In The Weight, I reported that as-yet-uncaught predators can use sex offender registries to their advantage:
“You know what that means, being a Registered Sex Offender? I maxed out, but I still got to keep an address, let them know when I move, stuff like that.”
“Cramps your style, does it?”
“No, that’s not it. They don’t actually do anything. It’s just a stupid Web site. And you know who uses it the most?”
“Uses what the most?”
“This ‘registry’ thing. The people who use it most are those … ‘pedophiles,’ they call them. See, what they do, when they’re trying to worm their way in
someplace, like with a mother who’s living with her little daughter, they tell her to check them out. On this Web site, I mean. When that comes up empty, it’s like the government is saying, ‘This guy, he’s all right,’ see?”
“How come you know this?” Woods asked me. He was way too casual–I could see he really wanted to know.
“When I first went in, on the last bit, I mean, they put me in this group. For sex offenders. It was supposed to be voluntary, but all of them know, if they don’t go, the parole board’s gonna nail them.”
“And you didn’t want to call attention to yourself, so you played along?”
“On the nose. I didn’t last long–they threw me out–but that was one of the things they talked about in ‘group.’ They talked about this registry a lot. Some of them, they were all … outraged, like. It was a violation of their rights, they were branded for life, blah-blah. But a couple of them said the truth: That was one scam they could never use again, which was a shame because it always worked.”
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