In recent years, there have been many changes to sex offender registry laws at the state and federal levels. For example, several previously convicted sex offenders in Texas who had taken plea deals in exchange for deregistration after a set amount of time learned that new laws required them to register for life.
Texas laws have evolved over time with an emphasis on public safety, requiring people who have committed heinous sex offenses to register for increasingly longer periods of time or permanently depending on individual case details. Some argue that these changes unfairly affect those who accepted plea deals under previous laws, but lawmakers justifiably argue that public safety and preventing more victims of sex crimes trumps the personal freedoms of convicted sex offenders.