By Sandy . . . Halloween is over for 2022. Little trick-or-treaters are recovering from sugar overload, and parents are recovering from little trick-or-treaters. According to a search of all news sources and the internet, once again, no child was harmed/abducted/molested by a person on a sex offender registry during trick-or-treat. That is true in Illinois, the only state remaining…
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By Larry . . . NARSOL is excited to announce that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals handed Butts County Sheriff Gary Long a stinging defeat today. The case is Cory McClendon v. Gary Long, No. 21-10092. This is a long-running case based on events that occurred on Halloween, 2018. At that time, two deputies from the Butts County Sheriff’s Office…
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By Sandy . . . Under the header, “Local law enforcement performs Halloween sex offender checks,” the second sentence of the article explains. “Designed to keep the community safe on Halloween, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from the Troy Police Department, conducted sex offender checks throughout the county, with positive results.” The “positive results” are portrayed in a “crime…
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By Liam Garrity . . . Across the nation and the Ozarks, police departments are checking in on sex offenders to make sure they are compliant with Missouri’s Halloween law. Buffalo’s police chief, Chris Twitchell, said the Halloween law in Missouri was put in place in 2008 to limit sex offenders from contact when a large amount of children are outside.…
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By Sandy . . . As far as I can determine, prior to 2003 there were no articles linking persons on the registry with Halloween. Then, in 2003, from Bryan, Texas, Google finds this sole article: “Halloween can be a tempting time for sex offenders.” The headline comes from a quote by the county senior community supervision officer and is…
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By Hayley Fowler . . . A group of registered sex offenders in Western North Carolina say the sheriff forced them to check in with local law enforcement or face arrest on Halloween night in 2019. Now they’re suing. At least 11 men and the nonprofit group North Carolinians for Rational Sex Offender Laws accused Cherokee County and Sheriff Derrick Palmer of…
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By Larry . . . On September 24, 2019, NARSOL engaged an attorney and filed a lawsuit a suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia challenging the Butts County Sheriff’s Office’s practice of placing warning signs at the residences of registered persons before Halloween. The court granted a request for a preliminary injunction which prevented…
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After weeks of dealing with Patch Publications about the maps they publish close to Halloween purporting to be “safety maps” but actually focusing totally on persons required to register on sexual offense registries, new maps appear almost daily. At last count, the maps appeared in 17 states, which, to give them credit, is less than in previous years. Nine of…
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By Timothy Moynahan . . . Patch, a local electronic news outlet, has continued its annual, indefensible, fear-mongering practice of publishing the names and addresses of people in the communities they cover who are on the sexual offender registry. Ostensibly pushed as a public safety courtesy in preparation for Halloween, after being called on the inadequacies in their promotion by the National…
Read MoreOriginally published 10/1/2020 at Reason; reprinted in full here with permission. By Jacob Sullum . . . Every year in the run-up to Halloween, Patch publishes maps showing the homes of “registered sex offenders” in various cities. Ostensibly, this information is aimed at helping parents who worry that their children might be molested while trick-or-treating. But research shows that such fears have no basis in…
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