Throwaway Children: The Tragic Consequences of a False Narrative

dc.contributor.authorCarpenter, C. L.
dc.date.accessioned2016-01-11T18:35:01Z
dc.date.available2016-01-11T18:35:01Z
dc.date.issued2015
dc.description.abstractTruth be told, we are afraid for our children and we are afraid of our children. The intersection of these disparate thoughts has produced a perfect storm. We have created increasingly harsh sex offender registration schemes to protect our children from sexual abuse. At the same time, fear of our children ensnares and punishes them under the very same laws that were designed to protect them. Yet, what compels action is premised on a false narrative that includes flawed studies on recidivism rates and misguided case decisions that embraced these findings. In this article, I explore the inherently unfair and deeply flawed practice of mandatory lifetime registration for children who commit sex offenses. Examination reveals two fallacies in a system that condemns children to lifetime monitoring: the breadth of its ensnarement, and the presumption of a child’s continued sexual predatory behavior. Fueled by emotional rhetoric, both are tightly bound in a fundamentally false narrative that is unnecessary and wholly damaging for the child registrant. The utility of an overly-simplified registration scheme comes with a hefty price tag: the acknowledgement that mandatory lifetime registration captures and shatters the lives of many non-dangerous children. It is a price tag we should no longer be willing to bear. In the face of overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary, we must commit to changing the false narrative that children who commit sex offenses are presumed to become sexually dangerous adults. We must commit to replacing it with a narrative that acknowledges that recidivism rates are low and that mandatory lifetime registration is both unnecessary and devastating. (Author Abstract)en_US
dc.identifier.citationCarpenter, C. L. (2015). Throwaway Children: The Tragic Consequences of a False Narrative. Southwestern Law School Law Review . 36 ppen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2709091_code359075.pdf?abstractid=2709091&mirid=1
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11212/2687
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherSouthwestern Law School Law Reviewen_US
dc.subjectchild abuseen_US
dc.subjectsexual abuseen_US
dc.subjectjuvenile perpetratoren_US
dc.subjectregistryen_US
dc.subjectpolicyen_US
dc.titleThrowaway Children: The Tragic Consequences of a False Narrativeen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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