Living Small: Race & the Sociolegal Consequences of Sex Offense Registration

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Sex Crime and Sex Offending in Law, Policy, and Reform Movements

Abstract

The lifelong civil and criminal penalties for sex offenses result in some of the criminal justice system’s most egregious racial justice and human rights failures. Sex offense policies subject people—disproportionately men of color—to ongoing surveillance, re-incarceration, impoverishment, homelessness, family separation, and compromised health, long after they have completed their sentences. “Living small” is how one man described his experience living as a Black man subject to sex offense registration, referring to how he monitors and circumscribes his movements and his world to limit discrimination, further criminalization, and vigilante violence. Using qualitative-interpretive methods of data collection and analysis, a study of the legal architecture of registration policies, and drawing from the limited extant quantitative data about race and sex offense registration, this paper argues that the punitive and stigmatizing impact of sex offense registration policies is borne disproportionately by men of color, and that these policies undermine public safety by destabilizing the lives of people who pose little to no risk to their communities.

Authors

• Eliza Hersh, Berkeley Law School / East Bay Community Law Center

• Edith Kinney, San Jose State University

• Danielle Arlanda Harris, San Jose State University