Tag: sex offender registration

UPDATED: 50-State Chart on Relief from Sex Offender Registration

We have completed an overhaul of our 50-State chart on relief from sex offender registration obligations, to bring it up to date and ensure that it is thorough and accurate.  This chart documents the duration of sex offender registration requirements, as well as legal mechanisms for early termination from such requirements. In conducting this review, we have identified a handful of states that have, since the chart was last revised in November 2017, expanded the availability of relief from sex offender registration requirements, including for people who have successfully completed diversionary dispositions, people with serious disabilities, and people who are registered based on out-of-state offenses.  These recent changes in the law, incorporated in the chart, are summarized below. In 2018, Missouri enacted SB 655, substantially revising its sex offender registration scheme in a manner expected to reduce the number of people who are required to register.  Previously, all sex offender registrants were required to register for life, and the only mechanisms for relief were either: 1) a petition to the court 10 years after registration for people with certain non-violent offenses, or 2) a petition 2 years after a guilty finding for certain consensual youthful sex offenses.  Under the new scheme, which follows federal guidance, registrants are classified as tier I, II, or III, with Tier I requiring 15 years of registration, Tier II requiring 25 years, and Tier III requiring life.  Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 589.400, .401.  Tier I registrants may petition for a 5-year reduction of their 15-year registration obligation after 10 years with a “clean record,” and Tier III registrants for a juvenile adjudication may petition for removal after 25 years with a “clean record.”  Id.  One reason the new law is seen as likely to reduce the number of registrants in the state is that Tier I registrants under the new scheme comprise a substantially larger number of offenses than those authorized to petition for 10-year removal under the old law.  (One puzzling provision of the new § 589.401 is one that authorizes Tier II registrants to petition for relief after 25 years, the point at which their registration obligation would otherwise expire automatically.  §§ 589.400(4)(2), 589.401(4)(2).  We must assume this is a drafting error.) In 2019, Tennessee enacted HB 624, which allows a person who is required to register due to a diversionary plea, to obtain termination of registration requirements upon successful completion of the term of judicial diversion and dismissal of the charges.  §§ 40-39-207(a)(1) and (c). Also in 2019, Utah enacted HB 298, which adds a new provision authorizing people who are currently required to register for a period of 10 years after termination of sentence to petition the court for an order to be removed from the registry as early as 10 years after being sentenced to probation or committed to a community-based residential program, or 10 years after release from incarceration to parole, as long as the person commits no further serious offense, completes treatment, pays restitution, and otherwise complies with the terms of registration.  Compare § 77-41-105(3)(a) with § 77-41-112(1)(b).  This law, effective in May 2019, is likely to result in earlier termination of a registration obligation for people convicted of less serious offenses. In 2018, Colorado enacted SB 26, which allows a registrant who suffers from a severe disability that is permanently incapacitating, to petition to discontinue registration.  § 16-22-113(2.5).  Georgia and Virginia have similar laws.  SB 26 also authorizes Colorado residents who are required to register because of an out of state conviction (which requires registration in the jurisdiction of conviction), to petition a Colorado court to discontinue the registration requirement if the person would not be required to register had the conviction occurred in Colorado.  § 16-22-103(3). Read more

Second chance for some youthful sex offenders

On April 6, Arizona became the latest state to offer early relief from sex offender registration obligations to young people convicted of consensual sex offenses and sentenced to probation.  The law, HB 2539, allows individuals convicted before reaching age 22 of sexual conduct with a minor between the ages of 15 and 17 (so-called “Romeo and Juliet” offenders), to petition the court for relief from registration after completing probation.  If a petitioner meets all applicable criteria, the court must grant the petition unless it finds that a “denial is in the best interests of justice or tends to ensure the safety of the public.”  Similar laws authorizing early termination from registration for those convicted of youthful consensual offenses are in effect in ten other states, including Florida, Oregon, and Michigan. Laws requiring young people to register have come under increased scrutiny thanks to recent media coverage of their harsh effects and flimsy justifications — notably an article by Sarah Stillman published last month in the New Yorker (“The List”).   Much of the attention to registry of juveniles has been driven by mobilization around the issue by advocacy groups like Reform Sex Offender Laws (RSOL) and the Center on Youth Registration Reform (CYRR).  In 2013, Human Rights Watch issued a ground-breaking report on the issue, Raised on the Registry. Public registration of juveniles and young people convicted of sex offenses is widespread. According to one recent article, An estimated one-fourth of the people on the public sex offender registries were convicted as juveniles. Fifteen states post the names and photos of offenders who are minors on the online registries. Thirteen of the 20 states that lock up people in indefinite civil commitment—preventive, dubiously therapeutic detention for crimes not yet committed—include people who committed their offenses as juveniles. “The single age with the greatest number of offenders from the perspective of law enforcement was age 14,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Sex offender registries were created largely based on dubious assumptions about the recidivism rate of those convicted of sexual offenses.  But, as far as young people are concerned, that risk is generally unfounded, particularly given the nature of the offenses they are likely to commit.  The article continues: As Raised on the Registry powerfully showed, with little or no intervention these young people are virtually guaranteed not to “reoffend,” mainly because so many of them are penalized for engaging in sex play—things that, even if not always entirely consensual, are common among children and usually without long-lasting harm. Nicole Pittman, the author of the Human Rights Watch Report and Director of CYRR, told NPR in 2015, We are criminalizing normative child sexual behavior in a large fashion ….. We have kids that are on the registry for streaking at a football game, peeing at a park …. Rome-and-Juliet-type offenses where you have a 17-year-old dating a 14-year-old.  That person goes on the registry. For these young people, registration is a sentence to economic insecurity and public stigma that may last decades, if not a lifetime. According to a 2014 piece from The Huffington Post, Finding housing and employment are among the biggest challenges for juvenile offenders on the general sex offenders registry, which makes information like recent photos, home address and place of work publicly available. Many ex-offenders report being harassed, excommunicated or otherwise targeted once neighbors find them on the registry. It can have tragic results in some cases. “Suicide [among children placed on sex offender registries] is a possibility … even predictable,” David S. Prescott, a social worker and expert on treatment strategies for youth sex offenders told HRW. Many of the state laws requiring young people to register came about because of the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) – also known as the Adam Walsh Act – a 2006 bill that requires lifetime registration of juveniles convicted as adults, as well as juveniles adjudicated of certain serious offenses in family court.  Many states have refused to implement these and other provisions of the Adam Walsh Act and have forgone federal funding as a result.  Arizona is among them, though it still requires registration of juveniles convicted in adult court and gives family courts discretion to require juvenile registration. Under Arizona law, juveniles required to register as a result of family court adjudications must remain on the registry until age 25.  Juveniles convicted in adult court remain on the registry for life, except that those sentenced to probation have an opportunity for removal during annual probation review hearings until they turn 22, or upon completion of probation.  HB 2539 extends a similar opportunity for relief to young Arizonans convicted between the ages of 18 and 21 of sexual relations with a minor over the age of 14. HB 2539 is by no means a game-changer since it will likely only benefit a small percentage of the youthful offenders that are required to register.  But hopefully its passage, and developments in the courts like the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling striking down that state’s lifetime registration requirements for juveniles, are a sign that legislatures and courts are ready to give some careful reconsideration to registry laws that ruin young lives while providing little public benefit. The CCRC maintains a chart that summarizes and compares the availability of relief from sex offender registration obligations in all 50 states, the federal system, and U.S. territories. You can find it at this link. Read more

