There were 912,643 people on the U.S. Sex Offender Registry last year. Now? Nobody knows.
Guest column by William Dobbs, Esq. from The Dobbs Wire.
Is the sex offense registry growing or shrinking?
Hard to tell because the long-time keeper of the national statistics, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), has stopped updating the figures.
Every six months for many years NCMEC put a new 50 state map online with the latest numbers. The updated statistics are now months overdue. NCMEC didn’t respond to our questions but we managed to get a reporter for a major media outlet to query them. The word came back – NCMEC confirmed that it no longer updates the map. The reporter, unfortunately, never filed a story, and NCMEC has not announced the change.
So you heard it here first–with 900,000 listings and counting, several million people directly impacted–the figures have gone missing. NCMEC is a private entity that gets the bulk of its funding from the federal government, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.
NCMEC is also the group that incited public fears over “stranger danger.”
Losing the statistics is lousy but there might be a silver lining–this failure by NCMEC may prompt the federal government to step in and keep tabs on the official blacklist. The US Department of Justice ought to take on this task because these numbers should not be entrusted to a private group that has other agendas.
If you have any ideas drop us a line: info@thedobbswire.com.
Below is our dispatch from Dec. 2018 with the last figures released by NCMEC. –Bill Dobbs, The Dobbs Wire
The Dobbs Wire: More than 912,000 on government blacklists – sex offense registry listings INCREASE 4.8% in the last year
The Dobbs Wire has produced a new chart with the latest sex offense registry statistics for every state and Washington DC, along with figures from 2017. One key indicator continues to *increase* — the total number on blacklists is now 912,643. That’s a 4.8% climb in the last 12 months! 42,001 listings have been added since 2017.
These government blacklists produce no benefit to public safety but they sure pack a punch. Life shattering consequences include routine harassment, discrimination and even vigilante attacks. Are such lists needed? That’s a public discussion that needs to happen.
Oddly, the federal government doesn’t track the numbers; a federally funded non-profit organization does: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) updates an online map with the statistics every six months, those figures are the best available although their accuracy has been questioned.
Have a look at the attachment, our new chart. -Bill Dobbs, The Dobbs Wire Dec. 12, 2018