4-20-2011 Maryland:
Office of student conduct finds four students guilty of assaults in 10 years, CNS reports
Four university students have been found guilty of sexual assault over the last 10 years, including a former Terps quarterback who left the university without explanation in 2006, according to information obtained by a group of student journalists.
The Office of Student Conduct released the information to student reporters at the journalism college's Capital News Service last month after more than three years of university resistance and an opinion by state Attorney General Doug Gansler last year that rejected the university's argument that the names were private information.
According to a CNS report that aired Thursday, ___ was suspended for sexually assaulting another student on the campus, although the details of the actual incident were not released by the university. He subsequently transferred to Jacksonville State, a Division II school.
The other three students found guilty in Office of Student Conduct investigations over the years were ___, ___ and ___; no further details on their incidents were available.
Allison Bennett, director of the university's Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Program, said the fact the list only includes four students doesn't mean the crime isn't happening frequently at this university — according to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college, and only 5 percent actually report it.
"This shows that a lot of people are not being held accountable for these crimes," she said. "Often survivors do not want to come forward, so there are few actual suspects. This is a tiny, tiny percentage of people actually being found guilty. There are a tremendous number of people getting away with this and that is unacceptable."
CNS broadcast bureau Director Sue Kopen Katcef, a journalism professor who oversaw the investigation, said even though she had heard a rumor that an athlete had been punished for sexually assaulting another student, she was still surprised to see his name on the list three years later.
"We were stunned," she said. "We had no idea what we were going to get, whether we were going to get nothing or volumes of material. We just decided we wanted to able to quantify what was being done by the administration on this issue. That's really at the core of what we wanted to find."
Statham could not be reached for comment yesterday. Athletics spokesman Doug Dull declined to comment.
CNS students first began uncovering the prevalence of on-campus sexual assaults in 2008 through a six-month investigation that resulted in a Terp Weekly Edition radio report entitled, "Out of the Shadows." CNS student and journalism major Danielle Lama conducted the final investigation and put together last week's most recent report.
Kopen Katcef said her students asked the university to release the names but were told the information was protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects students' records. Student Conduct Director John Zacker agreed to comply after Gansler's opinion. Last month, after paying more than $300 in processing fees that Lama fundraised, the student journalists finally got the list.
University and CNS alumna Alex Moe, who worked on the project last spring when Gansler's opinion was released, said the information was the public's right to know.
"We weren't really sure what we were going to uncover," she said. "It doesn't matter if it's an athlete or whoever. The fact is, there are 35,000 other students on this campus who deserve to know."
Bennett said she has faith that the university prosecutes all students found guilty of sexual assaults. However, based on the scarce information released by the Office of Student Conduct, she said it's hard to say whether the punishment fits the crime — only one of the students found guilty was expelled, and the other three were suspended for a year and forced to meet certain requirements, such as staying away from the victim and writing reflective essays.
And although the released information still leaves many questions to be answered, Bennett said she is hopeful the CNS report will encourage students to come forward when they are assaulted and show that anyone — even an athlete — is capable of committing such a crime.
"I think people will be surprised by this," Bennett said. "It's often assumed offenders are creepy men who don't have access to consensual sex and need to prey on women to get sex. But often, it's someone who is in a position of power and uses that to victimize women. They use those positions of power to hurt people." ..Source..
April 20, 2011
Univ. identifies student sex offenders
November 24, 2009
FBI Publishes 2008 Hate Crime Statistics
11-24-2009 National:
Congress mandates the collection of hate crime data
On April 23, 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which required the Attorney General to collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The Attorney General delegated the responsibilities of developing the procedures for implementing, collecting, and managing hate crime data to the Director of the FBI, who in turn, assigned the tasks to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Under the direction of the Attorney General and with the cooperation and assistance of many local and state law enforcement agencies, the UCR Program created a hate crime data collection to comply with the congressional mandate.
The first hate crime publications
The UCR Program’s first publication on the subject was Hate Crime Statistics, 1990: A Resource Book, which was a compilation of hate crime data reported by 11 states that had collected the information under state authority in 1990 and were willing to offer their data as a prototype. The UCR Program continued to work with agencies familiar with investigating hate crimes and collecting related information so that it could develop and implement a more uniform method of data collection on a nationwide scale. Hate Crime Statistics, 1992, presented the first published data reported by law enforcement agencies across the country that participated in the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program.
For the 2008 Hate Crimes Report: by FBI
May 9, 2008
Verifying age online doesn't solve all problems
5-9-2008 National:
I'm happy to be a member of a recently formed Internet Safety Technical Task Force, but it has caused me to feel a bit of a disconnect. One of the major goals of the task force is to explore whether it's possible to use technology to verify the age of people signing up for social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to give parents more control over whether their kids can use these services and to avoid inappropriate online contact between kids and adults. Yet, the first four experts to address the task force painted a picture that causes me to wonder if such technology would be helpful even if it could be employed.
The task force was formed in February as a result of an agreement between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general. The group consists of representatives of major Internet and social-networking services including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, AOL, Google and Yahoo, along with officials from companies that offer age- and identity-verification technology. Several non-profit organizations are also represented, including ConnectSafely.org, which I co-founded with Anne Collier. (Disclosure: ConnectSafely receives financial support from several social-networking companies.)
