The SOLAR Project - Sex Offender Legal Advocacy & Reform
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SOLAR Resource Guide

Supported Claims Library

A source-backed collection of the strongest claims SOLAR believes the evidence supports.

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This library turns SOLAR’s research base into a public reference for outside writers. It does not reproduce every study note or internal research step. It gives the strongest claims SOLAR believes can be responsibly published, with plain-language meaning and source trails.

The nine sections below now mirror SOLAR’s current advocacy positions and order. The section anchors are semantic rather than numerical so future reordering will not silently break direct evidence links.

Publication-safe claim

The strongest wording SOLAR believes should survive competent journalistic, editorial, academic, legislative, or fact-checking scrutiny.

What it means

A conversational version that keeps the same meaning without changing the substance.

Evidence

A concise explanation of why SOLAR can say the claim and what evidence supports it.

Source trail

Direct links to primary studies, government reports, court opinions, or authoritative sources.

Quick navigation

Jump directly to the SOLAR position you need.

How to use this library

Use the claim sentence when you need a concise published formulation; use the evidence paragraph when you need to explain why it is supportable.

Start with the SOLAR position closest to your topic. Each claim card then moves from the polished sentence to ordinary language to the evidence trail. A journalist should be able to scan from position to claim to evidence without reading a long literature review.

The claim labels distinguish empirical findings, evidence syntheses, comparative findings, legal facts, policy inferences, and SOLAR conclusions. That distinction matters: SOLAR can reach policy conclusions, but a normative conclusion should not be presented as if it were a single statistical result.

Boundary rule

Boundaries are not included for balance. They appear only when leaving them out would make the claim materially misleading, when a specific exception would make the sentence vulnerable to competent review, or when naming a narrow exception strengthens the durability of the claim.

Ineffective and rooted in misinformation

Publication-safe claims about broad SORN effectiveness, registry mechanisms, public use, and recidivism mythology.

SOLAR’s position

The sex offender registry system is ineffective and rooted in misinformation.

Supported claims
Claim 1.1
Evidence synthesis

Publication-safe claim

Across 25 years of evaluated U.S. SORN policies, the strongest broad quantitative synthesis has not demonstrated an overall recidivism-reduction effect.

What it means

After decades of registry laws, the best broad pooled evidence still has not shown that SORN as a system reduces reoffending overall.

Why we can say it / evidence

Zgoba and Mitchell synthesized 18 research articles, 474,640 individuals, and 42 effect sizes. The pooled effect was not statistically significant, including subgroup checks by sexual versus nonsexual recidivism and arrest versus conviction.

Boundary

Minnesota’s Level 3 community-notification study found favorable outcomes among selected higher-risk individuals; that finding should not be generalized into proof that broad public web registries work.

Claim 1.2
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Major state-level evaluations have repeatedly failed to show that broad registry-and-notification systems reduce sexual offending or sexual recidivism.

What it means

Large evaluations in several states did not deliver the prevention results the public is often told to assume.

Why we can say it / evidence

The New York time-series study reported no support for SORN reducing several sexual-offense outcomes. The New Jersey NIJ evaluation found no demonstrated effect on multiple sexual-offense or rearrest outcomes. South Carolina adult-recidivism research likewise found no simple registration-status effect on sexual recidivism in modeled analyses.

Claim 1.3
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Large state datasets have found that the vast majority of sex-crime arrests involve people without a prior sex-crime conviction.

What it means

Most detected sexual offending in these studies was not committed by repeat sex offenders who could already have been identified through a prior sex-offense conviction.

Why we can say it / evidence

Sandler, Freeman, and Socia found that more than 95% of sexual-offense arrests in their New York data involved first-time sex offenders. Levenson and Zgoba found that, across Florida data from 1990–2010, an average 6.5% of sex-crime arrests involved a person with a prior felony sex-crime conviction—meaning roughly 93.5% did not.

Boundary

These are arrest-based state studies from particular historical periods, not a fixed national estimate of all sexual offending. Prior sex-crime conviction is also not literally identical to registry status in every individual case. The studies nevertheless strongly support the conclusion that repeat known sex offenders account for a small minority of detected sex-crime arrests in those datasets.

Claim 1.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Registration, public Internet disclosure, targeted community notification, verification, residence restrictions, supervision, and treatment are different policy components and should not be treated as interchangeable evidence.

