ISLAND VOICES
Megan's Law use should be fair, reasonable
By Brook Hart
State Rep. Bud Stonebraker's April 18 commentary, "Legislature should approve Megan's Law," criticizes my position on the issue of limiting public access to certain sex-offender registration information.
I fully agree that Hawai'i's keiki (and Hawai'i's adults) deserve a reasonable degree of Megan's Law protection. That is a primary reason why I, having been appointed by our chief justice, devoted substantial time and energy to serving as a member of the Task Force to Consider Proposals to Revise Hawai'i's Community Notification (of the personal information of people convicted of sex offenses) or Megan's Law, also known as the Act 59 Task Force, which comprehensively studied that matter and submitted a final report to the Legislature in January.
Stonebraker erroneously claims that the task force "was highly biased against Megan's Law from the start" and was "composed of many who toed the party line of the American Civil Liberties Union." To the contrary, the task force, weighted heavily in favor of law enforcement, also represented a broad cross-section of our community.
My position is that Megan's Law should be applied fairly and reasonably, in a rational manner that will best protect both our community and the constitutional and civil rights of registrants and their families.
Stonebraker labors under the misconception that the widest possible public access to sex-offender registration information will increase protection of the public. In fact, that is not true. Providing unrestricted public access to registration information, particularly the precise home addresses of non-dangerous registrants, would be counterproductive because it would cause many registrants to decline to update their registration information with law enforcement authorities.
As the Hawai'i Supreme Court recognized in the Bani case: Granting public access (without a court hearing to determine dangerousness) to "accumulated and synthesized personal information that would not otherwise be easily available" can "cause harm to (a registrant's) reputation" and place the registrant's "livelihood, domestic tranquility, and personal relationships all around him in grave jeopardy." The "potential employers and landlords (of a registrant would) foreseeably be reluctant to employ or rent to (the registrant) once they learn of his status as a 'sex offender.' " Public disclosure (e.g., on the Internet) can "adversely affect (the registrant's) personal and professional life, employability, associations with neighbors, and choice of housing" for many years after the registrant has completed serving his sentence.
Additionally, "public disclosure may encourage vigilantism" against registrants and "may expose (registrants and their innocent family members) to possible physical violence."
Furthermore, when released offenders are unable to secure decent employment and satisfactory living accommodations because of widespread public access to their registration information, they have a strong incentive to commit economic crimes such as theft, burglary and robbery. The nationwide trend toward public access to sex-offender registration information has almost certainly contributed to the corresponding increase in identity-theft offenses.
Stonebraker cites a study from Washington state regarding recidivism rates for untreated sex offenders. But the task force's final report contains information much more relevant to Hawai'i: "The Hawai'i and Social Science committees reported that 38 other states besides Hawai'i provide some form of (sex offender treatment program), but Hawai'i is the only state that tracks offenders for life after they complete" the program.
In 2005, Dr. Barry Coyne, the director of the Hawai'i Department of Public Safety's sex-offender treatment program, reported that in the past 6ý years, only one offender who has completed the program and been released has been reconvicted of a sexual offense.
Significantly, Dr. Coyne's task force subcommittee "confirmed that Hawai'i enjoys the lowest recidivism rates for our released sex-offender felons, provided that offenders successfully complete sex-offender treatment pre-release." Importantly, his subcommittee found that "offenders who complied with registration requirements had a very low incidence of recidivism, approximately 1.2 percent."
Stonebraker's position, advocating unrestricted public access to a broad range of sex-offender registration information, without a court hearing to determine dangerousness, is based on fear — particularly fear of the unknown.
I strongly urge Hawai'i's legislators to reject as unfair and unreasonable the proposed versions of Megan's Law advocated by Rep. Stonebraker.
Brook Hart is a Honolulu criminal defense lawyer. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
