Research on sex offender laws and their effects on people and society

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Click on a question number to be taken to the answer.

No.

It’s easy to be complacent about sex offender laws — until one of them comes crashing down out of the blue on top of you or someone in your family. Unfortunately, it’s becoming easier and easier all the time for that to happen — with behaviors that most people consider perfectly healthy and acceptable, like breastfeeding or taking innocent pictures of their own babies in the buff. See the SOLR report, Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now!, for some heartbreaking examples.
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Note posted on August 24, 2007, updated January 10, 2008, January 28, 2009.

According to § 628(a)(11) of the Adam Walsh Act, 56 percent of victims of sexual assault are 18 or older. The act does not cite a source for this statistic. If correct, it would indicate that more sexual assaults are committed against adults than against children and adolescents.

Contrary to that, an initial analysis of the records of the 11,142 people on the public sex offender registry in Los Angeles County on April 14, 2008 shows that 7,447 of them (67 percent) are registered as a result of offenses whose descriptions indicate sexual activity with a juvenile. Of the total of 14,276 offenses shown on the registry for those individuals, the descriptions of 8,124 of them (57 percent) indicate sexual activity with a juvenile. [Analysis currently being prepared for publication on this website.]
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Note posted on August 24, 2007, updated January 10, 2008, January 28, 2009.

Some are. But many are not, unless you think breastfeeding your baby or taking a pee behind a dumpster makes you that dangerous!

	Source: National Public Radio

National Public Radio analyzed the sex offender registries¹ in April 2006 to determine which offenders are included on their public websites. It found that while 23 states only show those who are considered dangerous or are repeat offenders, 25 states “list hard-core predators alongside people who may pose no risk to the public.”

See the SOLR report, Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now!, for examples of fairly ordinary people who got caught doing fairly ordinary things that got some of them put on sex offender registries.

See also Q&A # 6 for information on registries that include those convicted of public urination, “streaking,” and “mooning.”
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1. Murders Put Focus on Sex-Offender Registry Policies, All Things Considered, National Public Radio (U.S.A.), April 21, 2006 (Audio report)
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Note posted on August 24, 2007, updated January 10, 2008.

Yes.

Public urination is typically charged under “indecent exposure” statutes, which also cover mischievous pranks, such as “streaking” and “mooning.” Here are some examples of people on the sex offender registries for such innocuous offenses.

• A Colorado man is on that state’s registry because of his conviction for a bout of drunken nudity in his own backyard in 2002. (See Absurdity Breakout: Laws end up targeting not-so-dangerous 'sex offenders', GateHouse News Service, August 20, 2007.)
• A Pennsylvania man is on his state’s registry for “streaking.” (See State Registration Laws in No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US by Sarah Tofte with research by Corinne Carey, Human Rights Watch, September 12, 2007.)
• Juan Matamoros pleaded guilty to public urination in Massachusetts in 1986. Because of that, 21 years later, he must move from the Florida home his family lives in because it is too close to a city park. (See Florida Banishes Man for Public Urination, MSNBC, March 2007.)
• A Chicago construction worker who relieved himself behind a garbage can in an alley was spotted by a police officer, arrested, and convicted of public urination and indecent exposure. As a Mexican immigrant, he was later rounded up for deportation by Homeland Security’s “Operation Predator.” (See Immigrant sex offenders targeted, Chicago Tribune, February 24, 2005.)
• Nancy Phipps was convicted of flashing a detective and will be on Oklahoma’s registry for that until 2012. In 2007, she moved into a homeless shelter with her 16-year-old daughter because residency restrictions barred her from 90 percent of the city they live in. (See Absurdity Breakout: Laws end up targeting not-so-dangerous 'sex offenders', GateHouse News Service, August 20, 2007.)
• In 1973, the California Supreme Court allowed James Birch to retract his plea of guilty to public urination because he did not know when he entered it the year before that it would make him subject to lifelong registration as a sex offender. (See case 10 Cal. 3d 314.)

In 2007, Human Rights Watch found thirteen states that require sex offender registration for public urination. While two limit the requirement to cases in which it was done in view of a minor, the other eleven states have no such limitation.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 15, 2008, January 24, 2008.

While some people consider any kind of sexual activity with a child intrinsically violent (see also Q&A # 36), numerous psychological studies have found that sexual activity with children is rarely violent in the sense that no force is used. For example:

Sex offenders against minors … were found for the most part to be non-violent and not aroused by sexually aggressive stimuli involving children … 26 studies conducted over the past 40 years have found that adult-child sexual activity rarely involves force or violence. … Some studies … showed that they were significantly more aroused by consensual stimuli than by those involving force. From Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators? by Paul Okami and Amy Goldberg, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Journal of Sex Research, August 1992 (MHAMic. Abstract)

Other studies reporting similar findings include:

• Theory-based assessment, treatment, and prevention of sexual aggression by Gordon C. Nagayama Hall, Kent State University, Ohio, 1996 (Google Books, MHAMic)
• Sexual encounters between boys and adults by Donald J. West and T. P. Woodhouse, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, England, 1990 (MHAMic)
• The heterogeneity/homogeneity of pedophilia by J.M.W. Bradford, B.A. Bloomberg, and D. Bourget, Forensic Service, Royal Ottawa Hospital, Psychiatric Journal, University of Ottawa, 1988 (MHAMic. PubMed)

See also the SOLR report, Discerning Use of Force in Sexual Offenses.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 16, 2008, May 11, 2008, January 28, 2009.

A pedophile is defined medically as a person primarily attracted to children who have not reached puberty (about age 12). See Diagnostic criteria for … Pedophilia in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), American Psychiatric Association, 2000.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 16, 2008.

Several government studies have shown that most sexual activity with children and adolescents is by family members, not strangers. The same is also true of physical injury and (intrinsically) neglect. See the SOLR report, Family and Strangers, for reviews of the data from some of these studies.
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Note posted on January 10, 2008, updated January 24, 2008, January 28, 2009.

(Entry coming soon.)
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Note posted on September 20, 2007, updated September 26, 2007, January 10, 2008, January 28, 2009.