The Effects of Failure to Register on Sex Offender Recidivism

Failure to register (FTR) as a predatory offender recently supplanted criminal sexual conduct as the most common recidivism offense for sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons. To date, however, little is known about FTR. The authors attempted to address this gap by examining recidivism outcomes among inmates required to register as predatory offenders who were released from Minnesota prisons between 2000 and 2004. In particular, they analyzed whether an FTR offense (or history of any FTR offense) had a significant impact on sexual, general, and FTR recidivism. To minimize observed differences between FTR and non-FTR offenders, propensity score matching was used to create the non-FTR comparison group. Results from the Cox regression models indicate that an FTR offense did not have a significant effect on either sexual or general recidivism. In contrast, the findings suggested that an FTR conviction significantly increased the risk of recidivism for another FTR offense. Moreover, the results indicated that offenders with at least a GED or high school diploma at the time of release had a significantly reduced risk of FTR recidivism.