The latest issue of The Economist features an article entitled "America's unjust sex laws," about the collateral consequences of sex offenses - lifelong offender registration, residence restrictions, high rates of unemployment due to social stigma, harassment from neighbors, and the list goes on.
I was pleased to see cited in the article recommendations to make sex offender registries private, with citizens gaining access through some kind of moderated process - as opposed to the current state of affairs, where people surf offender databases seeking out "predators" in the immediate vicinity and pulling up their addresses, modus operandi, rap sheets, and even mug shots. Though convictions are listed prominently, with provocative words such as "sodomy" (an example named in The Economist article as well), the registries do not share the facts of the cases behind those convictions - facts that can radically change perceptions of both offense and offender.
Back when I studied Restorative Justice as part of my Criminology program, I wrote a research paper that examined whether and how we could reform sex offender laws - in specific, sex offender registries - to make them restorative as opposed to retributive. Restorative Justice operates on entirely different principles than the adversarial, and some would say, retributive system currently in place in the United States. Rather than seeking to punish people for offenses "against the state," Restorative Justice seeks to right the wrongs done to individual victims. The focus is not on which laws were broken, who broke them, and how they should be punished; instead, Restorative Justice seeks to identify what harms were done, what needs these harms created, and who is responsible for meeting these needs (Zehr, 2002, p. 21).
Victims - rather than offenders - are the central focus of Restorative Justice (Zehr, 2002). The idea is to restore victims' sense of safety and dignity and heal the community, while at the same time treating offenders with dignity and humanity. This can be achieved in many ways, which I will explore in future posts, but one key component is encouraging in offenders a sense of shame for wrong actions - not shame for oneself as a human being. This ideally leads to authentic apology, as well as acceptance of responsibility to right wrongs.
My concerns about sex offender registries were threefold:
First, collateral consequences, because they are not technically "sentences" (even though they largely function as such), lack the individualization necessary to be humane in application and effect. Courts cannot take into account the specific facts of an offense - say, that an 18-year-old man had sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend - when assigning offenders to registries. That 18-year-old man may wind up with his name and face on a registry for life - listed alongside a predatory serial rapist, as if they were morally equivalent. The public, unable to tell the difference, assumes the two are equally dangerous.
Second, the aesthetics of most registries encourage the public to repudiate the offender as opposed to the offense, which has profound consequences in terms of both an offender's ability to reintegrate and rehabilitate, as well as the actual effectiveness of the databases in decreasing recidivism.
Third, sex offender registries do precious little to empower citizens. Although their intent is to protect the public, they tend to fan the flames of fear and hate, while at the same time creating a false sense of security.
One of my solutions was to change the way registries are used, making them private instead of public, so when I read The Economist article, I was glad to see others thinking in a similar vein. Another was to change their aesthetics. Finally, I wanted to see more individualization in the cases to which they were applied. So I was right in line with some of the key concerns expressed in The Economist. I am glad to see the possibility of a real discussion about this issue, and I hope more coverage in the mainstream media will follow the excellent Economist article.
What follows will be a series of posts from that research paper for my Restorative Justice class back in 2006 (with the concession that changes have occurred since that time). These posts will not contain the full paper, and will be trimmed for my purposes here. This will launch a discussion of Restorative Justice as well, which is something I find extremely important not only for providing a new framework for justice in this country, but also for providing a more humane framework for writers to view their work.
References
Zehr, Howard. (2002). The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
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