Well, just about lots of everything, including:
– Growing evidence that recidivism among sex offenders is much lower than popularly thought.
– The fact that most sexual predation isn't done by strangers but by family and people who the family knows.
– The expansion of such registries beyond what we think of as sex offenders and predators (rapists, pedophiles) to include teens who have consensual sex, prostitutes, people who solicit prostitution, and people who publicly urinate — any of which you may or may not approve of, but which oughtn't put you on a sex registry for decades or for life.
– Extending the periods for which "sex offenders" are registered as such.
– Expanding what restrictions registered "sex offenders" live underneath, including checking in with the cops, procedures for moving, restrictions on jobs, restrictions on residences, etc.
The problem being, of course, that (a) databases are keen and can always be trusted! and (b) no legislator ever lost an election for treating "sex offenders" more harshly.
Don't get me wrong — I'm all in favor of strong punishment of rapists and child molesters. The problems is that these laws are aren't necessarily effective in stopping those crimes, are ever-expanding in who they sweep in, and are draconian (and often irrational) in their consequences. By treating a flasher the same as a rapist, or a prostitute the same as a serial child molester, not only are police overburdened in trying to keep an eye on the real threats, the utility of such registries is sharply reduced (whether the public knows it or not).
Slate has been running an an informative series about the matter this week:
Part 1: How national sex registry laws started, and why one of the folks questioning such laws was the woman who started it. http://goo.gl/c11tNi (linked below)
Part 2: How a lot more people get legally labeled "sex offenders" than you might think. http://goo.gl/1y9bNJ
Part 3: On the irregular durations (in California it's for life) of being on a sex offender registry. http://goo.gl/3WZgn0
Part 4: On what jobs a registered sex offender can't have (logically or not). http://goo.gl/lbWO3v
Part 5: What might be done about the mess (and why it's unlikely to happen any time soon). http://goo.gl/kxguvi
Sex Offender Laws Have Gone Too Far
On Oct. 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped while biking home from a convenience store. A masked gunman approached him, his brother, and a friend, and ordered the three boys off their bikes. After demanding to know their ages, he ordered Jacob’s brother and the friend to run into…
Dave, the sad thing that something like this is common with a lot of laws that originally made sense to enact, that has now grown to an ugly beast that has grown out of control.
+Victor Powell Yes. The core crimes under consideration are scary ones, and politicians, for a variety of reasons (their own fears, their constituent fears, demagoguery) are always willing to get "tough on crime."
As well, humans are bad at risk analysis and proportionality. A lot of these laws and law expansions are driven by fringe cases. An awful crime happens (as in the Wetterling case), and suddenly it's an epidemic of crime. A single person manages to escape what is seen as full justice, and so the law is expanded willy-nilly to cover what the person did, but also sweeping up all sorts of unexpected people in its wake.
+Dave Hill Exactly.