The task force is a welcome intervention into what has been a nasty war of words. For the past couple of years, several attorneys general, lead by Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, had been hammering at MySpace and other social networks because of the perceived danger of predators using the sites to contact children.
But that's not what the task force heard from a panel of experts who actually know something about how kids can be harmed online. At its meeting in Washington on Wednesday, members heard from researchers Michelle Ybarra, from Internet Solutions for Kids; Janis Wolak, from the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center; Amanda Lenhart, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project; and Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Drawing from several surveys and studies, all of the researchers said the risk of a child being forced into sex from an online predator is almost non-existent. And in the relatively few cases where a youth does engage in sex with someone they first met online, the young person is almost always compliant in some fashion.
That doesn't excuse the adult - having sex with someone under the age of consent is rightfully a serious crime. But as part of what we need to know to better protect kids, it's important to realize that deception is rarely involved. Most teens are aware of the approximate age and intentions of the adults who contact them. Only 5 percent of the offenders pretend to be teens. In some cases, the kids themselves are being aggressive and sexually suggestive and pose in ways to make them look older than they are.
When unwanted sexual solicitations do occur, most youths deal with them appropriately. Two-thirds of youths didn't view the solicitations as serious or threatening and "almost all youths handled unwanted sexual solicitations easy and effectively," according to data reported by Wolak.
Researchers reiterated that the overwhelming majority of kids who are sexually exploited are victims of people they know from the off-line world. And they pointed out that children have a far greater chance of being harassed or "cyberbullied" by peers than by adults, and that nearly half of the cases of sexual solicitation were teen to teen.
Please don't interpret these findings as being soft on predators or oblivious to the dangers on the Internet. Everyone in the room was deeply committed to protecting kids from the very real harms that do exist. But in the interest of safety it's important to not confuse the perceived risks with the likely ones. To do so would be like worrying about some horrible but rare disease while failing to wear seat belts, washing your hands and flossing your teeth.
The task force's main mandate is to explore age-verification technology that would make it a lot harder to claim you're 14 when you're actually 12 or that you're 17 when you're really 40. Social networks have age restrictions (typically kids have to be at least in their teens) but they now rely on user-supplied birth dates.
Some attorneys general want to see the electronic equivalent of showing an ID at the door. There are companies represented on the task force with tools that might be able to accomplish this including Aristotle, IDology and Sentinel Tech. But Sentinel Chief Executive John Cardillo told me age- and identity-verification schemes typically rely on credit reports and other data that is accessible for most adults but generally not available for people under 17. One could, in theory, access school, birth or Social Security records, but for a variety of good reasons, these databases are off-limits to private entities.
Though the task force has yet to hear from any age-verification vendors, I'm keeping an open mind about the efficacy of the technology. Yet, even if age verification is possible, I still question whether it's desirable. I worry about some teens - including victims and youths questioning their sexual identity - being harmed because they're denied access to online support services that could help them or even save their lives. ..more.. by Larry Magid
April 15, 2008
Lawmakers Proposing Millions for Elementary School Surveillance Cams
4-15-2008 National:
Call it the No Child Left Unsurveilled Act.
On Thursday, federal lawmakers will hold a hearing on a proposal to let public schools use millions in federal grants to blanket the halls of learning with surveillance cameras.
Those grants have typically been used to install metal detectors, lights and locks, as well as paying for security training for students and employees.
The bill adds closed circuit surveillance cameras to the list of items eligible for Justice Department Safe School grants, ups the funding to from $30 million annually to $50 million and increases the feds share of any outlays to 80%, up from the current 50-50 split.
In what seems a plain attempt to arise the ire of Bruce Schneier, the bill would bar schools from using the money for actually assessing what the threats and weaknesses to the school are.
That eligible item is replaced in the bill by tip lines for reporting dangerous students. New Jersey congressman Steve Rothman (D) introduced the School Safety Enhancements Act last May, and the measure has 53 co-sponsors.
The House Judiciary committee's Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security subcommittee will hold a hearing on the school surveillance bill and two other bills Thursday at 10 a.m. EST.
A spokeswoman for Rep. Rothman was not immediately available for comment.
Photo: Rachael Voorhees
See Also:
California Police Camera Surveillance Increasing
Surveillance Shot of Hollywood Filmmaker Sparks Movie about Spycams
Chicago Crime Cams Nab Beer Drinker As Reminder of Big Brother System
DC Housing Complex Cameras Tell Residents Not To Loiter
Car Bomb Defused in London
April 7, 2008
Online “Predators” and Their Victims
March 2008
Myths, Realities, and Implications for Prevention and Treatment
Abstract:
The publicity about online “predators” who prey on naive children using trickery and violence is largely inaccurate. Internet sex crimes involving adults and juveniles more often fit a model of statutory rape—adult offenders who meet, develop relationships with, and openly seduce underage teenagers—than a model of forcible sexual assault or pedophilic child molesting. This is a serious problem, but one that requires approaches different from those in current prevention messages emphasizing parental control and the dangers of divulging personal information. Developmentally appropriate prevention strategies that target youths directly and acknowledge normal adolescent interests in romance and sex are needed. These should provide younger adolescents with awareness and avoidance skills while educating older youths about the pitfalls of sexual relationships with adults and their criminal nature. Particular attention should be paid to higher risk youths, including those with histories of sexual abuse, sexual orientation concerns, and patterns of off- and online risk taking. Mental health practitioners need information about the dynamics of this problem and the characteristics of victims and offenders because they are likely to encounter related issues in a variety of contexts. ..more.. by Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor, and Kimberly J. Mitchell University of New Hampshire
Michele L. Ybarra Internet Solutions for Kids, Inc.