What it means

A study about one part of the system does not automatically prove something about every other part.

Why we can say it / evidence

The literature separates law-enforcement registration from public notification and broader SORN packages. Prescott and Rockoff are especially useful because they analyze registration and notification as distinct mechanisms.

Claim 1.5
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Public availability of registry information is not the same thing as public use, protective action, or crime reduction.

What it means

A registry website can exist and still fail to produce the behavior change people imagine.

Why we can say it / evidence

Anderson and Sample’s survey work supports the distinction between registry availability, actual use, self-reported protective behavior, and measured crime reduction.

Claim 1.6
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Law-enforcement research documents implementation limits that constrain the registry’s claimed safety mechanism.

What it means

Even when a registry has informational value, usefulness depends on accuracy, communication, public understanding, and real-world implementation.

Why we can say it / evidence

Research with law-enforcement personnel has identified concerns about information reliability, inter-system communication, public interpretation, workload, and the utility of increasingly large registries.

Boundary

Practitioner perception is evidence about implementation and belief; it is not direct evidence that SORN reduces offending.

Claim 1.7
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Major official and longitudinal studies consistently find that detected sexual recidivism is a minority outcome, with rates varying substantially by population, prior history, age, follow-up period, and outcome measure.

What it means

The evidence does not support the common assumption that people convicted of sex offenses almost always offend again.

Why we can say it / evidence

BJS release studies and longer-term research show detected sexual recidivism as a minority outcome while also documenting substantial variation by subgroup, prior history, age, follow-up period, and measurement basis.

Boundary

Official rearrest, charge, conviction, and reincarceration measures undercount undetected conduct and should not be described as lifetime offending rates.

Registry policy and community safety

Publication-safe claims about counterproductive effects, destabilization, public notification, residence restrictions, and reintegration.

SOLAR’s position

Registry policies can make communities less safe.

Supported claims
Claim 2.1
Evidence synthesis

Publication-safe claim

Policies that destabilize housing, employment, treatment, and family support can undermine conditions associated with successful reentry and public safety.

What it means

Housing, work, treatment, and family support are not side issues. They are part of the stability on which successful reintegration depends.

Why we can say it / evidence

Government and peer-reviewed reviews document housing, employment, social, and psychological burdens associated with registry and restriction regimes. DOJ’s SMART synthesis specifically warns that residence restrictions can undermine housing, work, and family support in ways that may aggravate rather than mitigate risk.

Boundary

The destabilizing burdens are documented more directly than the complete causal chain from a specific burden to a new sexual offense. The latter should not be overstated.

Claim 2.2
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

One major study found evidence consistent with public notification increasing recidivism among registered people even while notification may deter some first-time offending.

What it means

More public exposure does not have a uniformly protective effect.

Why we can say it / evidence

Prescott and Rockoff separated registration from notification and reported results consistent with community notification deterring some first-time offending while increasing recidivism among registered people because notification changes the relative costs of legal and illegal behavior.

Boundary

This is an important mechanism-specific study, not proof that every notification system in every jurisdiction increases recidivism.

Claim 2.3
Evidence synthesis

Publication-safe claim

Residence restrictions have not demonstrated a general recidivism-reduction benefit and can produce destabilizing unintended consequences.

What it means

A rule can sound protective while making lawful, stable reentry harder.

Why we can say it / evidence

The SMART SOMAPI synthesis reports no empirical support for residence restrictions as a general prevention strategy and identifies housing loss, support-system loss, financial hardship, displacement, and transience as important unintended consequences.

Boundary

Residence restrictions are state and local policies rather than a required component of federal SORNA, and their design varies substantially by jurisdiction.

Claim 2.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Public-safety policy should account for counterproductive effects as well as intended benefits.

What it means

A policy does not become protective merely because protection is its stated purpose.

Why we can say it / evidence

The combination of broad null or mixed SORN findings, mechanism-specific notification results, and documented destabilizing consequences supports evaluating both intended and unintended effects rather than presuming net benefit.

Relationship, access, and trust—not stranger-location mapping

Publication-safe claims about child-safety threat models and the limits of registry-centered prevention.

SOLAR’s position

Sexual harm to children is primarily a relationship-and-access problem, not a stranger-location problem.

Supported claims
Claim 3.1
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Reported child sexual abuse is predominantly committed by people known to the child rather than strangers.

