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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by James Cantor (talk | contribs) at 00:49, 7 March 2011 (→Edit request from LODweed, 2 March 2011: cmt). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Although I don't necessarily question the findings of the DoJ study, I have one problem - the study says there's like 234,000 sex crimes a day. That translates to roughly 84,000,000 a year - so evenly distributed, about one in three people are sex criminals (every year). Unevenly distributed (say as many as 5 are for a person per year) then that makes the rate about 17 million people per year which translates to roughly one in 17.5 people committing 5+ sex crimes a year. To me at least this sounds ridiculous. Another thing:

http://www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org/materials/10myths.php

That site shows distinctly different figures from more recent studies. Some important, like 93% of molestation is done by trusted members of families. Second, at least two state studies show relocation is ineffective in preventing recidivism. Also sex offender registries don't openly distinguish statutory and non-statutory rape. I'd also like to note that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is 5.3%, yet the DoJ says they recidivism rate for any offense is 43% - I'm wondering how much of it is persecution, like if any study showed the majority of the charges were things like tresspassing, menacing, etc, any offense which can be thrown at someone and they'll be shoved back in prison/jail, even if there's no evidence.

Also, anyone care to mention the 14 year old sex offender? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/03/26/2009-03-26_14yearold_new_jersey_girl_may_get_sex_of.html I think there should be at least some youth section, talking about the controversy with charging minors with sexual crimes, especially if there's no "victim" (as in they cases in which they publish media of themselves)

Finally, the wiki is literally a copy-paste of the DoJ page. At minimum, the info should be condensed like "Recidivism" - Sex offenders re-offend an estimated x%<citation> times within 3 years and x% within a lifetime for sex crimes. Other criminal offense recidivism rates are typically x% within a lifetime. At least TRY to reduce all that space and prevent copy/paste. I will admit people (especially fanatics) will link a bajillion references putting sex offenders at like a 150% recidivism rate after 1 minute of freedom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.205.97.220 (talk) 20:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a note--would someone care to add information on the tier systems, for examples, from a CNN post today, an article mentions that an offender was a convicted tier three offender (link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/24/ohio.missing.girl/index.html ), a definition of a tier system would be great--I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Contested move

I'm trying to understand why people are constantly moving this page to "Child sex offender" when the page is supposed to talk about more than child sex offenders. Please stop? Pretty please?--Rookiee 18:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it is "supposed" to talk about other offenders, but at the moment it only talks about child sex offenders. If you want to keep the title, please bring in additional material. -Willmcw 20:20, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The "Sex Offenders' Register" in the UK has expanded in scope but seems to be commonly understood as covering only "child sex offences". 81.178.224.140 00:01, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Human Rights Watch

It looks like someone just copied another web page into this article. 71.179.35.115 19:45, 23 October 2007 (UTC) (DavidJCobb)

"Convicted"

I'm sure I read about a "caution" or something similar resulting in registration. Can't remember if UK or US. Rich Farmbrough. 21:17, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Possibley Pete Townshend? Rich Farmbrough. 21:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Accepting a Police caution for a relevant offence does indeed make one subject to the requirement to notify. See part II of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. 81.178.224.140 23:59, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

9.1 million sex offenders in LA?

How could this be possible when only 3.5 million people live in Los Angeles? -Unsigned

Some redacting

Made some edits, reasons being:

• "The word (sex offender) is also widely used in public discourse to describe persons accused of participating in sexually offensive behavior, irrespective of whether or not they were actually charged and convicted.

Hmmm. Well, I would certainly think that it wouldn't be used that way in public discourse by any entity that could be sued. That is, I would be very surprised if a newspaper or TV station etc. were to say "Sex offender Joe Smith spoke today at the Lions Club..." or whatever if Smith had never been charged with a crime (or even if he had been charged but never convicted). And I live in the USA where libel/slander laws are looser than the the UK. So um this just doesn't seem to fly. Of course, alleged this-or-that is applied people who are, well, alleged to have done this-or-that (by the authorities or by authoritative sources, of course). But that applies to all human activities ("Alleged uber-bitch Josephine Smith..."). So I can't see singling it out for sex offenders is particular.