November 21, 2007
Hate Crime Statistics
Following passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General, the FBI has gathered and published hate crime statistics every year since 1992. The following reports are available on this website:
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003 (pdf)
• 2002 (pdf)
• 2001 (pdf)
• 2000 (pdf)
• 1999 (pdf)
• 1998 (pdf)
• 1997 (pdf)
• 1996 (pdf)
• 1995
FBI Hate Crimes Site
October 14, 2007
Internet Sex Crimes Against Minors: The Response of Law Enforcement
November 2003
Executive Summary
The Internet1 and computers have come to play a growing role in sex crimes that are committed against children and youth.2 Since the mid-1990s these developing technologies have posed challenges for law enforcement requiring them to confront situations not anticipated in criminal statutes, master technical advances, develop new investigative techniques, and handle criminal cases that often span multiple jurisdictions. To assist, legislators have acted on a number of fronts creating new statutes that encompass Internet offenses, stiffening penalties, and creating a national clearinghouse for reports of Internet-related crimes against children and the CyberTipline® operated by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. In addition the federal government has increased funding in this area creating Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces to support state and local law enforcement and specialized Internet, child-exploitation units in federal, law-enforcement agencies.
Unfortunately the results of these initiatives are difficult to track. Criminaljustice authorities do not collect information specifically about Internet-related crimes. The National Juvenile Online Victimization (N-JOV) Study was undertaken to get a sense of the scope and types of law-enforcement activity in this area and serve as a baseline for monitoring the growth of Internet sex crimes against minors and related law-enforcement activities.
These are some of the important findings of the N-JOV Study about law enforcement activity.
.....: Law enforcement at all levels made an estimated 2,577 arrests during the 12 months starting July 1, 2000, for Internet sex crimes against minors
.....: These Internet sex crimes against minors can be categorized in three mutually exclusive types
• Internet Crimes Against Identified Victims involving Internet-related sexual assaults and other sex crimes such as the production of child pornography 3 committed against identified victims (39% of arrests)
• Internet Solicitations to Undercover Law Enforcement posing as minors that involved no identified victims (25% of arrests)
• The possession, distribution, or trading of Internet Child Pornography by offenders who did not use the Internet to sexually exploit identified victims or solicit undercover investigators (36% of arrests)
Two-thirds (67%) of offenders who committed any of the types of Internet sex crimes against minors possessed child pornography
• 83% of these possessors had images of children between the ages of 6 and 12
• 80% had images explicitly showing sexual penetration of minors
....: The vast majority of offenders were non-Hispanic White males older than 25 who were acting alone
....: Most investigations (79%) involved more than one law-enforcement agency
....: State, county, and local agencies were involved in 85% of all cases and federal agencies in 46%
....: It appears there are fewer dismissals and acquittals for Internet sex crimes against minors than for conventional child-sexual-abuse prosecutions
Introduction
As Internet use has become widespread, questions have emerged about how often sexual offenders are using the Internet to commit crimes involving child sexual exploitation and child pornography. These types of Internet sex crimes against minors have caused concern among parents, law-enforcement agencies, lawmakers, educators, and other child advocates and become a factor in the debate over Internet regulation. Media reports about them have proliferated; however, media reports may produce a skewed picture of the characteristics of these crimes and overall numbers of arrests.
Because Internet sex crimes against minors are a recent phenomenon, data about them have not been gathered in a national study. The N-JOV Study is the first national research to systematically collect data about the number and characteristics of arrests for Internet sex crimes against minors. The N-JOV Study had the three goals of
.....: Estimating a baseline number of arrests during a one-year period so that the growth of these cases in the criminal-justice system can be measured in the future
....: Providing a statistical portrait of the characteristics of Internet sex crimes against minors and description of how they are handled within the criminaljustice system
.....: Organizing the variety of cases into a typology useful for tracking and analysis This bulletin is the first publication of findings from the N-JOV Study. It discusses arrest estimates and gives an overview of the types of crimes, characteristics of offenders, and how ..more.. by Janis Wolak, Kimberly Mitchell, and David Finkelhor, Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire
Store the following for further research
================================================
Online Threats to Youth: Solicitation, Harassment, and Problematic Content
by Andrew Schrock and Danah Boyd, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard University
The Internet and Family and Acquaintance Sexual Abuse. Child Maltreatment
by Kimberly J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, Janis Wolak, University of New Hampshire
October 3, 2007
Michigan Sex Offender Registry Statistics
Michigan Sex Offender Registry
Michigan has its registration annually for some folks, and quarterly for other folks. Following a registration period the Michigan State Police publish a file called the "Backgrounder File." In that file are various historical facts about the registry, and current registry statistics. The problem with the Backgrounder file is, that the current one replaces the previous one, wiping it out when they update their figures. We store that file as they produce it, see dates in table below to read those files if you want.
