of the development of the concept of child abuse and how by positioning child abuse as something that cuts across class/race/etc. we erased the ways in which socio-economics impact child abuse. (This is similar to arguments Aya Gruber makes about carceral feminism -- Gruber's argument is about different groups seeking different remedies, and this is about different groups needing different preventative measures, but in either case the white middle-class got to be the Everyvictim and drive policy for everyone.)

The stories of individuals on the sex offender registry that Horowitz includes are really powerful (police stings that seem very close to entrapment, ruined lives for the accused and everyone around them [even without a conviction], etc.). She includes stories of people who have been convicted of varying kinds of crimes (why she put each anecdote where she did wasn't clear to me) and it's clear that even for people who did bad things, the punishment is disproportionate. (The ways in which the lives of the children of people who are convicted are ruined is, I think, one of the particularly compelling elements.)

The data sections tended to make my eyes glaze over, and I didn't feel a strong narrative progression through the book, even though I understood from the Introduction that the author had an arc in mind.

I did learn some wild things.

For example: in some states, minors having mutually consensual sex with each other can *both* be charged with statutory rape and put on the registry. (My recollection is that the book was vague about this, but this Quora post explains that it's because legally minors can't consent -- though the comments point out that many states have a clause allowing minors who are close in age to each other to legally have sex with each other.)

Also: it's literally illegal to look at child porn even if you're a legal scholar or journalist writing about the topic, so nobody really knows what's getting counted as "child pornography" other than law enforcement, attorneys, and sometimes juries on those cases -- well, and the accused, of course. (pp. 124-7)
And you can be charged with distributing child porn if you're a minor sending nudes of yourself to other minors. (pp. 129-30)

Also, a lot of the undercover stings for guys soliciting sex from underage girls are really very much entrapment -- even if the guy initially thinks the woman is of age and breaks it off after she "reveals" she's underage, if he doesn't *immediately* stop the conversation as soon as he learns her age he can still get arrested. And these guys are often on adult hookup sites -- it's not like they're seeking out underage girls. (pp. 64-6)

I wouldn't recommend against this book, but I would hope there are better books out there -- as I do think the abolition of the sex offender registry is important, etc., and there's a lot of important information contained in this book, I just don't feel like it's a very well edited book.

(I also have some feelings about the author's take on Lena Dunham -- part of her "the left and the right both overreact when it comes to issues around sexual abuse of children" in the closing chapter -- and I feel like there was something else I side-eyed in this book that I can't remember now. I get that calls for criminalization are problematic #CarceralFeminism but I'm not inclined to let Dunham off the hook as much as Horowitz is.)

[Christopher Hudson Jr.]

A difficult subject to write about objectively. The format of the book may not be for everyone but the material is incredibly important and well-argued. The author switches between rational critiques of modern sex offender laws and attitudes, and personal accounts of individuals convinced of sex offenses or their loved ones. Despite popular opinion, our current responses to sex crimes aren’t evidence-based, they’re based on sex panic / stranger danger hysteria, and tough on crime fear mongering. There’s good data on what actually reduces sex crimes against children and adults, but instead we waste resources on useless methods like public registries with zero pushback from even people who claim to care about criminal justice reform. Combatting our injustice system requires us not only to deal with low hanging fruit, but to also reckon with unsympathetic people who’ve actually caused harm.

[Julia]

Not particularly well written but a good overview of many of the laws affecting people convicted of sex offenses and why they don't work.

[Meen]

An important topic and some good arguments here, but very poorly edited, so much so that it was distracting.