Now, if the editor is saying that ordinary people in private conversation use "sex offender" to mean "person that my cousin says is a sex offender", two questions arise: 1) verifiability of that, and 2) so what. People refer to other people in private conversation as jerks, cheaters, crooks, tightwads, and on and on based on little evidence, I guess. So why are we specifically talking about that here in regard to sex offenders? So I'm removing that passage, subject to debate of course.

• "The tolerance for deviant sexual behavior and sex crimes in western society has declined drastically over the last 20 years"

Er, is this true? What is meant here by "deviant sexual behavior"? If (say) homosexuality, I'd definitely have to see some good cites on that... I think the common feeling (not always right, I know) is that gays are if anything more tolerated than in 1985. If it's criminal-type "deviant" behavior (don't like that word "deviant" - can we find another?)... Which sex crimes were drastically more tolerated in 1985 than now? I can't think of any. Was (say) rape really really significantly more tolerated in the West in 1985 than now? Child sex abuse? What, exactly? Anyway I'm removing that passage, subject to debate and some good citations, of course.

• "As a result, unlike other crimes, the term "sex offender" often stigmatizes ex-convicts for the rest of their lives.

So um "murderer" does not stigmatize someone for the rest of their lives? "Embezzler"? "Bank robber"? Hmmmm I'm not sure I agree with that. I think what the editor is trying to talk about is the Sex Offender Registries. If so, he should say so.

• A significant portion of the public believes that those who have committed sex crimes are "incurable"...

Lose the scare quotes. Other than that, the rest of the article is OK for now I guess, although it's not very good or balanced, but enh for now whatever.

Actually I don't see why this article exists. In the article Sex crime you have "Sex crimes are forms of human sexual behavior that are crimes. Someone who commits one is said to be a sex offender" which pretty much covers it. A reasonable exposition on the sex offender registries, the indefinite incarceration of "sexually dangerous persons", etc. might be a reason for the article, but as it stands the article is pretty lame.Herostratus 06:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge

I'm OK with merging the two articles. Herostratus 05:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I would be in favor of keeping Sex offender registration separate. It definitely can support a separate article by itself. –SESmith 09:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Do not merge Merging articles makes sense when one or both or the related articles are relatively short. But as I have noticed, when an article gets long, it tends to be split, with conspicuous links between them. Both these articles are quite long, and therefore belong separate. Shaliya waya 13:07, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Iowa

This section, while informative, seems really out of place and would be better suited in the article on Iowa. -Unsigned

Adding the word plysmograph to Misplaced Pages

I was doing a research paper on On-Line Sex Offenders, and while talking to an investigator here in Denver, CO he mentioned that many states are now using an additional test called a plysmograph. The only source of information I am able to find is that it was orginated in 2002 and known as the "Pervo Parks Penile Plysmograph". I think there should be further investigation into this word and added to the sex offender page because it is a requirement in many states now as part of probabtion. -Adam Aberle of Denver, CO, ajax2up@msn.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.218.226.203 (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC).

Be bold, add it to the Wiktionary —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dfpc (talk • contribs) 17:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

It's called a penile plethysmograph, not a "plysmograph." Daivox 19:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Recividism rates

Recidivism rates vary widely depending on the study that is being looked at. Rates from 3% (Bureau of Justice Statistics) to 95.9% (Langevin) can be found. The focus of recidivism studies may vary widely. Each study may be looking at a mix of particular types of sex offenders such as rapists, pedophiles, voyeurs and/or individuals caught via online stings. The study group can be offenders who were only given probation, or individuals who were released from a mental institution. The general trend of these studies is that the longer sex offenders are studied, then the higher the recidivism rate. Richardpowers1 18:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)richardpowers1

