Chris Dornin - Facts and Fiction about Sex Offenders

By Chris Dornin, Founder, Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform

 

May 2012 

 

Myth: Sex offenders are mean strangers who steal kids from playgrounds.

 

An Ohio prison intake report on sex offenders imprisoned in 1992 revealed that 2.2 percent of child molesters were strangers to their victims, and 89 percent of perpetrators had never been convicted before. 

 

In their 1993 textbook, The Juvenile Sex Offender, Howard Barbaree and colleagues estimated that teenagers perpetrated 20 percent of all rapes and half of all child molestations. 

 

A 2006 report for the Ohio Sentencing Commission said 93 percent of molestation victims were well known to their perpetrators, over half the offenders victimized close relatives, and 93 percent of molesters had never been arrested for a previous sex crime. 

 

A December 2009 study by David Finkelhor of UNH and colleagues for the US Justice Department analyzed national sex crime data from 2004. That year the estimated population of underage sex offenders was 89,000, and they had committed 35.8 percent of all sex crimes reported to police. One in eight juvenile sex offenders was under age 12. 

 

Myth: Treatment is a waste of money on sex offenders.

 

The New Hampshire Prison sex offender treatment program compiled recidivism data in 1999 for a national survey by the Colorado Department of Corrections. Lance Messenger, the New Hampshire program director at the time, reported a 6.2% sex crime re-arrest rate after an average of 4.8 years on parole for 204 men who completed the Intensive Sex Offender Treatment Program. The recidivism rate was 12.4% for 435 sex offenders who received no treatment and had spent an average of 8.6 years in the community. Messenger is now in private practice and recently told this writer his report did not constitute a rigorous scientific study.

 

A study in 2000 by the Vermont Corrections Department tracked 190 sex offenders released a decade earlier. The arrest rate over 10 years for new sex offenses was 3.8 percent for people who had completed the sex offender treatment program. It was 22.4 percent for those who started the program, but dropped out or got kicked out. Those who never attended had a 27 percent recidivism rate in decade.

 

A 2003 New Zealand study led by Ian Labie entitled, “Paedophile programmes work,” found that 175 offenders who completed treatment while on parole had an average sexual recidivism rate of 5 per cent over four years. Two control groups without treatment attained rates of 21 and 25 percent.

 

A Colorado recidivism study in 2003 led by Kerry Lowden tracked 3338 sex offenders released from prison between 1993 and 2002. After three years in the community, 5.3 percent had been arrested for a new sex crime.  Each month an inmate took part in the intensive therapeutic community for sex offenders behind the walls reduced by 1 percent the risk of committing a later sex crime. The report said these treatment programs “profoundly improve public safety as measured by officially recorded recidivism.”

 

Vermont corrections personnel tracked 195 adult male sex offenders over a six-year period ending in 2006. Those who completed sex offender treatment had a sex-offense recidivism rate of 5.4 percent, compared with 30 percent for people who never took that treatment. 

 

Lorraine R. Reitzel and Joyce L. Carbonell published a meta-analysis in 2006 of nine studies of recidivism among juvenile sex offenders with a combined sample of 2,986 kids. The sex crime recidivism rate was 12.5 percent for young offenders tracked for an average of 59 months. The rate was 7.37 percent for kids who had taken a sex offender treatment program and 18.9 percent for those who had not.

 

A 2009 report by Robin Goldman of the Minnesota Department of Corrections compared two samples of 1,020 sex offenders released between 1999 and 2003. One group had taken an intensive sex offender treatment program and the other had not. The treated group had a 27 percent lower sex crime recidivism rate. The report concluded, “These findings are consistent with the growing body of research supporting the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral treatment for sex offenders.”

 

Fact: Most sex offenders will have low sex-crime recidivism. 

 

A report to the Ohio Sentencing Commission in 1989 said 8 percent of sex offenders were convicted of a new sex crime within a decade. The 10-year Ohio recidivism rate for incest was 7.4 percent. http://www.drc.state.oh.us/web/Reports/Ten_Year_Recidivism.pdf

 

A 1998 Canadian Government study by Karl Hanson and Monique Bussiere, entitled “Predicting Relapse: A meta-Analysis of Sexual Offender Recidivism Studies,” examined 61 research efforts between 1943 and 1995 with a combined sample of 28,972 sex offenders. The overall recidivism rate for new sex offenses was 13.4 percent during the average follow-up period of four to five years. Of the 9,603 child molesters in the combined cohort, the rate was 12.7 percent. Some of these studies dated back to the period when only stereotype serial sex offenders went to prison, thus weighting the results toward greater recidivism.

