Opinion ID: 2007417
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Promotion of the Traditional Aims of Punishment

Text: Next, we address whether KRS 17.545 promotes the traditional aims of punishment: retribution and deterrence. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. at 168, 83 S.Ct. 554. KRS 17.545 promotes general deterrence through the threat of negative consequences, i.e. eviction or restriction of where a person may live in the future. More significant, however, is the statute's retributive effect. KRS 17.545 makes no individualized determination of the dangerousness of a particular registrant. Even those registrants whose victims were adults are prohibited from living near an area where children gather. When a restriction is imposed equally upon all offenders, with no consideration given to how dangerous any particular registrant may be to public safety, that restriction begins to look far more like retribution for past offenses than a regulation intended to prevent future ones. In his concurring opinion in Smith , Justice Souter expressed his unease with the absence of individualized risk assessment: Ensuring public safety is, of course, a fundamental regulatory goal ... and this objective should be given serious weight in the analyses. But, at the same time, it would be naive to look no further, given pervasive attitudes toward sex offenders.... The fact that the Act uses past crime as the touchstone, probably sweeping in a significant number of people who pose no real threat to the community, serves to feed suspicion that something more than regulation of safety is going on; when a legislature uses prior convictions to impose burdens that outpace the law's stated civil aims, there is room for serious argument that the ulterior purpose is to revisit past crimes, not prevent future ones. Smith, 538 U.S. at 108-09, 123 S.Ct. 1140 (Souter, J., concurring). By imposing restraints based solely upon prior offenses, KRS 17.545 promotes and furthers retribution against sex offenders for their past crimes. We therefore conclude that KRS 17.545 promotes the traditional aims of punishment.