50-state survey of relief from sex offender registration

We have prepared a new 50-state chart detailing the provisions for termination of the obligation to register as a sex offender in each state and under federal law.  This project was inspired by Wayne Logan’s recent article in the Wisconsin Law Review titled “Database Infamia: Exit from the Sex Offender Registries,” discussed on this site on April 15.  The original idea of the project was simply to present Professor Logan’s research in the same format as the other 50-state charts that are part of the NACDL Restoration of Rights Resource, supplementing it as necessary.  But getting all of the state laws condensed into a few categories turned out to be a considerably more complex task than we imagined, in part because we had to fill in a lot of gaps, and in part because of the extraordinary variety and complexity of the laws themselves. We present it here as a work in progress in the hope that practitioners and researchers in each state will review our work and give us comments to help us make the chart most helpful to them and to affected individuals. It is risky to try to generalize about the results of our study,  However, we found that registration laws seem to fall into three general categories: 18 states provide a single indefinite or lifetime registration period for all sex offenses, but a substantial portion of these allow those convicted of less serious offenses to return to court after a specified period of time to seek removal; 19 states and the District of Columbia have a two-tier registration system, which requires serious offenders and recidivists to register for life but automatically excuses those convicted of misdemeanors and other less serious offenses from the obligation to register after a specified period of time, typically 10 years; 13 states and the federal system have a three-tier system, requiring Tier III offenders to register for life, and Tier I and Tier II offenders to register for a term of years, generally 15 and 25 years. Most states require recidivists to register for life.  About half the states have shorter terms or special termination provisions for juveniles.  Successful completion of deferred adjudication avoids registration in many states. Most of the states that authorize discretionary relief after a period of years specify the criteria that are to be considered by courts, and require that there be no intervening convictions of any kind. A number of states give specific effect to executive pardon, and a few others specify that a pardon must be for innocence before it will relieve registration.  Many states make no mention of pardon as a relief mechanism, but it is at least arguable that a full and unconditional pardon would relieve the obligation to register as well as other collateral consequences.  A number of states specify that general expungement or sealing provisions have no effect on the obligation to register.  However, as noted, deferred adjudication schemes may avoid registration in many states. Most states provide the same relief to those whose obligation to register derives from out-of-state convictions, but a few refer to require them to return to their jurisdiction of conviction for relief. You can view the chart here, and find it with the other 50 state charts on the Restoration of Rights page. We welcome feedback, both from those familiar with a particular state’s laws and from those who simply have questions about particular aspects of the chart.  Please send your comments to joshgaines@gmail.com. Read more

North Carolina offers detailed on-line guide to relief from a criminal conviction

We’ve just learned that the School of Government at the University of North Carolina has produced a detailed and well-organized online guide to obtaining relief from a North Carolina criminal conviction. You can view the guide here.  The guide explains in one place the various mechanisms available in North Carolina for obtaining relief from collateral consequences, including expunctions, judicial certificates of relief, and other procedures. The guide supplements the School’s Collateral Consequences Assessment Tool, C-CAT, an online tool enabling users to identify the potential consequences of a criminal conviction in North Carolina.  C-CAT is user-friendly and has been kept up to date with new laws enacted since its launch two years ago. The relief guide is organized by the type of relief being sought and includes tables breaking down the specific requirements for relief. It describes special relief provisions for sex offender registration and firearms dispossession, as well as for drug crimes and juvenile adjudications.  Features of the online guide include keyword searching, live links to internal and external cross-references such as statutes and forms, cases and opinions, and periodic updates. The guide was prepared by John Rubin, Albert Coates Professor of Public Law and Government. This guide is the most detailed and user-friendly one we have seen, and should be a model for other jurisdictions. Read more