Sex offender registries are based on the idea of the “sexual predator” as someone who is inherently evil and will always reoffend. Yet research doesn’t show this to be the case.

The notion that people who commit sexual crimes reoffend at a uniquely high rate is persistent, yet definitively false. Numerous studies suggest that the number of people convicted of sex crimes who end up being re-arrested for a sexual offense hovers around 3.5%. While it’s true that sexual violence is massively underreported, this is still a far lower rate of reoffending than popularly believed.

In fact, in contrast to what registry supporters argue, one 2011 study found that sex offender registries actually increase the likelihood of recidivism by about 1.6%, largely due to the effects of social isolation, inequality, and homelessness caused by strict residence restrictions. This data is so convincing, numerous states are rolling back residency restrictions on people convicted of sex offenses. Meanwhile, rights organizations like the ACLUand Human Rights Watch argue against the broad use of sex offender registries and recommend that states should severely limit sex offender registries, remove restrictions on offenders’ mobility and residency, and restrict public disclosure of offender status.

As many feminists have argued, a major problem with punitive approaches to sexual violence like the sex offender registry is that they tend to ignore survivors’ needs in favor of a single-minded focus on perpetrators’ misdeeds. As our own Alexandra has written, survivors have concrete, material needs (healthcare, housing, counseling, paid time off) that punitive approaches to justice—while they may make politicians feel “tough on crime”— simply don’t address. Human Rights Watch similarly argues that sex offender registries divert resources that could be better spent providing prevention and victim services.

Meanwhile, child advocates argue that treatment and community support for convicted or potential offenders are much more effective at protecting victims than sex offender registries. As Alison Feigh, a child safety advocate, told Human Rights Watch, “When a sex offender succeeds in living in the community, we are all safer.” “Spencer,” a pedophile who has sought psychological help for his attraction to children and has not offended, told Slate “It doesn’t protect children to have a stigmatized group of outcasts living on the fringe of society.” While conventional wisdom would condemn even considering Spencer’s thoughts on how to prevent child sexual abuse, the existence of people who are attracted to children but who do not act on that attraction should give us hope in the potential for prevention.





Sex offender registries rest on fundamentally flawed ideas about sexual violence. By quarantining people who have committed sexual crimes, particularly crimes against children, proponents of registries claim to protect children from predation—with the underlying assumption that the greatest threat to children is “stranger danger.”

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