The publicly available sex offender registry should be abolished.

Acceptance locked, please comment to be accepted to this argument. This was an open argument before, but the last person who accepted this debate never gave a single reply. I oppose the existence of a publicly available sex offender registry. Note that this argument deals only with a registry that all citizens can access. I am not arguing that a record should not be kept by law enforcement. I also oppose background checks, but that is not material to this argument. I am confining the scope of this argument to publicly available sex offender registries. This in no way suggests that I am okay with rape or any other sex offense. To assert that would be to assert a false dilemma. I could as easily say that if you don't support cutting off hands for shoplifting, then you support shoplifting. 1)Sex offenders have an extremely low recidivism rate. Sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate of any group of offenders, and it isn't even close. All legitimate sources will confirm this. (Note: blogs, random websites, and the Huffington Post are not legitimate sources for data, criminal databases are.) If the numbers were not available, we could simply think about the rational effect of a registry. The registry causes these people to become social pariahs, so their options for consensual relationships are severely curtailed if not completely obliterated. The problem with this is that if they will now have the option of no relationship or forcing their way on someone. If someone has been rehabilitated and is then thrust into this situation I would suggest their odds of reverting to their former state rises. Thankfully the rate of recidivism is, as previously stated, very low, but it would seem that the registry is more likely to raise the rate of recidivism than lower it. The registry does not really protect anyone, it is just extra punishment beyond the prison time that the offenders serve. These offenders have already served their time, and if qualified professionals (ie psychiatrists) think a person is still likely to be a danger to society but has served his sentence, he should be getting therapy to treat his disorder and possibly confined in some way(eg a tracking ankle bracelet or confinement to a facility to treat these offenders). If you disagree with my conclusion that the registry should be abolished as it is cruel and unusual punishment, then it seems to follow that you should think anyone convicted of any offense should be put on a registry because any other offender is far more likely to re-offend. 2)The sex offender registry is horribly abused by the public. What is the real use of the sex offender registry? We brand sex offenders with a scarlet letter(the sex offender registry). This is then used by bullies and sadists so they can find someone they can harass or attack while claiming that they are doing something heroic. In truth, they are just cowards looking for approval. Similarly, those who set up stings to catch pedophiles online have been shown to falsify information and entrap people as was the case with Letzgohunting when they made a profile of a person of legal age then when the meeting was scheduled sent a text minutes before the meeting telling their mark that the girl was "actually" 15. They then chased him around town filming him and sending the film to his place of work to shame him for a thing he did not do all in the name of seeming like heroes for attacking someone they falsely claimed fit into a group that society deems worthy of harassment and attacks. I do not have statistical data on how common these attacks are. I know they exist based on news reports, but I have no way to compute their frequency.