Writing for the Sentinel of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, reporter Joshua Vaughn questions the effectiveness of sex offender registries — especially since most new sex crimes are committed by first-time offenders.
The Sentinel reviewed more than 450 charged sex crime cases in Cumberland, Dauphin, Perry, Franklin and Adams counties in 2016 and found only 15 cases where the defendant was on the registry at the time of the offense.More than 96 percent of all sex crime cases in those five counties involved defendants who were not on the sex offender registry.“You can look at that and say ‘people on the registry aren’t committing sex crimes,’” Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed said.
Read more of Vaughn’s report in the Sentinel.