A Stitch in Haste

To review: The original justification for sex offender registries was the (unsubstantiated) assertion that sex offenders have an extremely high recidivism rate and therefore posed an abnormally high risk to residents in communities where such ex-convicts live and work.

That argument is increasingly giving way to an alternative justification: brazen vigilantism. New York State, for example, is being surprisingly honest about it:

Gov. Pataki yesterday signed into law a bill that will keep thousands of sex offenders from disappearing off a state monitoring list.
...
"This new legislation will ensure that all sex offenders remain on the registry, most for life, and continue to give every parent and family the right to know exactly where sex offenders live," Pataki said.

[T]he new law will require offenders who are deemed at moderate risk of committing another sex crime to register for life.

There you have it -- "moderate" risk. Not high risk, not even serious risk, but "moderate" risk.

Of course, what constitutes "moderate" is unclear. But it certainly doesn't sound like a high hurdle.

Meanwhile, this reasoning opens the door for other ex-convict registries. Don't violent criminals in general have a "moderate" risk of repeat offenses? Drunk drivers? Drug dealers? Check kiters? Tax cheats? The unemployed twenty-something who misses a student loan payment?

If the standard is a mere "moderate" risk of repeat offenses, then any and every kind of ex-convict registry is permissible. And inevitable.

The argument that "it's all about the children" should not trump the argument that "it's all about common sense."