State Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter are still pushing legislation to update the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act – 13 years after the bill was first introduced.

Krueger, D-New York City, and Hunter, D-Syracuse, have reintroduced S.3201/A.8930, legislation that updates the way the state assesses the risk convicted sex offenders pose to the community. This is the eighth year the bill has been introduced in the state Legislature. The legislation hasn’t made it out of committee the past seven times it was introduced.

The bill makes technical changes to the law that require the application of a risk assessment instrument as well as requiring the Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders to use a validated risk assessment instrument subjected to

periodic empirical re-validation. Changing the way risk assessment is handled by the Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders could change sex offender designations seen at the local level – if Krueger and Hunter end up being able to move the bill through the legislature.

The state Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders created risk assessment guidelines in 1995 to assess each sex offender’s risk of reoffending and to make a recommendation to the courts concerning the risk level that should be assigned to such sex offender. The courts treat these recommendations as presumptively valid and generally only override the board’s recommendation if something is brought. to their attention that was not taken into account by the guidelines.

According to the legislative justification written by Krueger and Hunter, a panel, including two assistant district attorneys, a probation officer, a deputy attorney general, a police captain, the acting director of forensic services at the Office of Mental Health, a physician and a sex offender treatment provider applied the guidelines to 20 cases and then modified the guidelines. The guidelines were adopted and modified by the panel in January 1996 and, with one slight revision in 1997 and one statutory update in 2006, have remained the same since.

“The combination of using static, dynamic, and violence instruments will give a better picture of the overall risk of recidivism for individuals who have previously sexually offended,” Hunter and Krueger wrote in their legislative justification.

The Static 99/R is the most widely used sexual offender actuarial risk assessment instrument in the world. The assumptions aggregate criminal history as well as demographic characteristics to identify the predictors of recidivism. The general idea of any sex offender actuarial risk assessment is that the characteristics of an individual sex offender are compared to the characteristics of a large group of sex offenders who have reoffended over a given period of time. The instruments are not personality tests or psychological profiles, but are predictive statistical tools that look at the traits of an individual to see how other similarly situated individuals have fared in the past. The strength of the actuarial method is that it is research-supported rather than subjective, and that the instrument is susceptible to ongoing re-validation and refinement. The Static 99/R also demonstrates a moderate ability to identify recidivists and non-recidivists; recent updates include adding data on older offenders, over 60 years of age, with low recidivism rates. But the assessment hasn’t been tested to see if they accurately predict the risk of reoffending or been validated – something Hunter and Krueger want to see happen.

“It has been noted by clinical psychologists working with sex offenders in New York that many of the factors used in the state’s risk assessment guidelines do not have any relation to the level of risk; recommendations have been made that the risk assessment guidelines should be replaced with more modern and validated instruments such as those used in the Static 99/R,” the lawmakers wrote. “New York’s sex offender registry should utilize 21st century actuarial derived risk assessment levels. This will ensure that law enforcement and treatment services focus on

the sex offenders most likely to recidivate. The public and law enforcement depend on the findings of the Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders, so it is incumbent upon the legislature to ensure that the board is utilizing the most up-to-date, accurate and scientifically validated risk assessment instrument available. The first line of defense against recidivism is a precise estimation of which sex offenders need the most careful supervision, allowing law enforcement to focus its efforts on those sex offenders who pose a high risk of reoffending. Requiring the use of a validated risk assessment instrument like the Static 99/R will help the state to identify those high-risk individuals who need to be watched most closely.”