US sex-offender laws, registries not conducive to child safety

The US's burgeoning sex-offender registries are becoming more of a problem than a solution. "Because so many offences require registration, the number of registered sex offenders in America has exploded," The Economist reports in a thorough look at the subject. "As of December last year, there were 674,000 of them, according to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. If they were all crammed into a single state, it would be more populous than Wyoming, Vermont or North Dakota. As a share of its population, America registers more than four times as many people as Britain, which is unusually harsh on sex offenders."

The problem is when people "assume that anyone listed on a sex-offender registry must be a rapist or a child molester. But most states spread the net much more widely. A report by Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch found that at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes.... No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers." Only a small minority of registered offenders are the "predators" so widely referred to in the news media. Take Georgia, for example. That state "has more than 17,000 registered sex offenders," according to The Economist. "Some are highly dangerous. But many are not. And it is fiendishly hard for anyone browsing the registry to tell the one from the other." The state's Sex Offender Registration Review Board found that “just over 100” of the 17,000 could be classified as “predators,” "which means they have a compulsion to commit sex offences."

Disinformation and fear are not conducive to calm, constructive discussion about young people's online activities - in families or in policymaking circles. Overreaction by parents causes kids to go into online stealth mode (which gets easier and easier with proliferating access points and connected devices) at a time when child-parent communication is very much needed. Focusing too much on registered sex offenders causes people to forget that most child sexual exploitation is perpetrated by people the victims are related to or know in their everyday lives, most likely people who haven't been arrested, much less convicted, and therefore not people in sex-offender registries (see "Why technopanics are bad").

But the trend is bigger and bigger registries. "Sex-offender registries are popular," the Economist reports. "Rape and child molestation are terrible crimes that can traumatise their victims for life. All parents want to protect their children from sexual predators, so politicians can nearly always win votes by promising curbs on them. Those who object can be called soft on child-molesters, a label most politicians would rather avoid. This creates a ratchet effect. Every lawmaker who wants to sound tough on sex offenders has to propose a law tougher than the one enacted by the last politician who wanted to sound tough on sex offenders."

Writes parent and public-policy analyst Adam Thierer, "If you want to keep your kids safe from real sex offenders, we need to scrap our current sex-offender registries and completely rethink the way we define and punish sex offenses in this country." For example, a case I mentioned last April: 18-year-old Phillip Alpert will be in his state's sex-offender registry until he's 43, CNN reported. He is no predator, the way CNN tells the story. He had just turned 18 when he made what turned out to be probably the biggest mistake of his life. He and his 16-year-old girlfriend of two and a half years had had an argument. He told CNN he was tired, and it was the middle of the night when he sent a nude photo of her (a photo she had taken of herself and sent to him) to "dozens of her friends and family." Under current child-pornography and sex-offender laws, this scenario could be repeated in many other states. "Thirty-eight states include juvenile sex offenders in their sex-offender registries," according to CNN. "Alaska, Florida and Maine will register juveniles only if they are tried as adults. Indiana registers juveniles age 14 and older. South Dakota registers juveniles age 15 and older."

Why technopanics are bad

Remember the predator panic? It's not over, of course - presentations with titles like "Facebook, the Sex Offenders' Catalog" and "MySpace the Predator's New Playground" (actual titles) are still being given at a time when we need to empower young social media users and their parents, not scare them to death (for more on this, see "A new online safety: The means, not the end").

Now we really need to prevent a sexting panic from developing. I really believe teens themselves will help us end the trend if they're given the facts about current child-porn laws (see "Tips to Prevent Sexting"), which hopefully will undergo revisions, where minors and adolescent behavior are concerned and criminal intent is not (see what's happening in Vermont along these lines).

"But why are technopanics bad, if there's a chance they'll scare people into safe behavior?" you might ask. For one thing because the Internet is ubiquitous, here to stay, a tool of participatory culture and democracy, and youth are its most active, fluent users - its drivers, in many ways. Young people aren't scared of technology. They know all the workarounds if we get scared and try to ban the Net from their lives. They can easily go "underground" (away from home, at friends' houses, public hot spots, using friends' very mobile connected devices, from smartphones to music and game players), which can actually put them at greater risk, because when they're in stealth mode, we're no longer in the equation, and they need us as backup in their online as well as offline lives.

