The Cost of Labeling People "Sex Offenders"

If you think that sex offender registration, residency restrictions, punishment increases, and other "cracking down" measures are a good thing and can't possibly do anything but help you, think again. The mere existence of laws harming "sex offenders" do more harm to the average American citizen than you could have ever imagined. These costs take up many forms, and we might as well start jumping right into the details.

Homeowners see government-caused loss in home values: The existence of instant access to the exact location of all known and released convicted sex offenders damages the typical American homeowner drastically. Imagine if the federal government were to enact a law stating that if a member of a certain group of people live near your home, the value of your home will be instantly reduced by four percent. That means that if you have a $100,000 home and someone in that group is relatively close to your home (not even necessarily on the same road or in the neighborhood), the government's law just ripped a few THOUSAND DOLLARS out of your pocket by forcing your home's value down merely due to the presence of another person too close to your house. It's not the sex offender's fault, either, because the government enacted the law that reduced your home value, not the individual that moved in or already lived nearby. This is the sad reality for thousands of homeowners who live arbitrarily "too close" to a convicted sex offender. Because sex offenders, unlike other classes of ex-cons, have their government-confirmed addresses posted online for all to see without any significant restrictions or control, the existence of a sex offender nearby can devalue your home significantly. The government passed sex offender registration laws that caused this to happen, and sex offenders naturally must be able to live somewhere after release so they can rebuild their lives and build the social and personal supports required to prevent sexual reoffense, therefore the government is entirely at fault for such a drop in the value of a home when it occurs. If sex offenders' addresses were not posted online by the government, then nearby home values would not decline. Furthermore, because cash-strapped local goverments have REAL CRIME to deal with, sex offender registration does not receive the most timely updates, which has resulted in offender information not being updated and leaving an economic impact long after an offender's presence ends.

GPS tracking costs out the yin-yang, but has very limited usefulness: GPS tracking costs about $7 to $10 a day for each sex offender involved. Add it up: that's about $210-$300 a month, or $2,555-$3,650 a year, for ONE sex offender on GPS tracking. So when the State of North Carolina thought it would be a good idea to pass a law requiring 100% of the state's roughly 11,750 registered sex offenders on GPS tracking, they were forced to scale that proposal back significantly when the approximate yearly bill to the taxpayers of North Carolina was calculated up to be presented for appropriation. Tracking 11,750 sex offenders in North Carolina, at a cost of $7-$10 a day, would yield an annual cost between $30,021,250 and $42,887,500 to the state's taxpayers. Furthermore, because GPS units are like cell phones in that they can fall out of reception range, and because a GPS tracker can only report a location and not, say, some sexual abuse in progress, the value of the units is already severely limited. What's the cost of GPS procurement? At around $2,000 per GPS tracking device, it would cost $23,500,000 to buy up 11,750 devices. Given that all offenders must serve a mandatory minimum ten years on the Registry, the costs add up drastically quickly: $23,500,000 initial cost + ($42,887,500 per year x 10 years) = $452,375,000 over a ten year period spent on tracking 11,750 people. Note that this figure cannot take into account (a) newly convicted sex offenders or (b) offenders with lifetime registration requirements, both of which increase the costs even higher. Over $450 MILLION to track 11,750 (mostly low-risk) sex offenders! Yes, that's right, the geniuses in the North Carolina legislature were about to pull the trigger on just such a law, until figures like that started to come up. In the end, GPS was limited to "level 3 sex offenders" which are considered the highest risk. (By the way, NC hasn't even begun implementing the "level" system yet. Check the SOR at ncfindoffender.com and you'll see no mention of "risk levels" of any kind. Seriously!)

This article is still a work in progress.

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