 

Roger Hood and three British colleagues followed 162 released sex offenders for four years and tracked 62 others for six years. Their report in 2002, entitled “Sex offenders emerging from long-term imprisonment; A Study of Their Long-term Reconviction Rates and of Parole Board Members' Judgements of Their Risk,” found 1.2 percent were re-imprisoned for a new sex crime after two years.  The report concluded, “These facts need to be more widely recognized and disseminated if there is to be rational debate on this emotive subject.”

 

A 2000 Iowa Corrections study tracked 233 sex offenders released in 1995 and 1996 under a new sex offender registry law. That group had a 3 percent sex crime recidivism rate after 4.3 years in the community. A similar control group of 201 sex offenders released before the registry law took effect had a 3.5 percent sex recidivism rate in the same length of time. The group supervised under the registry had a somewhat lower average recidivism risk score to begin with, and it had a higher proportion of people on probation as opposed to parole. The difference in recidivism rates was statistically insignificant.

 

A U.S. Justice Department report in 2003 tracked 9,691 sex offenders released from prisons in New York, California, Ohio and 12 other large states in 1994. Their recidivism rate for new sex crime arrests and convictions after three years on parole was 5.3 percent. 7.3 percent of child molesters with two or more prior arrests for that crime were charged anew for molesting. That compares with a 2.4 percent sexual recidivism rate for child molesters with only one prior arrest for that crime.

 

Karl Hanson and Andrew Harris published a 2004 report on 4,724 sex offenders in 10 Canadian and American samples ranging from 191 to 1,138 subjects. The average follow-up period was seven years after release. The overall sexual recidivism rates were 14 percent after five years, 20 percent after 10 years and 24 percent after 15 years. Incest offenders had corresponding rates of 6, 9 and 13 percent. Recidivism was defined as a new sex crime arrest or a new conviction. Counting only new convictions, the recidivism rates were half as high.

 

Karl Hanson and Morton-Bourgon published a similar meta-analysis in 2005 of 73 recidivism studies with a combined cohort of 19,267 sex offenders. After an average of nearly six years in the community they had a new sex crimes recidivism rate of 14.3 percent.

 

A 2005 report by Robert Barnoski of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy tracked the five-year sexual recidivism rates for 8,359 sex offenders released from Washington prisons between 1986 and 1999. Here are the results by year of release, showing the rate decreased over time.

 

Year 5-yr rate Year 5-year rate

1986 6% 1993 8%

1987 7.5% 1994 6%

1988 7.5% 1995 4.4%

1989 6% 1996 3%

1990 7% 1997 2%

1991 8% 1998 3%

1992 6% 1999 3.7%

 

A 2006 New York study analyzed the recidivism patterns for 19,827 sex offenders. The rate for new sex offenses after one year in the community was 2 percent. The cumulative rate increased to 3 percent after two years, 6 percent after five years, and 8 percent after 8 years.

 

A 2006 California study followed 93 adjudicated high-risk sexually violent predators released from civil commitment at the Atascadero State Hospital. Only 4.3 percent of these worst-of-the-worst offenders had committed new sex offenses after six years on the street.

 

A 2007 study by the Missouri Department of Corrections tracked 3,166 sex offenders released between 1990 and 2002. Twelve percent had been re-arrested for a new sex crime in those 12 years, and 10 percent had been re-convicted. The report also looked at sex offenders released in 2002. In the first three years on parole their sex crime recidivism rate was 3 percent. The report concluded, “Due to the dramatic decrease in sexual recidivism since the early 1990s, recent sexual re-offense rates have been very low, thus significantly limiting the extent to which sexual reoffending can be further reduced.”

 

 An Alaska Judicial Council report in 2007 said 3 percent of sex offenders had committed a new sex crime in their first three years after release from prison.

 

A 2007 report by the Tennessee Department of Safety found that 4.7 percent of 504 sex offenders released from prison in 2001 were arrested for a new sex offense after three years. The sex crime recidivism rate was zero for offenders whose original crime was incest. 