The files we stored were used to create the following chart:
Report Date No. On
SORNo. of Juveniles No. In Prison Net Change Req. To Verify Compliance
I=In
O=OutNo. On
PSOR12-1-02 31,045 2,034 11,675 . . 15,109 (I)
1,313(O).
5-1-04 34,402 2,194 . +3,357 . . .
4-25-05 36,748 2,344 11,882 +2,346 . . .
6-1-05 36,900 2,400 11,900 +422 23,800 15,799(I)
8,100(O)20,000
7-29-05 37,296 2,395 12,028 +396 24,022 15,601(I)
8,421(O)20,546
11-4-05 37,916 2,433 12,333 +620 23,885 15,539(I)
8,346(O)18,176
2-21-06 38,346 2,457 12,567 +430 23,884 15,493(I)
8,391(O)18,405
11-3-06 39,945 2,427 13,313 +1,595 23,976 . 19,489
2-13-07 40,484 2,440 13,371 +539 24,188 15,330(I)
8,858(O)19,401
8-15-07 41,472 2,472 12,872 +988 25,343 15,276(I)
10,067(O)21,592
11-14-07 41,942 2,487 13,025 +470 25,443 15,243(I)
10,200(O)21,807
9-2-08 43,510 Eliminated 14,588 +1,568 24,649 38,565(I)
4,945(O)40,717
11-18-08 43,613 Eliminated 14,888 +103 25,166 39,071(I)
4,492(O)41,010
2-3-09 43,964 Eliminated 14,788 +351 25,467 39,427(I)
4,537(O)41,339
8-1-09 44,773 Eliminated 14,095 +809 25,868 40,257(I)
4,516(O)42,133
11-2-09 45,164 Eliminated 14,087 +391 26,185 40,849(I)
4,315(O)41,713
1-25-10 45,546 Eliminated 13,528 +382 27,085 40,896(I)
4,650(O)43,030
Additional Facts About the Michigan Registry:
Michigan has two registries, one for law enforcement which contains everyone required to register (and everyone who has ever registered, even if they are no longer required to register) and is called the SOR. Now, from the SOR they create the public sex offender registry which they call PSOR (not everyone appears on the PSOR).
Now, the "Not in Compliance" is a very interesting number, but you need to know what that means. From past "Backgrounder Files" we wrote a few commentaries in 2005 (now in our archives) covering the issue of "Not in Compliance," see our commentary 6-17-05 "Michigan Registered Sex Offenders: Out of Compliance, AWOL, Unaccounted For, Absconded, what does that mean?"
Not In Compliance Defined As:
1) Failure to change address and within time limits;
2) Failure to verify address and within time limits;
3) Failure to register and within time limits;
4) Failure to sign registration form;
5) Failure to have either a Michigan driver's license or State ID;
6) Failure to have the same address on the registry and at the DMV;
7) Registering a false address;
8) Failure to comply with reporting duties (likely the worst because the state can construe anything as 'failure to comply' even spelling errors).
Any of those, under the Adam Walsh Act, could cause someone to spend 10 years in federal prison and be subject to civil commitment, or if the state prosecutes at least one year in prison! States are out of control...
Here we discussed what the State Auditors found, the system is full of various kinds of errors that would lead a registrant, should s/he trip on one, to prison for 10 years.
UPDATE: January 2008: Michigan is now listing on PSOR (Public Sex Offender) registry, all those who are incarcerated -IN PRISON- for sex crimes. Now if that isn't insane enough, Michigan also includes in their NON-COMPLIANT figures, anyone IN PRISON who has not completed forms according to registry laws.
Insane? Yes, some incarcerated for LIFE, or 20-30-40-50 years, for a sex crime, do you think they care about registry laws, while in prison? NO! Michigan wants the public to be in a constant state of hysteria, thats the only reason to do something like this. Those in prison should not be on the Public registry until they are released!
Correctional Facility Addresses: CLICK, using the facility zip code and address, check for yourself. Registry
eAdvocate
September 24, 2007
Human Rights report pans offender laws
9-23-2007 New Hampshire
Lawmakers are struggling to make the state's sexual predators law mirror the federal Adam Walsh Act, named for the 6-year-old snatched from a Florida store in 1981. Authorities never found his body, just his head in a canal 120 miles away. Suspects in the unsolved crime have included the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer and a Florida mass murderer, Otis O'Toole, who died in prison in 1996 for another crime. O'Toole twice confessed to killing Walsh, but later recanted and authorities never charged him.
The federal law posts an Internet profile of most sex offenders, including their photo, age, home address, license plate number, identifying features, and employer's name and address, if they have a job. Those felons also give the police a DNA sample.
Each person is assigned to a reporting tier based on the severity of his crime. Tier III is for the worst threats, people who register four times a year for life.
