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This page is part of a proposal to ReformSexOffenderLaws.org. This is not an official part of that website yet.

Notes and Documentation: Cover page | Topical Index

RSOL Proposal: Work Needed

RSOL Proposal: Work Needed

Re proposal for Notes and Documentation pages for ReformSexOffenderLaws.org
  • Notes page
    • Notes for which correction is needed in the claims they refer to on RSOL pages:

      • Note I-3: “Most registered sex offenders have never committed sexual offenses against minors.”
           — I've begun some analysis of my registry data on this. First indications are that the above quote may not be correct.

      • Note I-15: “Some states now allow the death penalty for some sex offenses against minors when murder or even physical violence is not alleged.”
           — The above quote should be changed, such as to: "Until overruled by the Supreme Court, six states had attempted to institute the death penalty for sex offenses involving children when murder or even physical violence was not alleged."

      • Note I-16: “In some states, accused persons may be held for long periods in isolation and without specific charges.”
           — We may want to remove this claim entirely, unless there are some cases we can cite. The examples given in this note do not fit what is being claimed here.

      • Note I-23: “There are nearly 700,000 registered sex offenders.”
           — The above quote should be changed, such as to: "There are over 500,000 registered sex offenders in the United States."

      • Note I-26: “The youngest person now required to register is six years old”
           — The note following assumes the above quote is changed to: "The sex offender registry includes children as young as eleven years old"

      • Note S-3: “There are now about two million persons --adults and children-- who are identified as sex offenders, either in prison, on parole, registered or being sought as unregistered.”
           — The note following assumes the above quote is changed by changing "two million" to "700,000". In addition, the following could be added on the Statement page: ", and upwards of 2 million family members living with the consequences of the sex offender registries."

      • Note S-4: “… registration and classification is required of … children as young as six years old”
           — The note following assumes the above quote is changed by changing "six" to "eleven", i.e., changed to: "… registration and classification is required of … children as young as eleven years old".

      • Note S-10: “Mandatory chips … may be implanted in the bodies of offenders in some jurisdictions.”
           — The note following assumes the above quote is changed to: "Mandatory chips … have been considered by some jurisdictions for implantation into the bodies of offenders."

      • Note S-16: “… only a small percentage of sex offenders were convicted of crimes against minors (and an even smaller percentage against young children)”
           — The above quote may not be correct, along with Note I-3, q.v..

      • Note S-21: “If convicted, they [children accused of sex offenses] are often forced to comply with the same public registries and life-time commitment as adults.”
           — The note following assumes the above quote is changed by striking "and life-time commitment", i.e., changed to: "If convicted, they [children accused of sex offenses] are often forced to comply with the same public registries as adults.".

      • Note S-28: “Four states have mandated the death penalty for some sex offenses [not involving death], and other states are considering the death penalty for a second sex offense.”
           — The note following assumes the above quote is changed, such as to: "Six states attempted to institute the death penalty for nonviolent sex offenses involving children, until it was struck down by the Supreme Court."

      • Note S-30: “One wonders why all this doesn't raise red flags at least among human rights advocates”
           — It might be a good idea to change the above quote and its following clause, such as to "Red flags raised about all this by human rights advocates attract little attention. Unfortunately, this is quite similar in nature to previous panics aimed at other groups."

      • Note S-38: “laws that provide the death penalty [for sex offenders]”
           — The objective of abolishing these laws has been accomplished! This does not belong in the list of actions being called for anymore, or else there should be an indication (perhaps with some fanfare) that it has been accomplished.

    • Notes needing work by me:
      • Note I-3: I need to complete the analysis of offense categories that might indicate whether the quote for this not is correct.
      • Note I-13: I need to pull together a list of some of the best references I've found on recovered memories. And also reference the cases in the False Accusations table (Note I-11) that involve recovered memories.
      • Note S-18: I need to compile my research on recidivism rates and give some specific statistics to back up the claim that they are low for sex offenders.
      • Note S-37: I need to cover registration of juvenile sex offenders whether their actions were consensual or not, either as part of Note I-7 or in a separate note and/or article.

