Today I read an article titled “When Kids Are Accused of Sex Crimes,” written by Sarah Stillman and published in the New Yorker magazine in 2016. The article tells the sympathetic story of Leah DeBuc, who ended up on the sex offender list (Stillman, 2016). The reason she was put there was because of mischief she conducted with her younger step-sibling when she was ten years old, which could be classified more as play-acting than actual sex (Stillman, 2016).
Because of that, her life had been made considerably harder, with being refused membership in organizations, services, and places to live. Her life was also frequently put in danger by self-righteous individuals, who either sought to drive Leah away or put her life in danger in one way or another. She had undergone various treatments as part of her registration, many of which included behaviorist approaches that first forced her to adopt the label of a sexual offender despite her protests (Stillman, 2016). The article itself ends with a silent question of whether these methods are humane, effective, or even deserving for underage sex offenders.
Anecdotes are favored by journalists seeking to promote one narrative or another. These do not deal with facts, can be as heart-wrenching as they want them to be, and can be altered or edited to fit the needs of the writer. For every story like Leah’s, where her life was ruined by the registry, there is a story of a family whose daughter was raped by a gang of underage molesters, who got out of prison after 3-5 years, while having ruined a person’s health and life (Carey, 2021). However, what this article did succeed in achieving is making me think about sex offender lists, their purposes, and their effectiveness.
Officially, sex offender registration lists are tools for police to be able to keep a watchful eye on people who have committed sexual offenses, especially against minors, as a means of preventing them from doing it in the future. Therefore, the objective is to prevent crimes from happening. The effectiveness of such measures is disputed – some studies show that 95% of sexual offenses are committed by first-time offenders (Carey, 2021). The usefulness of the lists in preventing recidivist acts is also uncertain – some studies found marginal improvements while others did not (Carey, 2021). I think it is safe to say that these lists are not working too well.
Then, I thought that perhaps the objective of the list is to serve as an additional punishment to fit the crime. If that is the case, then the mechanism is extremely inefficient, as it requires citizenry to act on their own volition to punish the criminal outside of jail once they have already served their sentence. In many cases, this could potentially result in the person being killed or injured and another being charged for murder, like it was mentioned happening in the article.
Based on my research, I have drawn several conclusions in relation to the reviewed article. Children should not be placed on the registry, because the registry is an inefficient prevention and punishment tool. Punishment should fit the crime – an adult molesting a child should be put away for life. The case of an underage individual engaged in sex with another minor should be reviewed by a jury, with individual sentences doled out. In the case of Leah, I do not think the punishment she received was deserved or even warranted. In the case of several teenagers raping a girl, the teenagers should be put away for life. The treatments should also undergo significant changes, with the indoctrination methods described in the article being removed. If these measures are enacted, I believe that the number of crimes and recidivists would go down significantly.
References
Carey, J. (2021). Do sex offender registries actually work? Web.
Stillman, S. (2016). The list. The New Yorker. Web.