 

A 2007 Minnesota Department of Corrections study tracked 3,166 sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 1990 and 2002. After an average of 8.4 years in the community, 10 percent had been convicted of a new sex offense. Those released in the beginning of the study period were much more likely to reoffend within three years than those released later -- 17 percent in 1990 as opposed to 3 percent in 2002.  

 

A 2007 report by Jared Bauer of the West Virginia Division of Corrections tracked 325 sex offenders for three years after release from prison in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The recidivism rate for any return to prison, not just for sex crimes, was 9.5 percent. Only six parolees returned for new sex related crimes, including three for failing to properly register as a sex offender. The sex crime recidivism rate was slightly less than 2 percent. Only 1 percent had an actual sex crime victim.

 

A 2008 report by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tracked 4,280 sex offenders paroled in 2003. In the first year 2.43 percent had been arrested for new sex crimes. The cumulative totals were 3.27 percent at the end of the second year and 3.55 percent after three years. 

 

A 2008 study by California's Sex Offender Management Board reported on 4,204 sex offenders released in 1997 and 1998. 3.38 percent were convicted of new sex offenses in the next decade.

 

Utah criminologist Larry Bench tracked 389 Utah sex offenders for up to 25 years after release. His 2008 report disclosed that 7.2 percent had been arrested for a new sex crime.

 

An Indiana Corrections report in the spring of 2009 found that sex offenders released in 2005 had compiled a 1.05 percent sex crime re-conviction rate in three years. The study said this rate was “extremely low” and showed “a great deal of promise.”

 

Stan Orchowsky and Janice Iwama authored a 2009 study for the U.S. Justice Research and Statistics Association which showed similar low sex crime re-arrest rates after three years for sex offenders released from prison in 2001. The rates by state were as follows: Alaska 3.4%, Arizona 2.3%, Delaware 3.8%, Illinois 2.4%, Iowa 3.9%, New Mexico 1.8%, South Carolina 4.0%, and Utah 9.0%.  The comparison three-year national rate was 5.3 percent noted previously for inmates released in 1994. 

 

A report by Sarah Schelle of the Indiana Department of Corrections, entitled “Juvenile Recidivism, 2010,” said that only two of 71 juvenile sex offenders released in 2007 had committed new sex offense within three years. That’s a 2.8 percent sex offense recidivism rate, but the sample size was small.

 

A report in July 2011 led by Mark Rubin of the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service tracked 900 sex offenders released from prison or probation in Maine between 2004 and 2008. Within three years after release, 3.8 percent had been convicted of a new sex crime. The study entitled “Sexual Assault Trends and Sex Offender Recidivism in Maine, 2010” can be found online at http://muskie.usm.maine.edu/justiceresearch/Publications/Adult/Sexual_Assault_Trends_and_Sex_Offender_Recidivism_in_Maine_2010.pdf.

Rubin told the Portland Press Herald the public still thinks sex offenders have high re-offense rates. “There’s really no data to support that theory,” he told the newspaper. 

 

A report in March 2012 by the State of Connecticut tracked 746 sex offenders for five years after release from prison in 2005. Only 3.6 percent had been charged with a new sex crime, 2.7 percent were convicted, and 1.7 percent had returned to prison for that new crime. In comparison, 80 percent of all 14,400 inmates released in 2005 had been arrested for a new crime by 2010 and nearly half had returned to prison for those convictions. The author of the report, Ivan Kuzyk, noted these low re-offense rates appear to contradict a conventional wisdom that sex offenders have very high sexual re-offense rates. “The real challenge for public agencies is to determine the level of risk which specific offenders pose (to) the public," Kuzyk said. Here is the full report. http://www.ct.gov/opm/lib/opm/cjppd/cjresearch/recidivismstudy/sex_offender_recidivism_2012_final.pdf

 

 

Myth: Sex offenders have a 94 percent recidivism rate

 

Proponents of tough sanctions against sex offenders often cite a Canadian study published in 2004, “Lifetime Sex Offender Recidivism: A 25 year Follow-Up Study,” led by Canadian researcher Ron Langevin. The authors looked at 320 Canadian sex offenders referred to a single clinic for psychiatric evaluations between 1966 and 1974, when treatment programs for this group were uncommon. The report used an unusual definition of a recidivist as someone who had committed two or more sex crimes in their lifetime, even crimes they did before researchers began to follow them.