Assistant Attorney General Ann Rice warned that New Hampshire could lose up to $200,000 in crime-prevention grants unless its law substantially conforms to Adam Walsh.
Study debunks sex predator laws
Recently, Human Rights Watch, a national research and advocacy group, issued a damning report on the spate of sex offender laws that swept the country after the 2005 murder of Jessica Lunsford in Florida.
The 146-page document said the popular Internet offender registries endanger children by driving the few intractable pedophiles underground. The study tried to debunk several alleged myths: that all sex offenders are like Dahmer and O'Toole and prey on strangers; that they have many victims; that they commit new sex crimes after release from prison; and that treatment programs are useless.
The report, "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States," found the vast majority of offenders against children have a single victim well known to them. It also said sex offenders are the least likely of all parolees to re-offend, and therapy cuts that risk even more.
The report criticized municipal ordinances like the ones in Dover, Franklin, Tilton and Northfield that keep offenders from living near schools, parks and day-care centers. The study said these bans can cost sex offenders their friends, jobs, spouses, families and mental health. It also makes them more dangerous, being homeless and with no address to report.
Reams stands by law
Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams serves on a national executive task force of prosecutors, helped draft New Hampshire's child predator law, lobbied for it, and found the Rights Watch study biased. He said the country has more than 600,000 registered sex offenders, and only a handful have been murdered. The county attorney opposes residency restrictions on sex offenders, but said they have passed constitutional muster so far.
Note: His mentioning of a "handful" is grossly inaccurate. The reality of those murdered cam be found in this blog it is over 80 and still more to post.
Reams said a recent study of pedophiles at the federal Butner Corrections Center in North Carolina found that most had multiple victims. The report said 132 men had confessed to sexually abusing 1,777 young children. A Canadian study of sex offenders showed much the same thing, Reams said, and the lifelong recidivism rate was more than 90 percent.
Note: It appears the studies cited pertain to those in a civil commitment center and as usual should not be applied to all sex offenders as Reams has done here. Unfortunately I cannot find a e-mail address to contact the Journalist who apparently has the studies. The federal BOP study was never released and is being hidden by the feds, see link.
It should be noted the Butner facility is the only one in the federal system devoted to treating serial pedophiles. The Canadian study tracked 300 inmates arrested in the 1950s and 1960s when only fixated pedophiles went to prison. Even talk of incest was taboo, and modern therapies did not exist.
Carolyn Lucet of Conway has counseled hundreds of sex offenders in therapy over the last 30 years. She said only one has ever returned to prison on a new sex charge. She called the Human Rights Watch study reliable and urged lawmakers to classify sex offenders by rigorous clinical standards used in several states.
"The offenders I deal with are very frightened," Lucet said. "The man who murdered two offenders in Maine had New Hampshire names on his list. That man in Tennessee hasn't even been tried yet. And he's homeless."
Janis Wolak, a UNH researcher on crimes against kids, said the Rights Watch study is consistent with the scientific literature. Many sex offenders are treatable, and the incidence of sex crimes has declined for more than a decade, she said. The typical abusers are family members, close friends, babysitters, coaches, priests, teachers. Among teenagers, it's their peers. She said there are no studies to show if the new laws protect children.
"We desperately need research on it. The media is fixated on the stranger-danger idea," Wolak said. "Most are nonviolent. They use their authority as a father, stepfather or uncle."
Defense lawyers widely predicted their clients would reject plea deals under the new law. That's because the state can hold an offender five more years in prison if they remain dangerous to society. But Reams has seen no major shift in the pre-trial process. Most cases went to trial in the past.
"They still do," he said.
Assistant Attorney General Rice told lawmakers the state should conform with federal law by classifying people by their crimes, not by their actuarial risk. In an interview, Rice said she was aware of clinical indexes that claim to predict whether certain types of sex felons are likely to re-offend.
Attorney Mike Iacopino heads the Defense Lawyers Association and told Rice, "Just do without the federal money." ..more.. by Chris Dornin, of Golden Dome News, covers the Statehouse in Concord.
September 12, 2007
No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the US
No one could argue that HRW has not covered issues faced by registered sex offenders in the new HRW report and I commend them for doing an excellent job.
However, since I was contacted when the research for this report began, and I did offer the HRW access, more than once, to the news articles about hundreds of cases of vigilantism and acts of violence against, persons previously convicted of sex offenses, and those who are newly accused, but for reasons unknown to this writer the HRW chose to not address those acts of violence, nor even review them. The majority of those news articles are now in blogs and indexed several ways.
Accordingly that portion of their report is severely understated, especially the portion which speaks to the maiming and murders of registered sex offenders and persons newly accused of sex offenses. Statistically this is a growing problem that is not being addressed by any legislation, nor by the Human Rights Report.
Folks will note that I have distinguished between a registered sex offender -and- a person newly accused of a sex offense. I do this because although one would consider them the same there are distinct differences in those groups.
One major difference is the number of suicides by persons newly accused of a sex offense, an extremely high number in the record that I have been keeping. At the present time I am converting my OLD RECORD of suicides to a newly created blog to be able to show other information about those cases and to separate them from murders.
