The Community Notification Registry is More than a Hit list for just Murderers.

Everyone quotes  the Department of Justice study done in 1997 that looked at offenders released in 1994. The government has rehashed the study and done their best to make sex offenders look bad. This study was re-evaluated in 2001, 2002, and again in 2003 for the governments part. They like to point to the fact that  5.3% (517) of the 9,691 sex offenders released in 1994, were rearrested for a new sex crime, then they grudgingly admit that 3.5% (339) were reconvicted in a new sex crime. Since the government has been so kind as to point this 3.5% out, what they have overlooked is the fact that 34% of all the former sex offenders who were arrested, were not reconvicted and many of those were likely falsely accused. So over one-third of the people that are on the registry and charged with a new sex crime, may have likely been falsely accused.

Once a person has been convicted of sexually related crime and has their name posted on community notification they become easy targets for not only for vigilante murderers, but also all other types of vigilantes, including those that choose to falsely accuse them of new crimes. Fully one-third of the people arrested were able to prove their innocence, but I’m quite sure that a large number who were accused were never arrested simply because the accusations were so obviously false.

Any time that a group comes out with a study and tries to use the percentage of arrests to justify a high re-offense rate this point needs to be brought to the forefront, because in this country, unless you’re found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of a crime, you have not committed one.

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