J. J. Prescott is a professor of law at my alma mater, the University of Michigan School of Law. He also seems to have an interest in applying Freakonomics-ish analysis to legal problems. If you have read Freakonomics, you know that Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner — one an economist, the other a writer — look at “the hidden side of everything” and find connections that are sometimes counterintuitive but always interesting.
Prescott has written a couple of articles that argue that the data show (the academic usage — “data” is plural) that sex offender registry and notification statutes don’t always help prevent sex offenders from re-offending. In the magazine “Regulation” and then in an article in the February, 2011, issue of the Journal of Law and Economics, 54 J. Law Econ. 161-206 (2011), Prescott (and, for the Journal of Law and Economics article, Jonah Rockoff of the Columbia Business School) discuss whether sex offender registry laws and sex offender notification laws reduce recidivism.
Sex offender registry laws require that those who have committed certain sex crimes (sexual violence, child pornography, etc.) must notify the police of their whereabouts. Prescott and Rockoff write that the data show that such laws help prevent those offenders from committing new crimes — at least from committing new crimes against friends, family and neighbors. The evidence suggests that it makes no impact on the rate of new crimes against strangers. To put it in lay terms, if I have an urge to commit sex crimes against strangers, the fact that the cops know where I live won’t change that. I’m probably already pretty immune to social pressure as a constraint on my behavior. But folks who commit their crimes against family and friends are a little more “under control” than those who commit their crimes against strangers, and the duty to register — and the frequent police contact that results — seems to act as a check on them.
On the other hand, laws that call for notifying neighbors that someone is a sex offender may deter someone from committing a registrable offense in the first place, but it may actually increase recidivism among registered offenders. Why this odd result? Because the person who is on the registry, and who is known to his friends and neighbors to be on the registry, may see their situation as sufficiently akin to prison that the prospect of going back to prison holds less terror for them.
Our results instead suggest that notification deters nonregistered sex offenders, and may, in fact, increase recidivism among registered offenders by reducing the relative attractiveness of a crime-free life. This finding is consistent with work by criminologists showing that notification imposes social and financial costs on registered sex offenders, perhaps offsetting the relative benefits of forgoing criminal activity. We regard this latter finding as important, given that the purpose of notification is to reduce recidivism.
The article is very heavy on statistical analysis that is well beyond my competence to evaluate; I look at the conclusions. And their last paragraph is perhaps cautionary to policy-makers who, in Virginia, seem to want to load up sex offenders with new restrictions each year for political gain:
The lack of empirical evidence for the recidivism-reducing benefits of registration and notification has not stopped policy makers from imposing additional restrictions on convicted sex offenders. Registration and notification laws are now, in some sense, old technology. Today, states are in the midst of imposing even more intrusive laws, such as residency restrictions and civil commitment, with fresh hope of reducing recidivism. These policies may impose even higher costs on sex offenders and their families than registration and notification laws have, and research is needed to understand if the effects, if any, of these policies on criminal behavior makes these investments worthwhile.
Every year, the Virginia General Assembly considers bills that increase burdens and restraints on sex offenders. The law that says that they can’t go on school property, or on school buses, or to child care centers, has been getting amended frequently. Virginia law now prohibits a registered sex offender convicted after July 1, 2008, from living within 500 feet of a school or park. Most years there is a proposal to increase that to 1,000 feet — a prohibition which, if applied in Charlottesville, would basically make it impossible for a sex offender to live anywhere in the city. Bills get introduced to prevent sex offenders from using computers, even when their particular offense had nothing to do with a computer.
Some of those restrictions have been enacted in enough states that there may be enough data to allow an analysis of, for example, whether a prohibition on living within 500 feet of a school or park has any effect on recidivism. Here’s hoping that policy makers look for such evidence before they enact more restrictions.