HRW does cite "suicides" on page 81 of their report citing my Master List of Deaths (Suicides and Murders of sex offenders), but gives the wrong URL. They show http://www.geocities.com/eadvocate/issues/topic-pedophiles.html and it should be http://www.geocities.com/voicism/harm-master.html for the Master List.
The URL the Human Rights Report shows has to do with definitions (first created in 2002) and has been moved to The Confusing Words & Phrases in the realm of sex offenders.
These are the records of deaths that I keep:
1) The Master Listing of all deaths: CLICK
2) The blog showing the news story behind a suicide: CLICK
3) The blog showing the news story behind a murder: CLICK
Effectively the blogs are to keep the stories behind a death, whether it be a death of a registered sex offender, or a death of a person accussed of a sex offense, or the death of a person involved with a sex offender (i.e., murder-suicides and some other very odd cases).
Note: Because so many deaths have occurred compiling the news stories has been done on my home disk, and slowly I am getting them entered into the blogs for a permanent record which everyone can access. Accordingly, the blogs are not totally uptodate.
Again, I commend the Human Rights Watch for covering the topic of registered sex offenders. I do wish they would have covered sex offenders as a class with special needs, even though law today does not recognize sex offenders as a class. Registrants are likened to folks who suffer "Hate Crimes" which the government does keep special statistics of.
Special needs due to the laws forcing them to register and causing the harm they suffer today. Politicians claim regulation of a group with a high recidivism rate and refuse to recognize the fallacy of their claim as to former sex offenders. That political claim places former sex offenders in a false light before the public eye.
eAdvocate
With that said on to the HRW report:
Human Rights Watch:
Summary
The reality is that sex offenders are a great political target, but that doesn’t mean any law under the sun is appropriate.
—Illinois State Representative John Fritchey1
People want a silver bullet that will protect their children, [but] there is no silver bullet. There is no simple cure to the very complex problem of sexual violence.
—Patty Wetterling, child safety advocate whose son was abducted in 1989 and remains missing2
What happened to nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford is every parent’s worst nightmare. In February 2005 she was abducted from her home in Florida, raped, and buried alive by a stranger, a next-door neighbor who had been twice convicted of molesting children. Over the past decade, several horrific crimes like Jessica’s murder have captured massive media attention and fueled widespread fears that children are at high risk of assault by repeat sex offenders. Politicians have responded with a series of laws, including the sex offender registration, community notification, and residency restriction laws that are the subject of this report.
Federal law and the laws of all 50 states now require adults and some juveniles convicted of specified crimes that involve sexual conduct to register with law enforcement—regardless of whether the crimes involved children. So-called “Megan’s Laws” establish public access to registry information, primarily by mandating the creation of online registries that provide a former offender’s criminal history, current photograph, current address, and other information such as place of employment. In many states everyone who is required to register is included on the online registry. A growing number of states and municipalities have also prohibited registered offenders from living within a designated distance (typically 500 to 2,500 feet) of places where children gather—for example, schools, playgrounds, and daycare centers.
Human Rights Watch appreciates the sense of concern and urgency that has prompted these laws. They reflect a deep public yearning for safety in a world that seems increasingly threatening. Every child has the right to live free from violence and sexual abuse. Promoting public safety by holding offenders accountable and by instituting effective crime prevention measures is a core governmental obligation.
Unfortunately, our research reveals that sex offender registration, community notification, and residency restriction laws are ill-considered, poorly crafted, and may cause more harm than good:
The registration laws are overbroad in scope and overlong in duration, requiring people to register who pose no safety risk;
Under community notification laws, anyone anywhere can access online sex offender registries for purposes that may have nothing to do with public safety. Harassment of and violence against registrants have been the predictable result;
In many cases, residency restrictions have the effect of banishing registrants from entire urban areas and forcing them to live far from their homes and families.
The evidence is overwhelming, as detailed in this report, that these laws cause great harm to the people subject to them. On the other hand, proponents of these laws are not able to point to convincing evidence of public safety gains from them. Even assuming some public safety benefit, however, the laws can be reformed to reduce their adverse effects without compromising that benefit. Registration laws should be narrowed in scope and duration. Publicly accessible online registries should be eliminated, and community notification should be accomplished solely by law enforcement officials. Blanket residency restrictions should be abolished.
For access to the full report: CLICK by the Human Rights Watch
July 27, 2007
Age Specific Arrest Rates -and- Race Specific Arrest Rates for Selected Offenses 1993-2001
Age Specific Arrest Rates -and- Race Specific Arrest Rates for Selected Offenses 1993-2001
Uniform Crime Reports
November 2003
Introduction
The objective of this publication is to supplement the statistics published in Crime in the United States by providing users of Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data with age-specific arrest rates and race-specific arrest rates for the years 1993–2001. The current tabulations update the December 1993 publication, which presented these data for the years 1965–1992. The UCR Program’s statisticians have tabulated the data for the Crime Index, violent crime, property crime, and each Part I offense (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson). Age and race specific arrest rates are also tabulated for select Part II offenses (forgery and counterfeiting, fraud, embezzlement, stolen property, weapons violations, sex offenses, gambling, and drug abuse violations). Additionally, for each of the offenses, the statisticians have calculated age breakdowns representing juveniles and adults by race (white and all other races, black and all other minorities). A separate table lists the average age of arrestees for each of the Part I and Part II offenses by year.