What it means

The biggest child-safety problem is usually access and trust, not an unknown person living nearby.

Why we can say it / evidence

BJS’s report on sexual assault of young children reported to law enforcement is a strong official source for victim-offender relationship patterns and supports relationship-and-access framing rather than a stranger-location model.

Boundary

The BJS source is about cases reported to law enforcement; unreported abuse may have different measurement limits.

Claim 3.2
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

A registry website is a poor standalone child-safety model because known-access offending is not the same prevention target as stranger-location warning.

What it means

Looking up nearby addresses does not answer the deeper safety questions: who has private access, authority, secrecy, and trust?

Why we can say it / evidence

Known-perpetrator data, public-use research, and registry-implementation studies together show why a public map is an incomplete child-safety model.

Claim 3.3
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Registry-centered prevention can misdirect attention when it encourages the public to treat location visibility as the main child-safety strategy.

What it means

Children are better protected by prevention systems that address access, reporting, institutional response, supervision, and trusted authority—not by assuming a public map solves the problem.

Why we can say it / evidence

Known-person victim-offender data, the gap between registry availability and protective behavior, and broad null SORN findings support prevention strategies that reach beyond location visibility.

Lifelong public branding as an exceptional response

Publication-safe comparative claims about how other serious harms are managed and why exceptional burdens require exceptional justification.

SOLAR’s position

Other serious harms are addressed without lifelong public branding.

Supported claims
Claim 4.1
Comparative finding

Publication-safe claim

Many serious and recurring public-safety harms are addressed through prevention, regulation, enforcement, technology, treatment, and ordinary criminal accountability rather than permanent public identity branding.

What it means

The registry is an unusually durable public-status intervention, not the default way the United States responds to every serious harm.

Why we can say it / evidence

Federal public-health, transportation-safety, and criminal-justice sources illustrate prevention and intervention systems for firearm injury, impaired driving, and domestic violence that do not depend on a universal lifelong public list of everyone previously convicted.

Boundary

These harms are not identical and do not require identical policy responses. The comparison is about the form and duration of public-safety intervention, not moral equivalence.

Claim 4.2
Comparative finding

Publication-safe claim

Repeat-offense concentration is not unique to sexual offending; same-type specialization appears across many offense categories.

What it means

The existence of recurrence risk does not by itself explain why one class of convictions should trigger permanent public identity.

Why we can say it / evidence

BJS same-offense recidivism tables show elevated same-type rearrest patterns across multiple offense categories, including violent, property, drug, and public-order offenses.

Boundary

The magnitude of specialization differs by offense and base rate; this is not a claim that all offense categories present equal risks.

Claim 4.3
Comparative finding

Publication-safe claim

Sex-offense release groups are not uniformly the highest-recidivating groups when the outcome is overall rearrest.

What it means

Sexual-offense history can matter for sexual-reoffense risk without making the group uniquely highest-risk on every public-safety measure.

Why we can say it / evidence

Major BJS and federal same-cohort comparisons show lower overall rearrest for some sex-offense release groups than for other released-prisoner groups, while also showing relative elevation on specifically sexual rearrest.

Boundary

Overall rearrest and sexual rearrest answer different questions; both should be reported when relevant.

Claim 4.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

The more exceptional and durable a public burden is, the stronger the case should be that its demonstrated benefits justify it.

What it means

Permanent public branding should not be treated as self-justifying simply because the underlying harm is serious.

Why we can say it / evidence

Broad SORN effectiveness findings, documented burdens, and expert reform recommendations support a benefit-versus-burden approach rather than assuming that exceptional status is warranted by offense category alone.

Punitive in practice

Publication-safe claims distinguishing legal classification from empirical and lived effects.

SOLAR’s position

Registries are punitive in practice, not merely administrative.

Supported claims
Claim 5.1
Legal fact

Publication-safe claim

A court’s civil label for a registry scheme does not end the empirical or policy question whether modern registry systems operate punitively in practice.

What it means

Legal doctrine and lived effect are related, but they are not the same thing.

Why we can say it / evidence

Smith v. Doe held Alaska’s then-existing registry nonpunitive for federal ex post facto purposes. Later decisions, including Does #1–5 v. Snyder, show that materially different modern schemes can be judged punitive in effect.

