12-4-15 National:When Richard Joseph, a convicted rapist from New York, got out of prison in 2006, he started down the path that would send him back to prison again.
Joseph did not get in trouble by sexually assaulting someone again. Instead, he ran afoul of laws that required him to register as a sex offender.
Once he failed to report to New York parole authorities, Joseph moved to Teaneck and then did not alert New Jersey State Police of his new address, officials said.
His freedom didn't last long. About five weeks after moving to Teaneck, he was picked up and jailed. On Jan. 4, Joseph, 43, was sentenced to 36 months in prison for failing to register.
That arrest and conviction put Joseph among a relatively small number of the registered sex offenders nationwide who get caught trying to re-establish their lives by moving to a new state and attempting to hide their criminal records, officials said.
His case illustrates the difficult balancing act that society faces when dealing with sex offenders out of prison, experts say. Residents, especially families with children, want to know about potential threats in their neighborhoods by having access to public lists of offenders.
But those same lists, some experts say, have done little to reduce sex crime rates and in some cases may be the driving force in sending them into hiding.
One study from last year suggested that sex offender registries might actually increase the likelihood of re-offending.
"There's very little evidence that using registries to prevent re-offense works," said Maia Christopher, executive director of the Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers.
The push to identify sex offenders took off in 1994 after the murder of 7-year-old.
Megan Kanka of Hamilton Township, who lived across the street, unbeknownst to her parents, from two-time offender Jesse Timmendequas. Her parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka, argued after her murder that laws requiring offenders to register with authorities — made available to the police — failed to protect the public.
Their effort spurred states around the country to enact registration laws. Soon, the federal government followed, passing a law to make it a federal offense for a registered sex offender to move across state lines without letting the other state know.
Across the United States, about 500 people like Joseph are charged annually under that law, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Since 2007, nine people were prosecuted under the federal law in New Jersey, according to Michael Schroeder, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals.
As of December, nearly 844,000 people were registered sex offenders in the United States, according to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children NCMEC.
The link provided above although is on the NCMEC website, is NOT the normal place the map is found on NCMEC. Why the difference is unknown at this time, we will watch NCMEC to see if they are making a change.In the 20 years since New Jersey adopted Megan's Law, a 2014 report found, an average of 240 sex offenders a year are convicted of failing to register an address from one New Jersey residence to another, according to a study commissioned by the state Administrative Office of the Courts. That's out of a total of more than 15,000 registered offenders in New Jersey, according to the study.
According to Schroeder, the marshals assisted in 540 of those arrests since 2007.
There's no way to know exactly how often offenders deliberately move without telling authorities, said Jenah Cook, a representative of Family Watchdog, an Indiana-based organization that allows the public to search sex offender databases. They might die, have their reporting period expire or "just up and disappear," she said.
Differences in how states classify offenses make it difficult to track individuals who move across state lines, she said.
But the registries of sex offenders at least give families information about where those convicted of sex crimes live, she said.
"Whether it's thorough and the information is all there, that's up to the state," she said.
New Jersey is one of a minority of states that performs a risk assessment of offenders before they are classified as having a low, moderate or high potential to commit another sexual assault, said Dr. Andrew Harris, a criminal science researcher at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Like most states, the federal government does not recognize risk-based assessments, he said, so when a New Jersey offender goes to another state, he may be subject to more stringent reporting and notification requirements. Depending on how an individual is classified in a state, he may have to report his address annually, or as often as every three months.
Such increased scrutiny could drive sex offenders underground, a 2015 study found.
Offenders often are left to live in neighborhoods with high "social disorganization," said author Karen J. Terry of the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York. Their lives are marked by vigilantism, poor housing and few chances for decent employment, Terry wrote.
"Such policies have led to unintended consequences for both the offenders and the public that they intend to protect," she said in the study, published in the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice.
The restrictions placed on offenders "may actually increase" the likelihood of committing another sex crime by leaving the individual hopeless, Terry wrote.
But Parents for Megan's Law and The Crime Victims Center, a New York-based advocacy organization, argues that enforcement of registration helps reduce future sex crimes. The organization cites a Washington state report that found that 4.3 percent offenders who failed to register committed another sex crime -- 54 percent higher than those who registered faithfully.
"What we say is it's common sense," said Director Laura Ahearn. "It's very easy to say it's ineffective, because it's like trying to prove a negative."
Ahearn said the arrest and conviction of Joseph -- who had multiple sex offenses on his record -- shows the system works.
"The U.S. Marshals have been very proactive across the country," she said.
To Harris, the systems are not so much about addressing the risk to the public.
"My assessment," he said, "is a lot of this has to do with political risk." ..Source.. by Tim Darragh
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