Are Sex Offender Registries Worth It, Crazy Canadian Vigilantes Notwithstanding?

One of Bostonist's least favorite law enforcement tools, the sex offender registry, jumped unpleasantly into the news this weekend, as some crazy Canadian picked two random people on Maine's list and killed them, then boarded a bus to Boston before eventually killing himself when confronted by police at South Station. Since one of the men killed was on the registry for the not-so-scandalous crime of having had sex with his almost-16-year-old girlfriend when he was 19, Maine officials have begun asking whether maybe (gasp!) sex offender registries do more harm than good.

Bostonist has always felt that these registries are, at base, an invitation to vigilante justice more than anything else. It's like state legislatures have said, "We can't always justify keeping these guys locked up forever, and the Supreme Court says we can't execute them, so we'll just tell the public what they did and where they live and, you know, see what happens." The response to the killings this weekend isn't convincing us otherwise: Everyone is up-in-arms about the murder of the statutory rapist because most people aren't too shocked by sex between a 19-year-old and an almost-16-year-old, but tears aren't being shed for the dead child rapist. While we agree that this shows how silly it is to lump statutory rape in with other sex crimes, we wonder whether it's OK to care that one kind of convicted criminal was killed by a vigilante, but not another. Maybe we're being too legalistic and not emotional enough? What do you say, dear readers?