Claim 5.2
SOLAR conclusion

Publication-safe claim

Public exposure, recurring reporting duties, residence and proximity limits, employment barriers, and long-duration public status can function as continuing punishment after sentence completion.

What it means

For the person living under the system, the burdens do not necessarily end when the sentence ends.

Why we can say it / evidence

This is a SOLAR synthesis grounded in documented reintegration burdens, residence-restriction effects, administrative demands, public-notification consequences, and constitutional litigation over punitive effects.

Claim 5.3
Legal fact

Publication-safe claim

Modern registry challenges are fact-sensitive because courts assess the specific law’s effects, not the word “registry” in the abstract.

What it means

The legal answer can change when a registry adds exclusion zones, in-person reporting, public branding, internet disclosure, or other heavy burdens.

Why we can say it / evidence

Smith v. Doe applied an intent-effects framework to Alaska’s law as it existed then. Does #1–5 v. Snyder applied that framework to Michigan’s amended scheme and found punitive effects.

Claim 5.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

When a system produces punishment-like burdens without demonstrating broad public-safety gains, proportionality becomes a central policy question.

What it means

The state should not get to impose lifelong practical punishment merely by calling it administration.

Why we can say it / evidence

Pooled null or inconsistent recidivism effects coexist with documented financial, administrative, housing, employment, and reintegration burdens. That makes benefit-versus-burden an empirical proportionality question.

Families and children bear collateral punishment

Publication-safe claims about household spillover, children, stigma, housing disruption, financial strain, and collateral consequences.

SOLAR’s position

Registry systems punish families and children too.

Supported claims
Claim 6.1
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Registry-related burdens can extend beyond the person required to register and affect spouses, children, and other family members.

What it means

The practical consequences of public registration can spread through an entire household.

Why we can say it / evidence

Family-focused research and government evidence reviews document financial strain, housing disruption, stigma, harassment, social isolation, and other spillover burdens reported by family members of people required to register.

Boundary

Family studies often rely on volunteer or self-selected samples and should not be used to claim a precise national prevalence for every burden.

Claim 6.2
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Children can experience stigma, harassment, social exclusion, and household disruption because of a parent or family member’s registry status.

What it means

Children who committed no offense can still bear social and practical consequences of the registry.

Why we can say it / evidence

The family collateral-damage literature reports child-specific consequences alongside broader household effects, including stigma and disruption associated with public status and exclusion.

Boundary

The evidence establishes documented child impacts; it does not establish that every child in a registrant household experiences the same consequences.

Claim 6.3
Evidence synthesis

Publication-safe claim

Housing and employment barriers can become family burdens because lost housing, income, transportation, and community access are shared household conditions.

What it means

A legal burden aimed at one person can change where an entire family lives and what resources it has.

Why we can say it / evidence

Research on collateral effects, housing restrictions, transience, and family impacts shows how registry-related exclusion can propagate through shared household finances, residence, and social support.

Claim 6.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Collateral consequences imposed on people who committed no offense should count in any assessment of a registry policy’s proportionality and public-safety value.

What it means

Families and children should not disappear from the policy ledger simply because the legal duty is formally imposed on someone else.

Why we can say it / evidence

Documented family spillover, housing disruption, and reintegration burdens support treating collateral household effects as part of the policy’s real-world cost.

One-size-fits-all registry laws are fundamentally flawed

Publication-safe claims about heterogeneity, offense labels, age, time offense-free, assessment tools, treatment, and calibration.

SOLAR’s position

One-size-fits-all registry laws are fundamentally flawed.

Supported claims
Claim 7.1
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

An offense label is not a validated measure of an individual’s current risk.

What it means

Knowing what someone was convicted of does not tell you, by itself, how likely that person is to offend again.

Why we can say it / evidence

Research documents substantial heterogeneity by prior offense history, age, time offense-free, criminal history, CSEM versus contact offense profile, and tool population fit.

Claim 7.2
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Risk is dynamic across the life course: age and time offense-free materially change empirically observed risk.

What it means

Risk is not frozen forever at the moment of conviction.

Why we can say it / evidence

Age, desistance, long-term follow-up evidence, and actuarial guidance support the conclusion that risk changes over time and should not be treated as a permanent category label.

Boundary

Age and offense-free time lower average risk; they do not eliminate risk for every individual.

Claim 7.3
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Validated actuarial methods generally outperform unstructured professional judgment in predicting sexual recidivism.

