Sex offender registries are just registries. They only work if someone decides to actually do a query. It might prevent them from getting a childcare job, but it doesn't really prevent them from accessing children at all.

The registers are also massively bloated, some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination.

The only sex offenders who actually get regular checks that might identify this type of thing, are those on parole, or similar court ordered programs.

Other things that could get you on the registry include visiting a nude beach in California or being an 18-year-old high school student with a 17-year-old girlfriend and having your sexual activity discovered by a vindictive parent (that last one will get you the bonus bar of shame of criminal activity involving a minor). The registries are rather blunt tools and also end up doing things like making getting housing difficult (there was a news story I saw in the 90s about an encampment under a freeway in Florida as it was the only place people on the sex offender registry could legally live in a major city (I think Miami but this was 30 years ago). A more recent story in Chicago pointed out that a restriction on sleeping on the CTA would cause homeless people on the registry to end up being unable to meet the terms of their parole). I don’t really have much sympathy for child sex abusers, but if people are such dangers to society that they can only live under a freeway or will be reincarcerated on unavoidable technicalities, something is very wrong.

Right but I'll be honest, I've never thought about looking up the people I've dated in the past. No one really talked about it when I was younger. I don't remember my mother telling me to do criminal background checks on people I'm seeing.

Happened to me. Went out with somebody who turned out to be a serial shop lifter who operated with a small gang of other shop lifters. Everything looked fine up front until they disappeared when we had plans without contact for days. Thought I was ghosted. Turns out they were arrested.

A friend went out with someone who destroyed his car after he broke up because she was violent twords him. He had to get a restraining order. A friend of his dug up a link to a FL police site. Turns out she did a little time down there for assaulting another woman, beating her with a coat rack during a fight. He never thought to look her up either and she seemed nice at first. Shit happens. Don't blame the victim for not being paranoid that everyone they're dating might be a criminal. Especially when there are damn good liars out there.

I hav heard this many times, but never found a single example - and I’ve looked. Everyone I’ve researched on the registry richly deserved it.

I challenge you and anyone else reading this to find an example of someone who is on the sex offender registry due to public urination.

How many of these sex offenders bought this couch and live close to this brick factory in homes built in that time period?

The whole thing about people getting put on the sex offender registry for public urination is a myth and there's no verifiable cases of it happening. There are two cases that are relatively close. The first is James Birch, who pled guilty to indecent exposure for peeing on a Taco Bell because he was representing himself and didn't understand that meant he'd have to register as a sex offender. He realized his mistake and the court let him undo the plea and the charges were dropped. The second is Juan Matamoros, a meth dealer from Florida who claimed in the mid-2000s that the reason why he got put on the Massachusetts sex offender registry in the 80s was public urination. Due to the age of the case and Massachusetts privacy laws the court records aren't publicly available and his lawyer from the 80s responded to a request for interview about the case with "no judge I am aware of would allow someone to be put on the sex offender registry for peeing in public".

If anyone tells you that's why they're on the sex offender registry, it's extremely likely they're lying about it and you should really look them up.

The salient point was that the person was in a relationship to the child’s mother.

> some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination

When minor offences can get people put on the register, this dilutes the meaning of being on the register.

Every actual sex offender will claim they're on there not because of the serious crimes they committed, but because they went nude on the wrong beach, or something similarly minor.