Legal issue

Juvenile Sex-Offender Registration & Notification

Whether and how sex-offender registration and community-notification regimes may constitutionally be applied to children adjudicated delinquent. Federal SORNA (Adam Walsh Act, 2006) required states to register certain juveniles adjudicated for serious sexual offenses, importing an adult premise: that a sexual offense marks the offender as persistently dangerous. The developmental science runs the other way — adjudicated juveniles sexually reoffend at low rates (pooled official rates around 3–10% over ~5 years, indistinguishable from other delinquents), their general recidivism is several times higher, and individual prediction is modest — so lifetime or automatic registration rests on a presumption that is not universally true. State high courts have relied on this research to strike automatic juvenile registration on due-process grounds (In re J.B. (Pa. 2014): irrebuttable presumption of high risk) and Eighth Amendment/fundamental-fairness grounds (In re C.P. (Ohio 2012): automatic lifetime registration and notification for juveniles is cruel and unusual and strips the juvenile court's discretion). Litigation in this issue turns on recidivism base rates, the accuracy of individualized risk assessment as the tailored alternative, and the collateral consequences of registration on education, housing, employment, and rehabilitation during the transition to adulthood.

Claims under this issue

• Juveniles adjudicated for sexual offenses sexually reoffend at low rates — pooled official rates of roughly 3–10% over about five years, indistinguishable from the sexual-offense rates of other delinquent youth — while their general (nonsexual) reoffending is several times higher, and individual prediction of juvenile sexual recidivism has only modest accuracy.

  Evidence: HighConsensus: Established Certified· juvenile offending / recidivism