What it means

Risk decisions should not be based only on fear, offense title, or a professional gut feeling.

Why we can say it / evidence

Meta-analytic evidence supports structured, empirically grounded assessment over unstructured professional judgment.

Boundary

Structured methods are not perfect prediction; usefulness depends on the population, tool purpose, and decision being made.

Claim 7.4
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

PCRA results should not be treated as if they directly answer a specialized sexual-recidivism question.

What it means

A general federal risk/needs score is not automatically a sex-offense risk score.

Why we can say it / evidence

PCRA was built for general federal post-conviction risk and intervention needs. Federal CSEM validation work illustrates the importance of distinguishing general and specialized outcomes.

Boundary

General-risk tools can correlate with specialized outcomes; correlation does not transform their validated primary purpose.

Claim 7.5
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Moderate AUCs can contain useful ranking information while still being inadequate for precise individual probability claims.

What it means

A tool can be better than guessing and still not tell you that a particular person has a precise percent chance of reoffending.

Why we can say it / evidence

AUC is a discrimination statistic: it ranks relative ordering but does not by itself establish calibration, absolute probability, causation, or certainty for a particular person.

Claim 7.6
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Transporting a score-to-percentage table across populations requires calibration evidence, not just a respectable AUC.

What it means

A number developed in one sample may not give the right absolute-risk estimate in another setting.

Why we can say it / evidence

Static-99R norms and CPORT validation concerns illustrate why discrimination and calibration must be kept separate. Reference-group choice and population fit must be explicit.

Claim 7.7
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Risk assessment should distinguish historical baseline risk from changeable treatment and supervision needs rather than treating risk as permanently fixed.

What it means

Some risk-relevant facts are historical. Others can change with time, treatment, stability, supervision, and behavior.

Why we can say it / evidence

STABLE-2007, SOTIPS, VRS-SO, and treatment meta-analysis evidence support the existence of structured dynamic risk and change-related information.

Boundary

Dynamic ratings require training, appropriate data, and good longitudinal information.

Permanent underclass

Publication-safe SOLAR synthesis claims about cumulative reintegration barriers and long-duration public status.

SOLAR’s position

Registries create a permanent underclass.

Supported claims
Claim 8.1
SOLAR conclusion

Publication-safe claim

Registry systems create a permanent underclass when public status, legal restrictions, private exclusion, and administrative demands combine to obstruct ordinary reintegration.

What it means

The registry can follow a person into housing, work, family life, community participation, and public identity long after the court sentence is over.

Why we can say it / evidence

This is a SOLAR synthesis grounded in documented housing loss, employment exclusion, psychological burden, community-notification effects, residence restrictions, and recurring administrative demands.

Claim 8.2
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Housing barriers are a central mechanism through which registry systems destabilize people and families.

What it means

Housing is not a side issue. Without a lawful, stable place to live, nearly every other part of reentry becomes harder.

Why we can say it / evidence

GIS, restriction, and reintegration research shows how exclusion zones and public status can reduce housing options and contribute to residential disruption.

Boundary

Housing effects vary by local law, geography, landlord practice, supervision rules, and family resources.

Claim 8.3
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Employment and social exclusion are documented registry consequences, not speculative complaints.

What it means

People on registries can face work and community barriers because their public status invites exclusion.

Why we can say it / evidence

The reintegration literature includes job loss or exclusion, social isolation, threats, and psychological effects associated with public registry and notification exposure.

Claim 8.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

A system that undermines housing, employment, and community reintegration can weaken the same stability infrastructure public safety depends on.

What it means

Public safety is not served by making lawful life harder than it needs to be.

Why we can say it / evidence

Documented collateral burdens and the lack of demonstrated broad SORN recidivism reduction support this stability-and-proportionality inference without requiring a claim that every individual burden directly causes reoffending.

Boundary

This is a stability-and-proportionality claim, not a claim that every collateral burden has a proven direct causal effect on reoffending.

Measurable outcomes, not presumed benefits

Publication-safe methodological claims that keep policy claims tied to evidence, mechanisms, and actual outcomes.

SOLAR’s position

Public-safety policy should be judged by measurable outcomes, not presumed benefits.

Supported claims
Claim 9.1
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

The seriousness of sexual harm does not prove that a registry policy prevents it.

