Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States

Movement to reform sex offender laws in the United States is a growing nationwide movement that works towards reforms in sex offender registries in the United States. The movement consist of more than 50 state level organizations, at least one in each state. The cause of the movement is supported by researchers and some child safety advocates, such as Patty Wetterling, and organizations like Human Right Watch and ACLU.

The participants in the movement argue that indiscriminate placement of offenders in the sex offender registry may undermine their ability to rehabilitate because of the social stigma and other hardship related to sex offender registration. They assert that sex offender registries are overly broad as they reach to non-violent offenses, such as sexting or consensual teen sex and target people who are not sexual predators but who have rather made a mistake, and keep unfairly punishing the offender even decades after serving their sentences.

They say that registries should be available for law enforcement only and that officials should be more judicious in deciding who poses a risk instead of the current policies applied to all offenders indiscriminately, as every case and defendant’s story is different. The movement points to lack of evidence to support effectiveness of sex offender registries or residency restrictions, and notes that collateral consequences of sex offender registration, such as social stigma, unemployment, homelessness and vigilante attacks extend also to the families of registrants.

A primary argument for the reform of sex offender laws is that sex offender registration inherently encourages vigilante action by those who use sex offender lists to locate, harass, attack, and even murder registered sex offenders. [1] Due to widespread access to the Internet, many sex offender lists are easily located by those wishing to intimidate or otherwise harm registered offenders. Even though law enforcement officials strongly condemn using the sex offender registries for the purposes of harm and harassment, dozens of recorded cases occur each year of crimes against registered offenders. [2]

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