 

Langevin reported a 61.1 percent sex crime recidivism rate, including 51.1 percent for incest. The researchers also tabulated confessions the offenders made during counseling and new arrests that failed to bring convictions. Adding those presumed crimes to actual convictions increased the overall sexual recidivism rate to 88.3 percent, including 84.2 percent for incest. Measured this way, molesters of young children outside their own family had an even higher rate, 94.1 sex crime recidivism over 25 years. To this writer’s knowledge, that is the highest reported rate in any of the hundreds of existing recidivism studies. It underlies much of the widespread belief that all sex offenders are incurable and unrepentant.

 

The New Hampshire Attorney General, Kelly Ayotte, cited the Langevin report in her support for the state’s draconian child predator act passed in 2006. State lawmakers still think the repeat offense rate for all sex offenders in 94 percent. 

 

Critics of Langevin claim his cohort was the worst of the worst offenders. Canadian researcher Karl Hanson has called it a nonrandom sample chosen for evaluations in connection with major prosecutions, civil commitment proceedings or insanity defense cases. This group also came under scrutiny in a different era when sex offender treatment programs were rare and experimental. The ensuing revolution in child protection and sex abuse prosecution over half a century has swollen American prison populations of sex offenders by fifty- and a hundred-fold. The group in prison now is arguably far less prone to recidivism than members of the Langevin study.

 

Canadian researcher Cheryl Webster and colleagues have called the Langevin study so flawed it lacks any scientific integrity. In a rebuttal entitled “Results by Design: The Artefactual Construction of High Recidivism Rates for Sex Offenders,” Webster said more than half the individuals in the sample were already recidivists by Langevin’s definition at the time of their evaluations, thus ensuring at least a 50 percent recidivism rate. In the rest of the literature on criminology and in the popular press, recidivism generally means a new crime committed after release from prison. 

 

Webster noted the Langevin sample was much larger at first. His team removed any people from the study whose criminal records had been lost or purged from the justice system after 15 years for lack of new crimes or charges. In effect, the scientists deleted most of the non-recidivists and thereby skewed the recidivism rate. In a reply to his critics, Langevin cautioned against making claims about all sex offenders based on this sample. He defended his definition of recidivism as one of many legitimate ways to measure it.

Those promoting tough sex offender laws rely as well on a 1997 study led by Robert Prentky. His group looked at 136 rapists and 115 child molesters released from the Bridgewater sex offender civil commitment center in Massachusetts between 1959 and 1986. The sexual recidivism rates based on new sexual charges were 32 percent for molesters and 25 percent for rapists. But the length of time the men were free in the community varied widely. If all had been at large the full 25 years covered in the study, the authors estimated the sexual recidivism rates would have been 52 percent for molesters and 39 percent for rapists. 

 

This research dates from the same period as the Langevin findings and looked at a narrow sample of men already adjudicated to be an acute risk to reoffend. The average rapist had 2.5 sex crimes on his record before the crime that sent him to Bridgewater. The child molesters averaged 3.6 sex offenses prior to the crime that triggered civil commitment. Using Lengevin’s method, the recidivism rates for both groups would have been nearly 100 percent. The Prentky researchers concluded, “The obvious, marked heterogeneity of sexual offenders precludes automatic generalization of the rates reported here to other samples.”

 

Both the Langevin and Prentky studies have been cited in state and federal court decisions backing up sex offender laws.

 

 

Chris Dornin is the founder of Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform, a nonprofit agency that promotes humane crime laws as the best and cheapest way to protect society. Its website is www.ccjrnh.org.

Kelly Ayotte deceived the State Senate

U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte is so tough on crime she deceived lawmakers about the draconian child predator act she wrote in 2006. The former attorney general told senators the recidivism rate for sex offenders was 90 to 94 percent, according to the transcript of the Senate Judiciary hearing April 4, 2006. 

She based that claim on a Canadian report in 2004 by Ron Lengervin, “Lifetime Sex Offender Recidivism: A 25 year Follow-Up Study.” It considered 320 Canadian sex offenders seen at the author’s clinic for evaluations between 1966 and 1974. Langevin found an overall 61.1 percent sex crime recidivism rate. The recidivism rate rose to 88.3, counting confessions in counseling and new arrests, regardless of outcome. A subgroup, molesters of children outside the family, had a 94.1 sex crime recidivism rate over 25 years. That is by far the highest rate in any of the recidivism studies I’ve read or heard of.

