There are many stigmas attached to the blunt name/title that a state ran registry adds to a person's life and leads to harm; just by the sheer name of the registry.
There have been articles on WAR and other sites which are focusing on using the more politically correct wording for a person with a sexually related crime.
If you would like to share your ideas on this awful moniker that does nothing less than shame an already aggravating and unnecessary public list, feel free.
My favorite one to use when discussing the registry is "sexually motivated crimes" list or notification system.
Changing the way people look at things by relabeling an already poorly created system may be useful in convincing others that the registry is and was designed to punish and dehumanize individuals, by design.
I always say "the sex offense registry", that is what it is. It lists the offense and unfortunately also the person and their address, who in the past, and often very distant past, violated a sex related or unrelated law. By unrelated I mean things like "public urination" or even a 10 year old exposing themselves to another 10 year old, neither one even thinking about a sex act. But in some states that will put them on the registry for life.
There are almost a million people listed on the public registry, some as young as 8 and 10. 25 years later they are a 35 year old listed on the public registry. The lawmakers want all of the people listed on that registry to be labeled so that they are the most hated people on the planet. It is purely punishment. It has no public safety benefit.
The public registry does not reduce an already very low recidivism rate for the people listed on that registry. Over 95% of arrests for a sex offense are arrests of first time offenders that have no prior arrests or convictions and are not listed on any registry.
A very small number of the people listed on the public registry will ever commit another sex offense. At the same time, 20 times as many people with no prior conviction will commit a sex offense.
How can the public registry possibly have a noticeable reduction in sex law violations when in reality the public registry destabilizes those listed on it along with their entire family, parents, spouse, children, grandchildren are all put at risk from the destabilizing effect of the public registry on people's lives.
The public registry must be abolished to restore our country to a leadership position in human rights, instead of being near the top of the list of countries with the most human rights violations of any country.
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