Man arrested for a sex crime because he made a scheduling error

By Lenore Skenazy | Reason

When I agreed to keynote the Reform Sex Offender Laws conference this week in Dallas, Texas, I didn’t expect it to hit quite so close to home.

But before I arrived, I got a phone call from a soft-spoken, super-articulate young man, Joshua Gravens, who is a Soros Justice Scholar based in Dallas. His specialty is the injustice of the sex offender registry and the fact that it isn’t making kids any safer (see this study and this article). He was also on the public sex offender list until recently and still has restrictions on his movement.* He invited me to come with him to the police department to give notice he had moved. Who could resist?

Josh became a sex offender at age 12. That’s when he touched his sister’s vagina, twice. His sister told their mom, Josh said it was true (he was too embarrassed at the time to mention that he himself had been raped as a young boy by three local high school kids), and their mom called a counseling service for advice. The counselor said Josh’s mother was required to report his crime to the authorities and the next day, he was arrested.

at Reason.