Sex Offender Research Information Center ~
By sorinfocenter
Quote: “Who am I? My name is Emily Horowitz, and this is my personal website” ~ https://sorinfocenter
I am sociologist, and the author of Protecting Our Kids? How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us (Praeger, 2015), and I’m interested in using research to dispel panic and hysteria about crimes – especially crimes involving sex and children. I am also a Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY, https://sorinfocenter.org/
THE PURPOSE OF sorinfocenter website is: TO SHARE RESEARCH ABOUT SEX OFFENDER LAWS IN THE UNITED STATES IN A SYSTEMATIC WAY.
The United States has had a federally mandated public sex offender registry since 1996 (although some states had sex offender registries before this). Read more about the history of U.S. sex offender legislation, and the key piece of federal legislation that created the public registries. There are almost 850,000 (http://www.missingkids.com/en US/documents/Sex Offenders Map.pdf) people ( as of June 1, 2015, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (http://www.missingkids.com/en US/documents/Sex Offenders Map.pdf) on U.S. sex offender registries.
After 20 years of increasingly harsh and draconian sex offender polices, namely public listings with photographs and personal information about those with a prior sex offense, as well as residency restrictions and community notification, there is little research suggesting that they are effective at protecting our children or making us safer.
At the same time, 20 years of social science and criminal justice research shows us that these laws do a tremendous amount of damage to those caught in their web. (https://sorinfocenter.org/201608/27/existing-studies-negative-effects-of-the-registry/) If a research study is not included here, please email Emily Horowitz” (https://sorinfocenter.org/contact/