  • Articles

  • Longer-term projects
    • (Formerly Note U-2) Consider where to incorporate the following relevant references:
      • Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART), the agency of the US Justice Department responsible for the national SO registry
      • Sex Offenses and Offenders: An Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault, Bureau of Justice Statistics (US DoJ), February 1997 (Description) — Why have these data not been updated in ten years?
      • Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement: Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics by Howard N. Snyder, National Center for Juvenile Justice, July 2000 (Description)
      • Criminal Victimization, 2006, Bureau of Justice Statistics (US DoJ), December 2007 (Description and links for other years) — Table 2 shows that rape/sexual assault accounted for 4.5% of total violent crimes in 2006 (272k out of 6.1M). "Violent crimes" meant rape/sexual assault, robbery, or assault. The HRW report cited the analogous 3.7% from the 2005 edition of this document.
      • Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Rape Victimization: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, National Institute of Justice (US DoJ), January 2006 (Reporting results of survey conducted in 1995-96 (Why published ten years later?)), reporting results of survey conducted in 1995-96 (Why published ten years later?) — Rather startling statistic that only 19% of rapes of adult females and 13% of rapes of adult males were reported to police. "Rape" meant actual or attempted oral, vaginal, or anal penetration by penis or object using force or threat. Oral penetration included male perpetrator putting penis into victim's mouth or any perpetrator "penetrating" victim's vagina or anus with mouth or tongue. The fact that more completed than attempted rapes were indicated suggests most of these acts would fall into the category that the Criminal Victimization study would call "rape," not "sexual assault" (i.e., they were not just unwanted touching, but actual or attempted penetration by force or threat). The authors extrapolate their results to estimate that 300k women and 93k men were raped in the previous year (Exhibit 1). These numbers would outstrip the total number of rapes and sexual assaults reported in Criminal Victimization for 2006.
        A question this raises is what proportion of non-rape sexual assaults and what proportion of nonsexual violent crimes went unreported. For example, if most robberies and physical assaults are reported and most sexual assaults are not, then sexual crimes represent a greater proportion of violent crimes than indicated by Criminal Victimization. On the other hand, if 80% of all violent crimes go unreported (not infeasible since most reported violent crimes are "simple" assaults, meaning a deadly weapon was not used and there was no serious injury), then the proportion of sexual crimes is as indicated in Criminal Victimization, but the total violence in our society is much greater than reported there.
      • Sexual Victimization of College Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics (US DoJ), 2000 (Description)
      • Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2006, Bureau of Justice Statistics (US DoJ), August 2007 (Description and links for other years) — Prison rape

    • Distinguishing violent from peaceful sexual offenses
      • The NIBRS Codebook defines sex offenses in a way that makes classification on the basis of violence of the offense impossible. Three problems I notice:
        • Since forcible sodomy includes anal intercourse (offense category A-19-B), what is meant by forcible rape ("carnal knowledge") of a male (A-19-A)?
        • Offense category A-19-A says, "If no force … was used and the victim was under the statutory age of consent, the crime should be classified as statutory rape." Category A-20-B says, "If … the victim was incapable of giving consent because of his/her youth …, the offense should be classified as forcible rape, not statutory rape." At first, these statements seem to defy classification of consensual sexual intercourse with a minor. But note that the second one says "because of his/her youth," not "because of his/her age." This allows the interpretation that it is statutory rape if the victim was a minor mature enough to consent and that it is forcible rape if the victim was a minor who was not that mature. This interpretation is supported by what follows in the notes to A-19-A, "The ability of the victim to give consent must be a professional determination by the law enforcement agency. The age of the victim, of course, plays a critical role in this determination. Individuals do not mature mentally at the same rate. Certainly, no 4-year-old is capable of consenting, whereas victims aged 10 or 12 may need to be assessed within the specific circumstances." This is an amazing statement, which goes against the principle of the age of consent. We have here a situation where police officers are being called upon to assess the ability of a minor, even as young as ten, to consent to sexual intercourse, an ability which is, under the law, impossible. Nonetheless, police agencies are being asked to distinguish between forcible and statutory rape on the basis of such an assessment.
        • Category A-20, nonforcible sex offense, includes only incest and statutory rape, where the latter is limited to sexual intercourse. This means that there is no place to classify non-intercourse sexual activity with a minor outside the immediate family other than under one of the forcible sex offenses. This is probably the worst problem because it is likely that most sexual abuse of boys is nonpenetrative (either fondling or oral) and probably gets classified under forcible fondling and forcible sodomy, which hides any information about whether it was violent or not.
        My guess is that police respond to this definitional quagmire by classifying sexual activity with minors in whatever arbitrary fashion they individually choose, and that there is never any check on the accuracy or uniformity of the classification used for such cases. This renders any breakdown according to violence meaningless. Perhaps the best one can do with the existing data is to consider the cases classified as nonviolent as giving a lower bound on the number of actually nonviolent cases, where the correct number is necessarily much greater, but how much greater is impossible to determine.

