Chapter 9 Registration
Registration for sex offenders is unique. No other crime compels you to register yourself with the police. Local regulations vary from state to state so with business or personal travel you can find yourself in trouble without knowing it. The general rule of thumb is that if you spend more than 72 hours in a place outside your registered area, you must register with the police. If you change your residence, even if it is across the street, or to another apartment in the same complex, you must notify your probation officer and register within 72 hours. If you move on a Friday morning and wait until Monday morning you'll have violated the terms of your release. The fact that the police station was closed on the weekend will make no difference. I've seen this happen.
When you register, it is the same process as being booked into the jail. You are photographed and fingerprinted and your new address is recorded. You don't just walk in and say, "Hey man I've moved." and they type in your new address and off you go. Now prison has been extended to the outside world. For you the whole world is a prison and there is no escape. The fact that so many endure all this without going insane boggles my mind. Probation violations and registration violations will get you put back into prison quickly. Probation can be eliminated after a few years. Registration cannot.
When you’re first brought into prison your crime is classified as a level one, two or three sex offender. The various levels determine the conditions of your release. This varies from state to state and changes every year, which itself makes compliance difficult, because they aren't going to inform you of the changes. They'll just wait to violate you and send you back to prison. These rules change so much, so often, even though I would like to talk about them there is little I can say today without being wrong tomorrow. Changes occur in regard to GPS monitoring (ankle bracelet), the jobs you can have, where you can live etc. That's about all I can say without venturing off into shifting sands. For example one year ago, level one sex offenders weren’t required to submit to GPS monitoring. Now all sex offenders do. Given time it will change again with popular opinion, which is really what this is all about. This isn't about safety or control, this punishment by popular opinion and the proof is in the fact that the law changes so frequently and in accordance with popular opinion as opposed to any scientific study or rational basis.
In regard to registration if you're a level two or three sex offender fliers are mailed to your neighbors, which guarantees you'll be moving soon at the least, or windup dead on your front lawn as a result of someone's retaliation and hatred. There is a 23-year-old man who frequently comes into the Pima county jail, because he has been severely beaten, sometimes almost to the point of death by his friendly neighbors. This situation is rapidly escalating to the point that there is pressure to change the registration policies, because so many S.O.’s are being killed because of the notification sent to neighbors. No other form of crime requires lifetime probation and lifetime registration or registration in any shape or form. The fact that the public is so paranoid about living next to a sex offender is very hard for me to understand because it's so illogical. The public would rather have stringent controls placed on sex offenders, but not on people that might kill them. The housing restrictions that are applied to sex offenders indicate the public would rather live next to someone who might kill them, than someone who might have sex with them. This position doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me because you can always come back from rape, but you can’t come back from dead!
Here is a list of requirements for a sex offender registrant:
These statutes do not provide for termination of the registration requirement, except for registrants who committed offenses as juveniles. See A.R.S. § 13-3821(F) - (H). 7 Thus, once imposed, sex offender registration is a lifelong obligation. See Fisher v. Kaufman, 201 Ariz. 500, 502 P 8, 38 P.3d 38, 40 (App. 2001); State v. Lammie, 164 Ariz. 377, 382-83, 793 P.2d 134, 139-40 (App. 1990). The duration of the registration requirement makes this statutory consequence much more severe than a comparatively short probation period. See United States v. Nachtigal, 507 U.S. 1, 5, 113 S. Ct. 1072, 122 L. Ed. 2d 374 (1993) (holding that the Sixth Amendment does not require a jury trial when the potential penalty is five years of [***15] probation).
At the time of registration, the offender must provide, in addition to any other information required by the director of the Department of Public Safety, all names by which he is known, his mailing address, his physical residence, fingerprints, photograph, any "required online identifiers,"
For the rest of his life, a sex offender must notify law enforcement within seventy-two hours of any move or change of name. Id. § 13-3822(A)-(B). A move requires notification to sheriffs in both the original county and the destination county; each must be informed in writing, and the latter must also be informed in person. Id.An offender who studies or works at an institution of postsecondary education must initially notify the county sheriff of that jurisdiction and keep him informed of any changes in enrollment or employment status. Id. § 13-3821(N). A transient offender must register with the local sheriff every ninety days. Id. § 13-3822(A). If an offender changes a required online identifier, he must notify the sheriff within seventy-two hours and before using the identifier. Id. § 13-3822(C). An offender who fails to register is guilty of a class 6 felony, and a registrant who does not keep his information updated is guilty of a class 4 felony. Id. § 13-3824. [***17] Those offenses carry, respectively, one-year and two-and-one-half-year presumptive prison sentences for first-time offenders. Id. § 13-701(C) (2001).
Widespread publicity accompanies sex offender registration. For a level two or three offender, the offender's name, address, age, current photograph, conviction, and risk [**543] [*292] assessment level appear on the sex offender website. Id. § 13-3827(A)-(B). Id. § 13-3826(E)(1)(a). For level one offenders, law enforcement may notify the people with whom the offender resides. Id. § 13-3826(E)(1)(b). For offenders who are students [***18] or employees of postsecondary education institutions, law enforcement must notify the administration of the institution and, in some instances, the campus community. Id. § 13-3825(G). The Department of Public Safety may also communicate with businesses and organizations that offer electronic communication services about whether an offender's online identifier is being used on their systems. Id. § 13-3827(E). The statutory requirements of warnings to various communities about the identities and presence of sex offenders confirm that the legislature views sex offenses as serious crimes. Cf. Noble, 171 Ariz. at 177, 829 P.2d at 1223 (noting potential stigmatic effect of widespread access to sex offender registration information).
Technically registration is unconstitutional. Article 2 § 13 of the AZ. Constitution states, “No law shall be enacted granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens or corporations.” This idea was the premise for the elimination of the Jim Crow laws of the south and the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s. All citizens (convicted or otherwise) are entitled to equal protection under the law which means that the government cannot use the law to create a class of people such as negro’s or SO’s. As lawyers say, “The law is not a respecter of person’s.” Which means it doesn’t matter if you are the President of the United States or an SO they are both equal in the eyes of the law. The are some Constitutional Rights you lose as a convict and some you never do and equal protection under the law is not one of them. If government wants to register SO’s they can’t use the law to create a class of people and force restrictions on their liberty unless they force all convicts to register without regard to the offense. Most state constitutions have similar statements. The problem is that no one with the resources has stepped up to the plate to challenge these laws. This is partly due to the fact that they are so new. I bring this up with the hope that someone challenges the constitutionality of these laws soon. The reason why is that creating a class of people, no matter who they are, or what they've done, is no different than forcing people to wear yellow arm bands, with the word JUDEN on them. Lifetime probation and registration makes American government no different than Nazi Germany and here's the proof:
"Those who would sacrifice their liberty for a little temporary
security deserve neither liberty or security."
(Benjamin Franklin)
Yet this is exactly what is happening. I hope what I just wrote offends the hell out of people. It’s about time this offended the hell out of somebody!
Another trick the state does in regard to registration is arrest people on registration sweeps for violation of registration policies when those policies didn't exist at the time their crimes were committed and they were therefore not required to register. That didn't stop the state from throwing a man I knew in prison. It took him two a half years to fight his way out.
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