Why Sexual Registration is Doomed for Failure

In case you haven't noticed, here is what is happening in the land of expanded sexual registration. What started out as a well-intentioned idea to track sexual predators in the 1990's is turning in to a voluminous list of non-predators who have shown no predisposition to be a predator. Nobody can fault citizens and the government to create initiatives to eradicate the pathological beasts who prey on children. Short of catching and castrating them, the odds are their sexual depravations are likely to remain.

At this point in time, after the passage of the Adam Walsh Act just 5 years ago, we have expanded the rosters of registration to include men and women who committed crimes that do not have anything to do with pedophilia or predatory sexual malfunction. Voyeurism, sexting, and a high school boy who records the naked image of his 17 year old girlfriend, with her consent, are all subject to Tier 1 sexual registration under the Adam Walsh Act. That is 15 years as a convicted sex offender.

Meanwhile, for every non-threatening sex offender on the list, it hides the name of a legitimate threat. If we only put the names of predators on the list, then the list makes more sense. The false sense of security is eventually going to get exposed and its effectiveness will be questioned.

I hate to say it but the odds are another child will become a victim of a predator. A predator who was a convicted sex offender. A predator on probation who failed to check in on time. Who disappeared. But, the sheriff's office never knew in time because they were too busy working all the thousands of non-predator offenders. Intake, photos, online updating, checking in and the like. Sheriff's offices are not funded adequately to monitor and process all these folks.

Every year we add thousands of more non-violent, non-predators to the catalog of men and women that need supervised while the true threats get to hide and go unregistered much easier. In a perverse way, the only folks who benefit from The Adam Walsh act and the explosion of sexual regisrants are the guys the law was designed to protect our children from.