And there are macro-level, national and global, reasons why panics are bad. Here's a list, a draft for which your comments and additions are welcome. Technopanics are bad because they...

Cause fear, which interferes with parent-child communication, which in turn puts kids at greater risk.

Cause schools to fear and block digital media when they need to be teaching constructive use, employing social-technology devices and teaching new media literacy and citizenship throughout the curriculum.

Turn schools into barriers rather than contributors to young people's constructive use.

Increase the irrelevancy of school to active young social-technology users via the sequestering or banning of educational technology and hamstringing some of the most spirited and innovative educators.

Distract parents, educators, policymakers from real risks - including, for example, child-pornography laws that do not cover situations where minors can simultaneously be victim and "perpetrator" and, tragically, become registered sex offenders in cases where there was no criminal intent (e.g., see this).

Reduce the competitiveness of US education among developed countries already effectively employing educational technology and social media in schools (for an international view, see Joan Ganz Cooney Center/Sesame Workshop's "Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children's Learning").

Reduce the competitiveness of US technology and media businesses practicing good corporate citizenship where youth online safety is concerned.

Lead to bad legislation, which aggravates above outcomes and takes the focus off areas where good laws on the books can be made relevant to current technology use.

Widen the participation gap for youth - technopanics are barriers for children and teens to full, constructive participation in participatory culture and democracy.

What am I missing? Please add to or comment the list - via the ConnectSafely forum, commenting here, or email to anne(at)netfamilynews.org. We are literally all in this together, don't you think?!

Related links

Prof. Henry Jenkins: "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century," Fall 2006

"Living and Learning with New Media," a summary of findings (qualitative and quantitative) form the MacArthur Foundation-funded Digital Youth Project, by Ito, Mizuko, Heather A. Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C.J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson, Fall 2008.

"Critical Information Studies for a Participatory Culture," Dr. Jenkins's list of factors that block the full achievement of a more participatory society, 4/10/09 post on his blog

The skills of new media literacy

For a bit of history, see my first item on this, "'Predator panic'," in 2006 and "The latest technopanic" last August (before "sexting" was a word), linking to Alice Marwick's definitive paper on moral panics.

"Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies," the 12/31/08 report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and my post about it

"Pennsylvania case study: Social networking risk in context"

The latest technopanic

No comparative study has been done, but - having recently traveled around the world for 10 months and talked with people involved with children's online safety in a number of countries - I can tell you more than impressionistically that no country has experienced an extended technopanic about predators on the social Web quite the way the US has. The facts about online predation have been misrepresented in the US news media and by politicians purporting to champion child protection while fanning fears that not only draw attention away from rational consideration of both the problem and solutions but also potentially put youth at greater risk. How? Fear causes the kind of overreaction that breaks down parent-child communication at a time when it's most needed - when kids can easily go "underground" in various ways, further from the informed, non-confrontational parental support that really can help them have positive online experiences.

Fear and hype also delay rational discussion out in the public arena. We are way behind the UK in even holding meetings on social-networking-industry best practices, much less drawn up a list (as the UK Home Office has). I would love to see a comparative multi-country study on child-protection measures, but there is other, more important social-media research to be done too.

So what's a "technopanic"? It's "a moral panic over contemporary technology," as Alice Marwick at New York University ably describes it in "To catch a predator? The MySpace moral panic." Several points in Marwick's conclusion deserve highlighting: 1) "While online predators do not represent an epidemic or socially significant problem, child pornography and child abuse are important social issues that require attention. However, they are not caused by minors using MySpace, and preventing children from using social-networking sites will do nothing to end these problems"; 2) Inaccurate "negative coverage of technology frightens parents, prevents teenagers from learning responsible use, and fuels panics, resulting in misguided or unconstitutional legislation"; and 3) "Prohibiting teens from using MySpace will not prevent them from using the site, and instead will dissuade them from talking about any problems that occur. Taking a nuanced, informed, and gradual approach to the social integration of new technologies will do more to lessen harm and improve responsible user practice than a panicked, emotional response." [See also a video report in eSchoolNews: "Online safety: Dispelling common myths."]