CA- Jaycee Dugard and Sex Offender Registry Laws

9-11-2009 California:


GUEST BLOGGER: Wayne A. Logan

When Phillip Garrido was arrested in connection with the kidnapping 18 years ago of Jaycee Dugard, questions immediately arose how Garrido, a man with a history of sexual assault, could have slipped through the system. We asked author Wayne A. Logan to sort through the vagaries of the law. Logan, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, is author of "Knowledge as Power: Criminal Registration and Community Notification Laws in America," which was published in July by Stanford University Press.

The alleged kidnapping, sexual assault and 18-year imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard highlights the need to reassess the nation's sex offender registration and community notification laws.

Suspect Phillip Garrido was on California's registry, which like other state registries is known to be rife with inaccuracies and missing data. Garrido, however, was not among the scofflaws. He dutifully kept authorities apprised of his whereabouts, and his identifying information (including home address) was prominently posted on the Internet due to California's concern about the significant offenses in his history.

Perversely, Garrido was thus a "success."

But his sustained depravity highlights a reality long known to police: Individuals determined to commit repeated sexual crimes will find a way to do so. Garrido not only was compliant when his crimes came to light in 2009 but also was on California's registry when he abducted Dugard in 1991.

Moreover, even if community notification was then in effect -- it was not implemented until 1996 -- Garrido committed his crime outside his community, meaning a family like the Dugards would not have benefited anyway from the knowledge of a predator's proximity.

A reassessment of the laws will need to surmount at least two major obstacles. First, any effort will be distracted by the knowledge that human error played a role in this case -- police repeatedly failed to aggressively investigate Garrido. If registries are to exist, individuals such as Garrido surely should be on them. Yet, we know that registries contain far more individuals than can realistically be monitored, including many low-risk convicts.

This problem calls to mind Justice Potter Stewart's comment that "[w]hen everything is classified then nothing is classified, and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless." There will always be a risk of police errors, but the nation's over-inclusive system significantly heightens this possibility.

Second, any effort at reevaluation will likely face political resistance. Politicians raising the possibility of a reevaluation risk being branded as soft on crime or -- worse -- regarded as disrespectful of victims after whom laws are often named. Moreover, one often hears that the laws are justified "if one child is saved."

But the nationwide social experiment of registration and community notification laws, affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals and their families, imposes significant costs. It also distracts from other -- possibly preferable -- public safety strategies. The system demands a closer look. Indeed, it would be difficult to identify any other social policy of such magnitude that has evaded a critical review.

We must also be careful to avoid allowing Garrido to serve as a benchmark. His targeting of Dugard, who was unknown to him in 1991, is not typical of sexual offenses. Indeed, while "stranger danger" has always motivated the laws, in reality the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by people known to the victims.

Allowing Garrido's gruesome crime to drive public discourse will fuel the tendency to play down the very real harms of such crimes and make it even less likely that they will receive the attention they warrant. ..Source.. by Wayne A. Logan