Residence Restrictions Are Ineffective, Inefficient, and Inadequate: So Now What?

Kelly M. Socia – University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Huebner et al.’s (2014, this issue) study of the effects of state-level residence restrictions in Michigan and Missouri finds little to suggest that these laws are having their intended effect of reducing the sexual victimization of children. Indeed, Huebner et al (2014) note that their findings “caution against the widespread, homogenous implementation of residence restrictions,” and instead they recommend individualized programming and risk-centered models when dealing with released sex offenders. This study is unique, and important, because of its focus on residence restriction laws’ effects on individual-level criminological outcomes, its examination of two states, and the advanced methods used in the analysis.

However, although this study is an excellent contribution to the aggregate literature on residence restrictions and brings a new perspective to how these policies are being studied, the findings are not surprising. These policies have been studied for years as they spread across the country, first as state-level laws and then as local-level ordinances. As a result, criminal justice scholars have been skeptical of the utility of residence restrictions for some time because study after study has suggested that these policies are ineffective and may be resulting in collateral consequences for both registered sex offenders (RSOs) and community members.

Read the entire article at http://criminology.fsu.edu/