Criminologists widely agree sex offenders have very low recidivism today. Indiana sex offenders released in 2005 compiled a 1.05 percent sex crime recidivism rate in three years. State officials said this figure showed “a great deal of promise.” The typical rate in state after state is around three percent after three years. 

Canadian researcher Karl Hanson accused Langevin of using a nonrandom sample chosen for evaluations in connection with major prosecutions and civil commitments. In the 1960s, only serial predators faced the loss of freedom for their sex crimes. Since then the prison census of sex offenders has risen a hundred-fold, and the folks on the sex offender registry today are far less prone to recidivism. The Internet shaming roster includes teen perpetrators who lost their virginity with their teen victims.

Canadian researcher Cheryl Webster has accused Langevin of unethical research. In her rebuttal entitled,  “Results by Design: The Artefactual Construction of High Recidivism Rates for Sex Offenders.” she said the Langevin sample was much larger at first. He ignored all the people who were purged from the records system after 15 years for lack of new crimes. Those were the non-recidivists. 

Kelly Ayotte is capable of doing great harm in Washington. 

Chris Dornin of Concord is a former correctional counselor and a retired Statehouse reporter. 



NH Senate Kills Two Sex Offender Bills, One Bad, One Good

By Chris Dornin

The NH Senate last week tabled and thus killed HB 1628, a bill to encourage police to actively notify the neighbors whenever a sex offender is released into their midst. A dozen opponents, including several sex offenders, had packed the senate public hearing on the legislation.

In response, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-1 to kill the bill politely by sending it to interim study in an election year. A co-sponsor of the bill, Sen. Sheila Roberge (R-Bedford), voted to effectively defeat her own legislation after hearing the evidence against it.

There was no debate on the later Senate floor motion to table. Whatever infighting led to that outcome happened behind closed doors. After the vote, one senator said people were worried about the consequences to the families of sex offenders if neighbors got into the habit of welcoming every sex offender harshly.

I certainly expected an emotional floor fight in the senate chambers. Sen. Robert Letourneau (R-Derry) missed the committee vote, but he co-sponsored the bill and would have voted for it. Close split decisions are rare in senate committees and often lead to donnybrooks on the senate floor. All 24 senators received an email from me the night before the final vote with a copy of an op-ed I had just published in the Laconia Citizen. The full text appears at the bottom of this update.

I’m sorry to say the Senate killed HB 1484 the same way, a bill to bar towns from imposing residency restrictions against sex offenders. I heard conflicting reasons from senators and sources close to the governor for the surprising vote to table this fine legislation. It had sailed through the House and left Senate Judiciary Committee with a 5-0 ought-to-pass endorsement. The sponsors tentatively plan to resubmit the bill for next year.

Losing this favorable legislation was palatable in an election year. Only five towns have adopted these residency restrictions, and several have chosen not to enforce them in light of a district court decision last August. It shot down the Dover residency restriction against sex offenders as a violation of fundamental property rights.

###################

An Op Ed in the Laconia Citizen May 12, 2010

 " We are losing the war on sex offenders Community Commentary"

By Chris Dornin

But not the way you think. The stereotype of the mean stranger watching the schoolyard underlies the last two decades of sex offender laws. Ironically, these feel-good, knee-jerk statutes endanger the very kids they aim to protect.

State Sen. David Boutin (R-Hooksett) is sponsoring House Bill 1628 this spring to encourage police departments to use active public notice when sex offenders are released into a neighborhood. He filed the bill to please constituents hoping to drive all the sex offenders from Hooksett. Joel Dutton, a man on the sex offender registry, had been charged with a new sex crime. When Dutton made bail, his neighbors started a website against him with these and similar comments:

"You show true restraint by not beating the tar out of this lowlife." Chris Johnson

"I hope you guys get rid of the bastard. What a piece of crap." MTgirl

"This is an incestuous family of whack-jobs and psychopaths, and it makes me feel good to know they are going down." Steve

"Hang'em high and let the sun set on em. Only in a perfect world right? Haha" Josh T

Boutin echoed those feelings in his Senate testimony. "Late September of 2009 a convicted child sex offender heinously struck again and was charged with felonious sexual assault against a 7 year old Hooksett girl," Boutin told lawmakers. "Quick adoption of this bill and dissemination of notification guidelines to local law enforcement will go a long way towards preventing another sexual assault, with regrettable consequences for the victim, family and community, who all share in the burden of the pain."