What it means

A problem can be grave and a proposed intervention can still fail.

Why we can say it / evidence

The moral seriousness of sexual harm and the measurable effectiveness of a policy are separate questions. Broad SORN evidence has not demonstrated an overall recidivism-reduction effect, and individual policy components show different mechanisms and evidence profiles.

Claim 9.2
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Visibility is not prevention, and the existence of a database is not proof of protective action.

What it means

A public list only matters if it is accurate, understood, used, and connected to behavior that actually reduces harm.

Why we can say it / evidence

Public-use research, implementation research, and broad SORN findings support separating availability, use, protective behavior, and crime reduction.

Claim 9.3
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Practitioner belief that SORN is useful is evidence about practitioner perception, not direct evidence that SORN reduces offending.

What it means

Survey answers can tell us what administrators think. They cannot, by themselves, prove crime prevention.

Why we can say it / evidence

Law-enforcement studies document mixed views and implementation concerns. Those findings support claims about practitioner perception and administration, not direct crime-rate effects.

Claim 9.4
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Registry policy should be evaluated component by component rather than as one indivisible package.

What it means

Registration, public notification, verification, residence restrictions, supervision, and treatment can have different evidence, mechanisms, and burdens.

Why we can say it / evidence

Mechanism-specific and program-specific studies illustrate why evidence about one component should not be generalized across the whole policy package.

Claim 9.5
Policy inference

Publication-safe claim

Where demonstrated public-safety gains are null, narrow, or inconsistent, financial, administrative, and reintegration burdens become central to whether a registry policy is proportionate.

What it means

Costs and harms matter most when the promised benefit is weak or unproven.

Why we can say it / evidence

Pooled effectiveness findings, cost evidence, reintegration burdens, residence-restriction effects, and implementation concerns together support a benefit-versus-burden framework.

Boundary

Minnesota’s selected Level 3 community-notification program produced favorable outcomes in one major evaluation; that finding does not establish a broad public-safety benefit for public registry systems generally.

Claim 9.6
Empirical finding

Publication-safe claim

Any recidivism claim that omits its measurement basis is incomplete.

What it means

Rearrest, charge, conviction, reincarceration, self-report, and actual offending are not interchangeable.

Why we can say it / evidence

The same population can produce different rates depending on the endpoint, follow-up period, source of data, and subgroup definition.

Sources and methodology note

How claims and sources are selected and presented.

This page organizes primary studies, government reports, court opinions, and other authoritative sources into evidence-supported public claims. Source trails prioritize original sources, while SOLAR evidence guides are listed below as synthesis gateways.

Claims are curated for strength, relevance, and accuracy. Complicating evidence is used to define scope and boundaries when it materially changes what the evidence allows SOLAR to say.

Common reporting mistakes to avoid

  • Rearrest is not reconviction.
  • Public availability is not prevention.
  • Practitioner perception is not measured efficacy.
  • General-risk tools are not automatically specialized sexual-risk instruments.
  • Registration, notification, residence restrictions, supervision, treatment, and verification are not interchangeable policies.

Primary SOLAR evidence gateways

Registry Effectiveness Evidence Guide

SOLAR Guide
Deeper synthesis on registration, notification, public use, and measurable public-safety outcomes.

Recidivism Evidence Guide

SOLAR Guide
Deeper synthesis on rearrest, reconviction, follow-up periods, absolute rates, and comparator evidence.

Risk Assessment Guide

SOLAR Guide
Deeper synthesis on offense labels, actuarial tools, dynamic risk, calibration, and individualized assessment.

Research & Data Resources

SOLAR Resource
Research-oriented starting point for source trails, data resources, and evidence navigation.

Advocacy Positions

SOLAR Page
The public SOLAR positions this claims library is organized around.

Related SOLAR resources

Registry Effectiveness Evidence Guide

SOLAR
Use this for broader support on whether registries reduce offending.

Recidivism Evidence Guide

SOLAR
Use this for careful distinctions among rearrest, reconviction, absolute rates, and comparator groups.

Risk Assessment Guide

SOLAR
Use this for individualized-risk, tool-purpose, AUC, calibration, and dynamic-risk issues.

Source list

Direct source trail for the claims above.

Sources & verification

Position architecture and source links verified September 13, 2026. Source URLs may change over time; claims are framed to the evidence and boundaries identified above.