Last year it was reported that 45 persons were murdered as a result of being registered or associated with a person on a sex offender list published for all to see. This list of deaths included innocent bystanders and falsly accused individuals.

These lists are an open invitation to any ignorant vigilante with a gun or a fire bomb. These people are typically more dangerous than those on these lists.

The reason behind the existence of these lists is rooted in fear and ignorance and supported by legislators who don't bother to learn the relevant facts. They often rely on faulty information from special interests or general news broadcasts to form their opinions and to decide their votes.

Persons charged with knowing the facts often spout false information to further their own agendas. One such claim made by proponents of these types of registration laws claims a high recidivism rate for convicted sex offenders. This is an out right lie and false hood which seems to be accepted without question by lawmakers. Anyone in Congress is no more than a phone call away from the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics who will confirm that released sex offenders typically have a low rate of re-offense. Much lower than other crimes. Those same sources will also point out that far more sex offenses are committed by persons released after convictions for non-sex offenses. Because the numbers of non-sex offenders are far greater, the real result is that they commit more sex offenses after release than sex offenders do.

What do these registration lists accomplish?

What they accomplish is the draining of state budgets trying to comply with such laws as SORNA which penalize states by reducing federal money to states who do not implement the law on a state level. Many states are finding out they save money by refusing to implement the law. The costs, often in the tens of millions per state, far exceed the federal funds they lose.

People on these lists often cannot find jobs or housing because of being listed. People who live with these people such as a wife and children, often find themselves ostracized simply by association.

Some insurance companies, fearing such retaliation as a fire bomb or an assault refuse to insure the homes they live in.

Many, facing possible assaults, ostracism, job loss, loss of housing etc. simply go underground where no one knows where they are.

It targets people who are not even a threat to your neighborhood. Other than the very low percentage of cases that attract national news coverage, the vast majority of offenses occur as a result of interaction with someone already known to the victim, such as a family member or a close friend. These people seldom target strangers. Most sex offenders do not target strangers.

The VERY SMALL number of cases that receive the most attention involve offenders who, if caught, are not likely to be released, thus don't wind up on these lists at all.

A comparison would be like a drug cartel list that lists all of your neighbors who smoked marijuana but not one of the dealers names and faces. Such a list does nothing to protect you from the real dangers but it could give you a false sense of security that causes you to over look real dangers.

Registrants due to local residential restrictions find they cannot find anyplace to live including their own families. By law many must seek rural housing to comply with residential restrictions, placing them in areas not served by public transportation and where few if any jobs are available. This creates additional pressure to go underground.

What is worse, some provisions of SORNA are designed to defeat ex-post-facto protections and apply restrictions to offenders who have long since been released from their sentences and obligations imposed by the states. People who have been living a law abiding life for years my face new registration and sex offender lists which could destroy lives, families and cost jobs, homes, marriages and clean reputations. There are already constitutional challenges in many areas regarding this attempt to apply this act on a retro-active basis.

So far no study has been able to show that they make the public any safer than they were prior to such lists. In fact, if those very few who may pose a threat are the very persons these laws drive underground, the law may have to opposite effect...losing track of the most dangerous few.