There was much more to the story. The prosecutor has dropped the case against Dutton for lack of evidence. A neighbor had accused Dutton of molesting his own niece, who still lives with Dutton, his wife, and his brother in law.

States like Pennsylvania and New Jersey evaluate all their sex offenders for threats to the public and save active notice for the worst of the very worst. That lifelong punishment after incarceration can include mass emails, newspaper ads, wanted-style posters, and hostile PTA meetings. Those states also have strong safeguards against vigilantism. In the last decade dozens of registered sex offenders have been murdered.

These laws shame the very group of ex-cons least prone to do another crime. The recidivism rate for new sex charges against registered sex offenders is averaging about 1 percent per year in state after state. Likewise, the research says more than 95 percent of sex crimes are committed by people who have never been convicted before, usually the loved ones of the victim. Between a third and half of the offenders against kids are teenagers or younger themselves.

The middle school in Hooksett had a bizarre episode of active notice this winter. Jennifer Frank, a visiting detective from Plymouth State University, displayed student Facebook pages in front of the whole school. Some belonged to the children of local sex offenders. Then she posted their fathers' Internet mug pages from the state registry. Charles Littlefield, the Hooksett superintendent, confirms that these children were "traumatized." Steve Harrises, the principal, says he was "blindsided" by the assembly.

Something worse happened when Frank went to Fall Mountain High School. Steve Fortier, a school parent, gave this testimony at the Senate hearing on HB 1628. Fortier is not a sex offender, by the way.

"Many of the sex offenders whose information was shown (in front of the school) are family members of teens who were sitting in the audience," Fortier said in written testimony. "Because most youth sexual abuse is committed by a family member or someone else known by the victim, there was an even more troubling consequence. Many of the victims of the sex offenders were watching the assembly. This retraumatization, including the stigma associated with being a teen sexual abuse victim, was, in my opinion, not worth whatever gains were made through the assembly."

Other Fall Mountain parents have said kids ran out crying and stayed away from school for days. One couple has asked the Civil Liberties Union to represent them in litigation.

The hysteria sweeping New Hampshire against sex offenders has already reached a critical stage. Hostile neighbors drove convicted child murderer Raymond Guay from Manchester to Chichester to New Hampton last year. Along the way he stayed with the family of Pastor David Pinckney, whose parishioners gave the ex-offender meaningful handyman jobs to do. Pinckney told senators that men like Guay can assimilate safely back into society.

"I would welcome him back in my home," Pinckney testified.

Mobs gathered outside the apartment of registered sex offender Gloria Huot in Manchester a couple of years ago. People burned dolls on her wooden porch, according to news reports. Huot shared the apartment with another woman and her kids.

John Crawford, a former Laconia State School resident on community placement, was bludgeoned to death in 1981. Three former State School residents were awaiting trial on molestation charges. Rumors that Crawford was a sex offender had spread through his neighborhood before his murder.

A man at NH Prison stabbed two sex offenders in Concord and tried to burn an apartment building with seven sex offenders. The Maine vigilante who killed two sex offenders in 2007 was coming here next. After his suicide, police found a New Hampshire hit list on his computer.

Nobody can identify the very few predatory child rapists among the 2,700 mug shots on the New Hampshire registry. Judging by registry data from other states, most are incest offenders at low risk to commit a new crime. Some are husbands stung on the Internet without an actual victim. Some are drunken college guys who misunderstood a no for a yes. Some are former Romeos with 15-year-old girlfriends. Those are all criminals, I'm not minimizing their crimes, but they were well punished in prison. Few will recidivate. No one can tell if the folks branded by the registry have families to share the horrors of active notice.

None of the names comes with a clinical risk score. On line they all look bad. If HB 1628 becomes law, bullies will follow the children of sex offenders. Some will lose their jobs. Landlords will evict some of them. Some could become those mythical strangers watching the sandbox from the shadows.

Chris Dornin is a retired Statehouse reporter and religious volunteer into N.H. Prison working for criminal justice reform.