New York's sex offender registration system is broken. The time has come to fix it.

By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma

There are more than 42,000 people in New York who have to register as sex offenders — about the population of Poughkeepsie. Sex offender registration can affect every aspect of a person’s life: where he lives, where he can travel, how he is treated by his neighbors, the community and even the police.

But the system for determining risk level is flawed, producing predictably inaccurate results based on a “Risk Assessment Instrument” that was last updated in 2006. Only one thing can be predicted based on a person’s risk level: how much unwarranted fear they generate. People who are affected by the system mandated by the New York Sex Offender Registration Act (“SORA”) know how capricious it can be. For five years, the New York City Bar Association has supported legislation that would reform the system for determining sex offender risk levels. That call was joined by a prominent judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Daniel P. Conviser, in a pair of articles in the New York Law Journal that meticulously picked apart the flaws in the RAI.

Now the City Bar has come out in support of another proposed law that would take a larger view of how people are treated after being convicted of a sex offense. The proposal in the New York legislature would create a Commission on Sex Offender Supervision and Management charged with investigating what happens to people convicted of sex offenses after they are released from prison. It will look at housing, prison system policies, and the availability of treatment. The proposed commission will specifically look at the difficult problem of housing for people with sex offense convictions, many of whom are restricted from living in densely populated areas throughout the state.

“Appointment of a Commission, including academic experts and advocates who are closest to the situation, is an eminently sensible approach to the problem at hand,” wrote the City Bar. “Given the near unanimity of expert opinion that the existing residence restrictions are ineffective, the Commission is likely to reach a consensus on recommendations that would be a basis for action by fair-minded legislators.”