An age-specific arrest rate refers to the number of arrests made per 100,000 inhabitants belonging to a defined age group. Technical Note A describes the computational procedures used to derive age-specific arrest rates. Technical Note B describes the methodology used to compute the average age of the arrestees. The reader should be aware that the average age of the arrestees is based on the age composition of the U.S. population. Therefore, any shift in the average age of the arrestees should not immediately be associated with a change in criminal pattern since the data may, in fact, reflect a shift in the population.
A race-specific arrest rate refers to the number of arrests per 100,000 inhabitants belonging to a defined race. The statisticians have updated the race-specific data used in this publication, and therefore, figures may differ slightly from the national averages published in earlier editions of Crime in the United States. The rates represent that portion of the population covered by all agencies that contributed race data for the given offenses. The UCR Program requires that reporting agencies supply the age of arrestees; however, the Program stipulates that the submission of race data is voluntary. Therefore, the population coverage for race statistics is lower than that for age statistics.
This publication will be updated annually and published in electronic format beginning with the 2002 data, which will be posted on the FBI’s Web site in the spring of 2004. ..more.. by FBI
July 20, 2007
Contacts between Police and the Public: All Years
Presents data on the nature and characteristics of contacts between residents of the U.S. and the police over a period.
Contacts between Police and the Public 2005 NCJ 215243
Contacts between Police and the Public 2002 NCJ 207845
Contacts between Police and the Public 2001 NCJ 184957
June 30, 2007
Indicators of School Crime and Safety: All Years
Presents data on crime and safety at school from the perspectives of students, teachers, principals, and the general population. A joint effort by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics, this annual report examines crime occurring in school as well as on the way to and from school.
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2008: 4/09 NCJ 226343
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2007: 12/07 NCJ 219553
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2006: 12/06 NCJ 214262
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2005: 11/05 NCJ 210697
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2004: 11/04 NCJ 205290
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2003: 10/03 NCJ 201257
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2002: 11/02 NCJ 196753
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2001: 10/01 NCJ 190075
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2000: 10/00 NCJ 184176
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 1999: 9/99 NCJ 178906
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 1998: 10/98 NCJ 172215
June 27, 2007
Age and Sexual Recidivism: A Comparison of Rapists and Child Molesters
Table 1 shows all the underlying studies used. However, those studies are based on varying "Recidivism Criteria" sometimes convictions or charges or readmissions to prison. Many of these are not even crimes.
Further, the total sample size (4,673) includes 1,137 (24%) from a already questioned California study of civil commitment persons. i.e., already known to be recidivists. Such slants the statistics making the study not a good cross section of all sex offenders.
In addition, two of the underlying studies are from 1976 and 1983 released inmates who had no therapy programs available to them. Again slanting the input towards known recidivists.
2001:
Abstract
This study examined the relationship of age to sexual recidivism using data from 10 follow-up studies of adult male sexual offenders (combined sample of 4,673). Rapists were younger than child molesters and the recidivism risk of rapists steadily decreased with age. In contrast, extrafamilial child molesters showed relatively little reduction in recidivism risk until after the age of 50. The recidivism rate of intrafamilial child molesters was generally low (less than 10%), except for the intrafamilial offenders in the 18 to 24 year old age group, whose recidivism risk was comparable to that of rapists and extrafamilial child molesters. The results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in sexual drive, self-control, and opportunities to offend. ..more.. by R. Karl Hanson
Department of the Solicitor General Canada
June 19, 2007
AGE AND SEXUAL RECIDIVISM
May 2001:
Question: Does the risk of sexual offending decrease with age?
Answer: On average, the rate of sexual recidivism decreased with age. The effect was not large and the patterns were different for rapists, extrafamilial child molesters and intrafamilial child molesters (incest offenders). For rapists, the highest risk age period was between 18 and 25 years, with a gradual decline in risk for each older age period. There were very few old rapists (greater than age 60) and none were known to recidivate sexually. In contrast, the highest risk period for extrafamilial child molesters was between the ages of 25 and 35, with only modest declines in their recidivism risk until after the age of 50. Incest offenders were less likely to recidivate than either rapists or extrafamilial child molesters; however, incest offenders in the 18 to 25 year age group were among the offenders most likely to sexually reoffend. The observed pattern of results is consistent with developmental changes in sexual drive, self-control, and opportunities to offend. ..more.. by R. Karl Hanson, Ph.D., Solicitor General Canada Study available
Age and Recidivism: How Accurate are Our Predictions?
November 2004:
Psychopathy and Age
Most crime is perpetrated by males in their late adolescence and early adulthood. After that most offenders commit fewer crimes or stop offending altogether. Many have argued that although most offenders “burn out” and quit offending as they get older, especially violent psychopaths would not “burn out”, but instead would continue to reoffend.
The best-accepted measure of psychopathy is the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R),1 on which a score of 30 or above (out of a possible 40) is recommended as the appropriate cut-off for diagnostic purposes.
