OFF-LINE REGISTRY

Why is it important that someone from Topeka, Los Angeles, Hong Kong or, for that matter, Nova Scotia know where sex offenders are living in Maine? It isn’t, yet current state law insists that every nut with a grudge worldwide be handed an address and picture of the 2,200 sex offenders here. With the recent shooting deaths of two of these offenders, legislators are reviewing Maine’s listing policies and as they do they should weigh public safety vs. mere convenience.

That’s what the Internet is in this case, a convenient way for the state to believe it is meeting a public reporting duty – stick the names and photos on the site with more information easily available and hope nothing bad happens. But sometimes it does, as Maine discovered last month when Stephen Marshall, 20, of Nova Scotia killed Joseph Gray of Milo and William Elliott in Corinth.

In March a man from Washington state was sentenced for shooting to death two convicted child rapists whose names he found on a sex offender web site. A New Hampshire man in 2003 was caught trying to murder two convicted sex offenders whose names he found on the state’s sex offender registry. In each case the state made these criminal acts easier.

Of course this doesn’t excuse in any way the crimes the sex offenders committed and it doesn’t at all say that continued local notification isn’t necessary. It says that if the state is going to take action against citizens, which it does when creating an Internet sex-offender list, it has a duty not to endanger them. This, roughly, is the argument that “John Doe” brings to Kennebec County court in a suit to keep his name off the state registry.

According to his complaint, the plaintiff was 18 years old in the early 1980s when convicted of a sex offense and since then has not been arrested or convicted of a sex crime. Instead, he is married, employed and leading a productive life. If his name goes on the list, he believes, he will lose his job, his wife says she will leave him out of fear for her family’s safety and the plaintiff himself believes that he will be harmed.

The fact that he has not been arrested again is not that surprising. A decade ago the Department of Justice conducted a major study that examined recidivism rates for 272,111 prisoners released in 15 states. Overall, about 67.5 percent were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years, while the re-arrest rate for sex offenders was 5.3 percent over the same time, though it is worth noting that sex offenders were much more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime, which are considered under-reported.

Some people will look at John Doe’s fears and conclude, “Good – he ruined someone’s life 20 years ago and now his life should be ruined too.” And that’s why the nation is governed by the rule of law. If John Doe, who recently lost a bid for a temporary restraining order on listing his name, has served his time and poses no particular threat, the state has no legitimate interest in invading his privacy.

The question for lawmakers is whether they view the Internet listing as part of the punishment for offenders because it surely is. The balance between privacy and safety is unquestionably difficult in this debate, but absent evidence that sending out sex-offender information to the world increases safety here, the real threat of violence it produces should cause Maine to rethink its position.