Ross Opposed the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Press Release:

    Deborah Ross opposed the creation of the North Carolina sex offender registry. From The Washington Post:

THE FACTS:

    In an August 1995 memo, Ross slammed the creation of a sex offender registry in North Carolina, saying "This bill would make it even harder for people to reintegrate into society and start over and could lead to vigilantism." (Deborah Ross, Memo To The Legislative Committee Of The ACLU-NC, 8/4/95)


    Deborah Ross, in her own words, against the sex offender registry:

    "There's no oversight, and there's no specific rules about how to use it - that's where we will get into the problems of improper identification and vigilantism." (The Village Voice, 4/21/98)

    "There are serious concerns about what people do with this information." (The Village Voice, 4/21/98)

    "One would hope that law enforcement would enforce the law against vigilantes and harassers of sex offenders as much as they do against sex offenders themselves." (The Village Voice, 4/21/98)

    "Just because you know somebody in your neighborhood is a sex offender does not make you safer. It means you avoid that person. It also makes it more difficult for people who have paid their debt to society to reintegrate into society.'" (Times-News, 12/31/95)

    "There are some weird things in our laws that make people sex offenders, including statutory rape situations, where it might be consensual, but because of the age it is a crime." (Salisbury Post, 10/15/00)

    "Two bad things happen for society through sex offender registry. First, when they don't want to register it kind of pushes them under ground and it makes them more violent. And that gives a false sense of security of who the people are that you should be aware of. It also keeps them from reintegrating the community and society. Psychological factors are they feel separated from society and this makes them feel more, kind of, isolated and unable to experience normal human interaction." (Salisbury Post, 10/15/00)

    "Not everyone who is a sex offender is a serial offender." (Salisbury Post, 10/15/00)

    "People have the false impression that all sex offenders do it again and do it on repeated occasions, while the majority of sex offenders involves people within families." (Salisbury Post, 10/15/00)

    "This bill requires sex offenders, who have already served their time, to register with local authorities whenever they move to a new location...Despite the fact that this bill would make it even harder for people to reintegrate into society and start over and could lead to vigilantism, it passed both houses and is now law." (Ross Memo To The Legislative Committee Of The ACLU-NC, 8/4/95)

• Contact: Jesse Hunt
•     jhunt@burrforsenate.com