It’d be a shame if Colorado is forced to stop tracking the home addresses of sex offenders because a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the registry law violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment.
Colorado’s sex offender registry, like those in every other state, presents critical public information in a usable format that can make communities safer. We hope Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman prevails in her appeal of the ruling.
Colorado requires those convicted of certain sex offenses, excluding juveniles or misdemeanor convictions, to register their current home address with the state.
That information, coupled with public court records of convictions, creates an online registry that allows people to search geographical areas for sex offenders living nearby and learn about their crimes.
We fail to see how that equates to cruel and unusual punishment.
However, the registry can make the lives of those on the registry extremely difficult when coupled with misguided laws at the local level that govern where those on the registry can live and with overly aggressive community members who use the information in a punitive way,
The collision of the registry with those laws too often leads to inability of convicted sex offenders to find work or housing, and that’s counterproductive to the goal of having offenders get the treatment they need and rejoin society as productive members.
But it’s not the state law that’s creating those difficulties or making lifetime registration cruel and unusual. Some local governments, like Englewood, have implemented incredibly strict limitations on where sex offenders can live, essentially limiting the area of the city where they can reside to a very small percentage of the city’s housing stock.
A ruling in 2013, which was thrown out for complicated legal reasons, struck down the Englewood laws temporarily. The judge ruled, “Few sex offenders are incarcerated for life, most will at some point return to the community, and there must be a place for them to live.”
We agree. Municipalities must revisit their punitive rules to make them reasonable and workable while still ensuring public safety.
But those misguided laws could exist even without a statewide registry.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch found in his ruling this month, however, that the statewide registry itself poses a “serious threat of retaliation, violence, ostracism, shaming, and other unfair and irrational treatment from the public.”
Matsch wrote that punishment “not by the state, but by fellow citizens” is the equivalent of public shaming and banishment, which he said are considered cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment.
We consider the registry to be important public information provided in a useful and informative manner. Public reaction to that information is beyond the contemplation of the Colorado Sex Offender Registration Act.
An important public safety tool would be lost should the state lose its ability to compile information about where sex offenders live after they are released from prison.
But also, a number of sex offenders would find themselves with incredibly light sentences, as judges across the state have considered the ramifications of lifetime registration as a part of their sentences.
Words cannot express the injustice of a man like Austin James Wilkerson — convicted of sexually assaulting a helpless victim at the University of Colorado — walking free after 367 days in jail on work release without having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
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