Category: Research

all about the facts

11-8-2022 New research study posting: the impact of faith communities on registrants

Dr. Chrysanthi Leon and Maggie Buckridge are interviewing formerly incarcerated folks about their re-entry experiences with religious communities. They are especially interested in learning about what religious communities provide for people on the sex offender registry. In addition to speaking with those who found a church or another place of worship to join, they are also interviewing people who wanted…

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Butner Study Redux: “They used us. They lied.”

By Sandy Rozek . . . In the early 2000s a young man we will call Joseph was serving a sentence for a sexual crime, an internet crime, in the Federal Bureau of Prison’s Butner Low Unit in Butner, North Carolina, when he was approached by a Dr. Andres Hernandez. As he listened to Dr. Hernandez explaining a treatment program…

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Current sexual offense registration and notification policies are nothing but “window-dressing”

By Meghan M. Mitchell, Kristen M. Zgoba, Alex R. Piquero . . . There are roughly half a million sexual assault incidents in the United States every year — and more than 11,000 in Florida alone. These numbers are troubling. So it’s no surprise that people search the sex offender registration website to make sure that no one convicted of a sexual…

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11/18/21 New NARSOL-approved research project

Yvette Harris, a presenter at our 2021 conference in Houston, has launched a new study designed to identify the challenges that children and family members of the incarcerated have faced because of COVID. More specifically she is interested in determining how COVID has influenced their communication with their incarcerated loved one, how it has affected their mental and physical health,…

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Sex offense registries create blame and harm for spouses and children of registrants

By Drs. Kristen Russell and Daniel Pollack . . . Committing a sex offense can ruin two lives — the victim’s and the offender’s. For the offender, the result can be significant incarceration time and financial penalties. In all states, persons convicted of certain crimes are required to register on a sex offender registry. The registry is viewable by the general…

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Black and Hispanic Americans receiving disproportionately harsher sentences

By Andrea Cipriano . . .  In a recent study published in the journal Sexual Abuse, the researchers explored what they said was a trend in more severe punishment over the past decade since Congress has enacted several pieces of legislation aimed at increasing the punishment in federal sex offender and child pornography cases. The researchers University of Texas at…

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African Americans disproportionately represented on sex offender registries

By Sandy . . . At this time of public outrage and demands for meaningful criminal justice reform, one area in need of serious attention is the racial make-up of our states’ sexual offense registries. In 2018 a study was done that has been largely ignored. It shows conclusively that in every state in the union except one – Michigan…

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Two research opportunities

UPDATE 9/8/2021: These two studies are now closed. Two opportunities are being made available for qualified persons to participate in research studies.   #1. Dr. Lisa Zilney; Montclair St. U. “Contextualizing the Experiences of Sexual Offenders.” This is targeting specifically those who received a conviction as the result of a plea bargain. There are two attachments for this study; one…

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Research validates lack of publication for sexual offense registry

By Ken Nolley . . . The Register-Guard editorial on Oct. 20 noted that current policy limits online information about persons on the sex offender registry to high risk offenders.  The editorial saw this as a “shortcoming in state law,” which might suggest to some that this was merely an egregious oversight.  But whether one agrees with that policy or…

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