Psychopathy, as measured by the PCL-R, is characterized by 20 criteria relating to affective / interpersonal traits (e.g. glibness/superficial charm, pathological lying, lack of remorse, shallow affect; Factor 1) and a chronically impulsive and unstable lifestyle (e.g. need for stimulation, lack of realistic goals, promiscuity; Factor 2). The predictive qualities of the instrument are very good.2
Using the PCL-R, the complete criminal career and community release profiles of 317 Canadian federal offenders (224 low scorers and 93 scoring within the psychopathic range) were compiled.3 Crimes were coded according to age at commission, and were coded as either violent, non-violent, or non-sexually violent. Results showed that offenders scoring within the psychopathic range consistently committed more violent and non-violent crimes than the low-scorers starting in adolescence and continuing into their late-40’s, after which the re-conviction rate of high scorers decreased substantially relative to low-scorers.
For non-violent crimes, the two groups both virtually ceased reoffending by their late 40’s. Similarly, for non-sexual violent crimes, the two groups both virtually ceased re-offending by their late 40’s, with the high scorers actually committing fewer offenses than the low scorers. This effect was even more pronounced for violent crimes, with the high scorers committing fewer offenses than the low-scorers after their early 40’s.
These results indicate that even most psychopaths “burn-out” in mid-life. Reasons may include lack of opportunity, lack of physical strength, ill health, and scrutiny by law and justice agencies, as well as lack of continued criminal propensities. ..more.. by Brett Trowbridge, Ph.D., J.D., Washington Criminal Defense, November 2004, vol. 18 no. 4
May 27, 2007
Effect of Age-at-Release on Long Term Sexual Re-Offense Rates in Civilly Committed Sexual Offenders
A cohort of 136 rapists and 115 child molesters civilly committed to a prison in Massachusetts and followed for 25 years was examined for the effect of age at time of release on sexual reoffending.
Abstract: The data support the general conclusion that risk of sexual reoffending diminishes as a function of increasing age at the time of release for rapists. There was a significant difference, however, in the reoffending patterns of rapists compared with child molesters according to age at release. Whereas the age-crime pattern was linear and declining among the rapists, child molesters had low reoffending rates according to age just after release, but then had a sharp increase before leveling off for several decades before declining at age 60. The highest risk period for child molesters was middle age (late 20s to mid-40s), followed by a decline. The difference in age-crime patterns of rapists and child molesters should be taken into account when assessing relative risk for reoffending. The study examined the reoffending rates for each of five age-at-release groups, separately for rapists and child molesters. The study tested the fit of linear and quadratic models for 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years, using Cox regression analysis. 5 tables, 3 figures, and 30 references. ..more.. by Robert Alan Prentky -and- Austin F.S. Lee (Have Copy on Disk)
May 25, 2007
Sex Offenses and Offenders: An Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault
February 1997, NCJ-163392
Foreword
This report draws on more than two dozen statistical datasets maintained by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Uniform Crime Reporting program of the FBI to provide a comprehensive overview of current knowledge about the incidence and prevalence of violent victimization by sexual assault, the response of the justice system to such crimes, and the characteristics of those who prey on victims of all ages by committing sexual assault or rape.
This report reinforces a striking observation in recent studies about crimes involving rape and sexual assault: In a high percentage of cases, the victims are children. In self-reported victimization surveys of the public age 12 and older, teenagers report the highest per capita rates of exposure to rape and sexual assault. Data drawn from police-recorded incidents of rape in three States revealed that 44% of rape victims were under the age of 18. The self-reports of convicted rape and sexual assault offenders serving time in State prisons indicate that two-thirds of such offenders had victims under the age of 18, and 58% of those ¾ or nearly 4 in 10 imprisoned violent sex offenders ¾ said their victims were age 12 or younger.
Though the vast majority of violent sex offending involves males assaulting female victims, females account for a small percentage of known offenders, and males account for a small percentage of victims. In a very small fraction of sexual assaults, victim and offender are of the same sex.
Victim and offender are likely to have had a prior relationship as family members, intimates, or acquaintances. Victims of rape and sexual assault report that in nearly 3 out of 4 incidents, the offender was not a stranger. Based on police-recorded incident data, in 90% of the rapes of children younger than 12, the child knew the offender; twothirds of the victims 18 to 29 years old had a prior relationship with the rapist. The FBI’s UCR arrest data, as well as court conviction data and prison admissions data, all point to a sex offender who is older than other violent offenders, generally in his early thirties, and more likely to be white than other violent offenders ¾ characteristics that match the information obtained from victims who describe the offender to interviewers in the National Crime Victimization Survey.
This report was prepared as background information for the Assistant Attorney General’s 1996 National Summit Promoting Public Safety Through the Effective Management of Sex Offenders in the Community. It presents a thorough analysis and compilation of the currently available national data, but we anticipate that even more will be learned in the coming years as BJS assembles data on rape and sexual assault from the redesigned National Crime Victimization Survey and surveys of felony probationers, local jail inmates, and State and Federal prison inmates.
Jan M. Chaiken, Ph.D.
Director, Bureau of Justice Statistics
Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General Office of Justice Programs
..more.. by Lawrence A. Greenfeld, Statistician, Bureau of Justice Statistics