Of course, if you take one group of people and study them for one year, five years, ten years, or even thirty years, there is always a better chance of more recidivism. If the studied group remains the same throughout any given time frame, you will have a certain number of people at whatever arbitrary point in time is chosen that have recidivated. Now, how can recidivism stats go down in such a case? Those who have recidivated can't be counted twice, and those who haven't are the only ones remaining that can change the count; the count can only move up if the initial group is unmodified over time. Your comment is a convenient twisting of what is otherwise quite obvious, and you haven't provided sources to back anything you just said up, and I would caution all readers here to be very wary of the presentation chosen by those who comment. What exactly WAS the point of your comment, again? Judging by your choice of wording and your decision to withhold any credible sources, I must say that I have a "perception of deception." An item of interest, since you mention "Langevin," would be the summary of a bigger article on the subject here: http://www.ccja-acjp.ca/en/cjc/cjc48a1.html#four Daivox 22:39, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

The general trend of these studies is that the longer sex offenders are studied.... This is expected. For a given set of subjects and a given set of criteria, would be impossible otherwise. If 5% of them re-offend in the first 5 years after release, then the 10-year recidivism rate will include these 5% plus everyone who re-offended in years 6-10. The "interesting" number that you rarely see is how long before the person becomes very unlikely to re-offend. That is, if he's been clean for X years, we can safely assume he's no more likely to re-offend for the rest of his life than a person of similar age/gender/what-not that never offended in the first place. Once a person falls into the "no more than average" risk, it's a waste of resources to keep him on the sex-offender registry. Dfpc 23:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Georgia

I watched this set of edits go by an an antivandalism editor, and while I am hesitant to revert good-faith editing, I have huge problems with the changes that were made to the Georgia section today: (1) it doesn't fit stylistically, (2) it's not at all NPOV, it even makes Misplaced Pages appear to take a stance on pending litigation, and (3) it's a very disproportionately large part of the article now. Rather than just revert it, I'm going to bend over backwards in an attempt to salvage it, and edit it into more suitable form. Poindexter Propellerhead 21:10, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

03/10/2009 - The user Bionga has screwed up the GEORGIA section by copying it, and modifying it with the ILLINOIS label, and thus causing issues with the GEORGIA section. Can someone consider undoing their changes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.131.23.35 (talk) 04:23, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Illinois has the laws mentioned in the 'Georgia/Illinois section'. Illinois law clearly states that no sex offender may live within less than 3 miles and 6 city blocks of any school, church, park, playground, day care center, and any place where minors are known to congregate, and that no sexual predator may live within less than 6 miles and 2 city blocks of the aforementioned places, nor may any sex offender live within less than 1,000 feet of a residence that contains individuals under 18 years of age, and nor may any sexual predator live within less than 5 miles of a residence that contains minors. In addition, Illinois law really does require castration of all sex offenders and sexual predators. Boinga (talk) 07:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Gack! This is one of the ugliest pages I've ever seen. I removed most of the state-by-state legalistic info (which doesn't belong in an encyclopedia), and summed it up briefly in the first paragraph. However, there is a lot more that needs to be done. Especially, many sections are headed with "Source:" followed by a link to a website, which is not in keeping with our WP:MOS. I'll be continuing cleanup efforts, and help would be appreciated. To whoever's work I just deleted....sorry, but it really didn't belong here. It's often best to discuss things like that on the takpage first, to avoid having large amounts of your work deleted. Doc Tropics 20:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no issue with anything you're doing. An editor had changed some of the content significantly just before you deleted things last night and I saw that too much of what the editor added (which was at the least, quite wrong) still remained and couldn't easily be extracted from the current version, so I decided it was best to go back to a version prior to that edit and go from there. I am sorry that it undid some of your changes, but I didn't see a way not to do that. Cheers and good luck. Wildhartlivie (talk) 01:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks W. Sometimes things just get messy and the only fix is a restart. It needed a lot more work anyway, so no great loss. thanks for such a clear edit summary tho, that really helped. Happy editing! Doc Tropics 02:05, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no objections. I watch this article as a function of WP:CRIME. Some of the articles are a mess and need a hatchet and forty whacks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

"sex offender"?