        I sent an e-mail on 2008 01 23 to the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), which manages the NIBRS for the FBI, to inquire about these problems.

      • In Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, National Center for Juvenile Justice, March 2006 (Linked and previous editions at Publications), five tables in Chapter 6 break down juvenile court cases by most serious offense type. The categories include rape, other violent sex offense, and nonviolent sex offense. The sources cited are "Stahl et al.’s Juvenile Court Statistics 2001–2002" (pg 157, 172) and "National Center for Juvenile Justice’s National Juvenile Court Data Archive: Juvenile Court Case Records 1985–2002 [machine-readable data file]" (p 160, 162, 174). I want to check those sources and see if their distinctions between violent and nonviolent sex offenses were based on NIBRS data or something else.

      • In Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, National Center for Juvenile Justice, March 2006 (Linked and previous editions at Publications), p 37 indicates that only 18% of statutory rape offenders of females were juveniles. (Corresponding statistics were not given for males victims.) The 1999 edition of the report showed 24..43% of sexual assault offenders being juveniles (for different victim age groups). Since the former are supposed to be consensual and the latter are supposed to be violent, this would suggest that coersion was used more by juveniles than by adults. That would be interesting and deserves greater analysis. But the difference may just as well be evidence of the corruption of the NIBRS data due to the crime definitions, as discussed above. (Could there be a political reason for the emphasis on "few ... juvenile offenders" in the headline of that page after the 1999 report showed a significant number of juvenile sex offenders? Is somebody trying to pretend that there are not a lot of juveniles on the SO registries?)

    • (Formerly part of Note U-1) I want to give an overview of the panoply of victim-named laws, such as Megan's law, Jessica's law, etc., and what the common features are of laws with these names in the various states. One useful reference: History: Violent sex attacks lead to tough laws, GateHouse News Service, August 20, 2007.

    • History of Sexual Repression (Formerly Note U-1)

           I want to write an article giving the historical context of all this madness. Some accounts I've read trace it back to the CAPTA Act of 1974. A book on the sexual revolution (reference needed) referred to the sexual oppression raised by the Nazis when they came to power in the 1930s. (He didn't talk about this, but the pink triangle armband was analogous to today's public notification.) I think it goes back much farther than that. I have some references in notes of other research about the treatment of masturbation in the 1800s, which seems analogous to how we treat juvenile sex offenders today. Also, I've heard that the witch hunts in New England in the 1700s were largely targeted at lesbians. One can go much farther back and blame it all on the Bible, but actually, it seems that much of the last two thousand years may have been more sexually liberated than the last few hundred. So I want to look into that and see if I can find the real roots of this thing.

           Some resources identified on the more recent aspects of this are

Notes and Documentation: Cover page | Topical Index
This page is part of a proposal to ReformSexOffenderLaws.org. This is not an official part of that website yet.
 

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