Psychological law assignment

Child Sex Offender Registries: Psychological Law Assignment

Henry Mack

Grantham University

December 2, 2019

The question of whether children should be registered in sex offenders’ registries lies in the impacts and effectiveness of such registries. To begin with, many individuals are not aware of Sex Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) and the purpose it serves. Essentially, the SORN captures personal information of people who are convicted of various sex offenders. This information is then availed to the public. With this in mind, children should not be captured in sex offender registries (Letourneau, 2017; Stillman, 2016).

The contemporary sex offender registry emanates from the Federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act which was drafted so as to provide conditions under which juveniles who committed sexual offenses could be captured in the registry. All states were advised to comply with the provisions of this Act, failure to which there were to face federal budget cuts. However, not all states have been in compliance for various reasons which premise why such registries should not exist for juvenile sex offenders (Letourneau, 2017; Stillman, 2016).

First, the implementation and maintenance of these registries can be costly at both federal and state levels. This especially applies to large states the financial costs of implementation are significantly higher than the amount of funds they would lose from the budget cuts. Thus, it would be financially prudent for such states to have other regulations geared towards curbing juvenile sex offenders other than keeping the juvenile sex offender registry (Letourneau, 2017; Stillman, 2016).

Secondly, the Adam Walsh act only makes a blanket provision for characterization of sex offenders. If these requirements were strictly followed by the state agencies responsible for their implementation, then minor offense such as streaking or “sexting” could see many juveniles registered as sex offenders. Such minor offenses would then clog these registries and consequently the major offenses such as rapes could get lost in this pool. This implies that the major sex offenders who duly deserve prosecution under the law could get lost in the crowd of offenders (Letourneau, 2017; Stillman, 2016).

According to statistics, there has been no significant reduction in the number of juvenile sex offenses in states that maintained the SORN. This is based on an analysis of six states that have SORN laws including Utah, Oregon and South Carolina. This analysis shows that no justification could be drawn that observing SORN laws reduced the number of child sex offenses. Besides, this analysis revealed that no considerable trends in control offenses could be established hence implying that the SORN laws have had insignificant impact on the patterns of juvenile sex offenses. This analysis builds the body of evidence that registering juvenile sex offenders and may be inhibitive to their growth and psychological well-being as they progress into their adulthood (Letourneau, 2017; Stillman, 2016).

The reasons above point out that while it is in the public interest to keep at minimum the instances of juvenile sex offenses, forcing children to register as sex offenders, alongside adults, is not effective. Thus, focus should be on committing resources towards preventing juveniles from engaging in sex offenses without victimizing them nor jeopardizing their future. This means that states should be encouraged to observe a risk assessment-based registration of sex offenders. This way, only the major offenders should be registered and minor offenders, with least probability of re-offending, given a chance to reform and amend their ways (Letourneau, 2017; Stillman, 2016).

References

Letourneau, E. (2017). Should Children Register as Sex Offenders. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/prevention-now/201704/should-children-register-sex-offenders.

Stillman, S. (2016). When Kids are accused of sex crimes. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-accused-of-sex-crimes.