“2016 Crime Review: A look at the effectiveness of sex offender registries
“By Joshua Vaughn The Sentinel Feb 13, 2017
It may run counter to conventional wisdom, but it is exceedingly rare for a person registered as a sex offender to be charged with a new sexual offense in Cumberland County.
Of the 75 charged sex crime cases in Cumberland County in 2016, only two were committed by a person listed on the sex offender registry, according to an analysis of court records conducted by The Sentinel.
Neither of those offenses involved a direct assault on a child.
Of the more than 300 charged sex crime cases in Cumberland County between 2013 and 2016, only six cases involved a person listed on the sex offender registry.
Those stats show that the more than 290 remaining cases — including some of the most heinous sexual assaults against children — were committed by people who were not registered.
“It’s really clear that all of the evidence and all of the data shows that most sex offenses are committed by first-time offenders,” said Emily Horowitz, professor of sociology and criminal justice at Saint Francis College. “For whatever reason, people who are on the registry have a very low recidivism rate, and if one is really concerned about decreasing sex offenses, they kind of have to look elsewhere instead of people who have already been convicted of sex offenses.”
The Sentinel reviewed more than 450 charged sex crime cases in Cumberland, Dauphin, Perry, Franklin and Adams counties in 2016 and found only 15 cases where the defendant was on the registry at the time of the offense.
More than 96 percent of all sex crime cases in those five counties involved defendants who were not on the sex offender registry.
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