When most people commit a crime getting back into society after they've served their time can be challenging. For sex offenders it can be impossible. Restrictions on where they can live and work keep people from being able to improve their situation. Those on the registry often find no one who will rent them an apartment or hire them. Even if they have the money to buy a home they can find themselves facing petitions and protests. If they do get a home, it may be burned out from under them by vigilantes. Even if they committed a single offense and even if that offense was decades in the past the registry keeps the punishment going for a lifetime.
The usual justification for this is that keeping track of sex offenders improves public safety. Only it doesn't.
Massachusetts state representative Paul Heroux
Do Sex Offender Registries Reduce Recidivism?
No. Or at least that is what the empirical evidence and research on this issue shows. But that doesn't mean we should not have them. The fact is that the registries don't really do anything to improve public safety. They just make people feel safer and in control; unfortunately this is a false sense of security.
... Put another way, sex offender registries probably don't work because they miss the mark on what works and what does not. Registries don't really address the behavior of sex offenders.
Is that because all sex offenders are monsters who will reoffend no matter what?
Not really
First of all, not all sex offenders are the same and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Sex offender is a category of criminal offending. It is not a homogenous group. Pediophiles are very different than someone guilty of a drunken rape, and both are very different than someone who is guilty of statutory rape. And then there are many more types of sex offenders. The way each type thinks is different. The likelihood of reoffending is different. The effectiveness and utility of treatment is very different for each. There is nothing to suggest that there is one solution to all these different problems.
Compulsive pedophiles and serial rapists have relatively high rates of reoffending. But those groups are a tiny fraction of those who end up on the registry. Other sex offenders have very low rates of reoffending.
Contrary to popular perceptions, considering that sex offender recidivism is very low, we would not expect that past behavior to predict future behavior.
There is one thing that sex offender registries do. They promote crime. They convince some registered offenders that they will never live s normal life and drive them into criminal activities to make a living. They also encourage those who want to practice violence against a class of people who get very little sympathy or protection.