The term “sex offender” is erroneous. It is a western/christian cultural phenomenon spawned by sexual oppression which includes homosexuals. In states where “sodomy” is officially illegal, homosexuals convicted or pleading guilty to such a “crime” are, by definition, “sex offenders”. How many people are on this so called “sex offenders registry” who’s only crime is being gay? What a horror. Western culture makes me sick. -amunptah777 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amunptah777 (talk • contribs) 14:38, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Criticism section needs a rewrite

The "criticism" section of this article is, basically, crap. There is no significant discussion of criticisms regarding the term "sex offender" or what it means, and I'm not entirely sure that "Criticisms" is an appropriate section to have in the first place. If it can't gather more than a single poorly-written semi-paragraph of content, we should remove it and put its content in other parts of the article. Daivox (talk) 00:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Concur. I've reviewed and deleted the section. It was off-topic, not about sex offenders, only about a mismanaged database; and, the source was of dubious reliability.--Jack-A-Roe (talk) 00:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Therapies section is poorly written

There are numerous errors in the 'Therapies' section of this article, and once again I do not have the time to fix it. If you have the time and inclination, please take a look at this section and demangle its contents as you deem appropriate; it has plenty of grammatical and punctuation errors, and that's just half the problem. Daivox (talk) 14:53, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

USA

Why does this only feature infomation about the USA? This article is far too biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.131.140.83 (talk) 11:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Be bold, introduce information about other nations' laws then, if you have found some information about them. Many contributers are US citizens therefore have more knowledge of the laws where they live. Also, I cleaned up. ESL? Tyciol (talk) 05:10, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Recidivism

This entire section is a confused collections of links and semi-random facts from the U.S. DOJ website. Personally, I really don't think that it adds enough useful content to the article to justify the space and verbage involved. I'd like to axe most of it and copy a couple of lines of useful content into the section above. Keeping the entire section would require a total rewrite and I find that very daunting. Are there any strong arguments for keeping the entire mess, or can I start whacking? Doc Tropics 02:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Unify the USDOJ information into one section. I've put the NC material back because information gleaned from the NC registry regarding recidivist-status offenders illustrates recidivism rates that are far lower than other studies which are more well-known. It is not state-specific legislation information, it is either an anomaly in recidivism rates or a very big problem with how accurate North Carolina's public registry information is. Please don't strip it out again without some specific discussion about why it should be removed; I feel that your reason as stated in the edit misses the point of the information's inclusion. Granted, though, it could use some rewording and needs to be more concise; I'm pretty horrible at being brief, so by all means, tear into it to shorten it and make it less confusing! Daivox (talk) 20:35, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is about a global issue and giving article space to a single (questionable) study from one U.S. state is going to be undue weight no matter how it is phrased. I understand that you feel the information belongs here, but imagine if we tried to include detailed information about every study ever published, or specific information from every legal jurisdiction in the world. Why is this information so special that it should be given space when we don't do the same for every other municipality in the world? Frankly, without strong references explicity backing up your opinions, both the reasons that you presented are nothing more than speculation (OR). In short, the study doesn't belong at all, and the USDOJ info needs to be reduced to a few (properly wikified) sentences, not several indepenent sections, which is what I had tried to do. Doc Tropics 15:52, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment

Anonymous said... I Work in the financial department of the California government in the Sacramento office. The laws do not work and not only do we know it but several of our so-called bosses are proud of it. The money spent does not even go where it is intended. In CA it costs the taxpayers OVER $1800 per unit PER MONTH for the electronic tracking units that we use. These units are LEASED at this price and they are no more complex than a cell phone transmitter with a GPS tracking chip. A similar program is happening in Texas. And the units are bad. They are badly designed as the signals drift from area to area causing several of our parolees to be violated for technical violations that they are not even responsible for. The units are so badly designed that they are even using NiCad batteries which are prone to fail with extended use. We have recently contracted a "psycho-therapy" company, "CPC Inc." claiming OVER 30 years experience in treating sex offenders and other such "criminals" in our state and others and, going over the financial records, discovered that they did not even exist thirty days ago. I went to one of their offices and was shocked to find a literally "fly by night" operation in which the signs on the door were handwritten on binder paper, perhaps two tables and laptop computers on the floor. When I reported this to my superiors I was outright threatened that if I should continue with this investigation or pursue ANY oversight that I would be attending those courses myself before long. I am afraid for my freedom and the safety of my family and children. I am under contract to the state and cannot even break said contract for fear of this. Almost the entirety of our golden state is now run by the equivalent of organized crime. This is the reason that unconstitutional, unjust and outright illegal laws Have been allowed, and forced, to pass. We are in the grip of the criminals that we have elected and I am guilty of this as any of you. My contract will be up soon and not only do I have no intention of renewing, I and my family are leaving the country. Should I make it that far. This is no longer the country that I was raised to believe in nor a place that I want my children to grow up in. Should I be able to before I leave I plan to release ALL of the financial records to the net and I encourage all within the state governments and especially any in the financial departments who feel as I do to do the same. As even with legal action they will not release them or if they do, it is published in such ways that make the records impossible to read as well as how much they receive in kickbacks. Even though they are blatant in such things. May God forgive us for what we have done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.202.79.188 (talk) 08:46, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Comment

Under Victims: Megan's Law was actually enacted Federally in 1996, not just in Ca. As well the Kanka family were NJ residents at the time the crimes were committed, which seems unclear (though maybe not significant).

Under Risk assessment: In addition to Static-99, for pre-release assessment of re-offense risk there are numerous other tests, including, but not limited to RRASOR (older than Static-99, but still used) and MinSOST (also Min-SOST/minsost/MINSOST).

Under Recidivism rates: As long as you are including stats from http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf how about including the never talked about but very real statistic found in Page 1:Highlights:paragraph 3 - During the study 517 sex offenders were rearrested for sex crimes and 3,328 non-sex offending felons were arrested for sex crimes, the sex offenders accounted for only 7.4% of the arrests for sex offenses during the study. This might indicate a flaw in the penal system as there seem to be more sex offenders coming out than there are going in.

Maybe a section should be added to discuss controversies and contradictions? IDK 76.125.82.8 (talk) 15:21, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Victims: Adam Walsh

The section is long and without citations, it begins with an editorial comment, and most importantly is about a murdered boy. If there is evidence that the child was molested before being murdered then the section should be fixed up. Otherwise, it should simply be removed.

/mo'n —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.243.131.224 (talk) 00:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from LODweed, 2 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} Under the recidivism section, I think the following should be added:

One study with a follow-up period of 25 years, however, found that when "undetected crimes" were accounted for, the recidivism rate for sex offenders rose to 88.3%.

Ron Langevin et al., Lifetime Sex Offender Recidivism: a 25-Year Follow-Up Study, 46 Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, no. 5 (2004).

LODweed (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting fact, but could you clarify how exactly 'undetected crimes' are accounted for? It goes without saying that by virtue of being undetected the crimes are not accounted for. Intelligentsium 01:35, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template.—C45207 | Talk 00:39, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, sexual offense recidivism is a very complicated research field with many contradictory findings. Typically, we don't put much weight on individual, unreplicated findings. Personally, unless one is attempting to collect a comprehensive list of all reported findings, I would not overturn a very solid, very well-replicated finding on the basis of a single report in a relatively low-end journal. As they say, "One swallow doesn't make a summer"...or even more on point, "Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence." IMO.

— James Cantor (talk) 00:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)