Against the Sex Offenders Registry

Dear Editor,

I read your editorial about the Sex Offenders Registry report in Samoa.

I don’t know Samoa law or how things work there so I will only comment in regard to the experience in the U.S.

In the U.S., experts never supported the Sex Offender Registries (SORs). Over the past couple of decades it has been clearly proven that they were right to not support them. Today, there are no informed, intelligent, un-biased Americans who support the SORs.

The SORs are idiotic, counterproductive, destructive social policy. They are negligibly beneficial and unnecessary - the reason for that is because nearly all sex crimes are committed by people who are not Registered (are not “Registered Citizens (RCs)”). In order to protect anyone from being a victim, the person must be protected from ALL people and if/once that is done, there is no need at all to know anything special about anyone who is an RC. And if a person is not protected from ALL people, then they aren’t protected at all and knowing about any particular RC won’t change their risk in any significant way.

Further, the SORs protect no one. We have seen in the U.S. over and over and over again that even when a neighborhood knows that a person who lives near them is an RC and the neighborhood completely ostracizes the RC, that RC very easily and trivially lives a complete, full life away from anywhere he or she is Registered and interacts only with people who have no idea that the person is Registered and never will. And IF the RC wants to commit any crime, he or she can easily do it without being hindered by the SORs at all.

Justice Vui said that SORs would provide a means such that “such offenders can be supervised and monitored post-release from prison”. 

In the U.S., it is not possible at all to supervise or monitor anyone who is merely listed on the SORs. Law enforcement (LE) loves to lie and wants the public to believe that is happening, but it has no basis in reality at all. In fact, nearly all RCs won’t let LE get anywhere near them or ever communicate with them for any reason. There is no supervision or monitoring going on at all. Most RCs ensure the opposite happens.

But unfortunately, the SORs are not just merely worthless, they are much worse. All the while they are protecting no one, they cause grave harm. The SORs are all about harassment and the families who are harassed for decades stop caring about other people or being good citizens. The SORs are completely divisive. The SORs have directly caused the murder of innocent children. The list of harm from the SORs is long. I’ve already written too much so I won’t even start into it.

The title of your article is correct in that people have a right to be protected from sex offenders. 

But SORs don’t do anything like that. Further, there is no special right for sex offenses that does not exist for all other serious crimes. There are no legitimate excuses to only create SORs and not create 100 other Registries. The U.S. has completely failed there and that alone is complete proof that the SORs are not REALLY for “public safety”, “protecting children”, or any of those other lies. 

The primary use of the SORs is harassment, growing big government, and making uninformed people feel good.

 

Will Allen

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