Should Sex Offender Registration Be Changed ?

There are currently 62,000 names on the sex offender registry in Texas. There are those who say it has gotten so large that it can no longer effectively serve its original purpose -- to warn the public of sex offenders living in their neighborhoods. I don't agree with that, but I do think there are probably some on the list who don't belong there because they don't pose a serious risk to the public.

It's just a fact that all sex offenders are not the same (and not all of them are dangerous). Take for instance a 19 year old boy who dated and had sex with a 15 or 16 year old girl. This is not something the general public would like to see happen and it is against the law, but it doesn't generally mean the offender is a predator who poses a danger to the community. He certainly shouldn't be put in the same class as a violent rapist, stalker or abuser of small children.

In the last legislative session here in Texas a law was introduced and passed by both houses that would have given judges discretion on whether to place a person on the offender registry if the person was 18 or 19 years old and had sex with a person not over four years younger (it was called the teenage lovers bill). Governor Perry vetoed the bill.

I agree with the governor's veto for several reasons (although it makes me very uncomfortable to agree with this governor about anything). I'm sure he did it to avoid making his right-wing supporters angry, but there are some valid reasons for vetoing the bill. Some of these are:

1. It should not be up to a judge whether a person goes on the registry or not. Some judges are very strict and some are not, but people committing the same crime should get the same treatment from the court. It is simply not fair that one person goes on the offender registry because he was unlucky enough to get a strict judge while another is not put on the offender registry because he was lucky enough to get a lenient judge.

2. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (a federal law) take effect in about a year and require all states to have uniform kinds of sex offender registry which would rate the offenders according to the crime committed. Any state that does not conform to the rules in this federal law will lose federal funds to offset the cost of keeping the sex offender registry (about $2.2 million for Texas). Texas cannot afford to bypass any more federal funds (because they are already looking at a huge deficit for the next biennium).

3. All states need to use the same rules for registering sex offenders. This would prevent sex offenders (especially the dangerous ones) from shopping around for a state with lenient registration laws. It would also let the offender know what the registration requirements are if he did move to a different state and remove the excuse of "I didn't know this state required me to register".

There probably are people being required to register that really don't pose a risk and should be removed from the list. However, it would be a mistake to address this on a state-by-state basis. If the law must be changed, then it should be changed on the federal level so all the states are still doing the same thing.

Dangerous sex offenders should be registered and tracked by law enforcement officials. There is no doubt of that. But it should be done the same in all states. Texas should change its law, but only to bring it into compliance with the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (and all other states should do the same).