04/11/2026
Taken from NY Times Columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah's," I Saw a Neighbor on the Sex-Offender Registry. Should I Tell Others?"
Public shaming, doxxing, assaults, exclusion and discrimination are all reasons to end the registry but one of the most prominent reasons to end the registry it does not keep communities safer (because a vast majority of s*xual offenses are committed by individuals who aren’t on any registry) but breeds fear out of ignorance! The public has no idea that not everyone on s*x registries are s*xual threats and have no idea what or why they are basing their discontent or discrimination on!
Despite s*x-off***er registries being created to protect the vulnerable by informing the public of someone who is a s*xual threat so they can take “common-sense measures” for their protection, they don't actually do that but instead has evolved into a system of prolonged public punishment, treating vastly different cases as if they were the same. THEY ARE NOT! What people do not know is that not everyone on these registries have committed a s*xual offense let alone are s*xual predators, in fact a quarter of people currently on the registries, were minors at the time of their offense.
While some people are on the registry for horrifying, predatory acts, others wind up on the s*x registry for nonviolent conduct committed when they were children or teenagers, including a 10-year-old girl who pranked a classmate by pulling down the other students pants in front of other students, teenagers in a relationship who consensually swapped n**e pics, adults who got busy in a car parked in a municipal lot, a drunken undergraduate who went streaking across the quad, all of whom may be subject to lengthy registration mandates that require them to be on a s*x registry for life and all of which go against what the registry was actually created for!
Therefore, because registries rarely convey the full details of why people are on the registry and the presence of a name on a list tells you very little about your actual risk, before you decide to renege on buying a home, running to tell all your neighbors, exclude or discriminate or refuse to hire or rent to someone on the registry, it would do you well to ask yourself, "how dangerous is my neighbor, really? What happened? How long ago did it happen? How old was the person at the time and what the person has done since? Were they consenting adults? Were they a child who pranked another child?
Read the full article at https://restore-georgia.org/2025/05/nyt-magazine-the-ethicist-i-saw-a-neighbor-on-the-s*x-offender-registry-should-i-tell-others/
