Last summer, I expressed my doubts about scientific aims of the SORNA Challenge. By asking for proposals for “innovative” ways to measure the costs and benefits of the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act, I felt that the National Institute of Justice was implicitly admitting that the widely accepted methodologies of sociology, criminology, and economics wouldn’t give them the answers they were hoping for.
Also, the SORNA Challenge was using a very broad definition of the social benefits of SORNA, but limiting costs only to those directly incurred by the government, which could make SORNA look much more beneficial than it really is, if people using the study were not careful in interpreting the results.
I decided to check up on how the Challenge was going, and it turns out to be a bust:
We would like to thank everyone who submitted an idea under this Challenge.
We know our Challenge questions are tough, and in this case, no submission met the Challenge, so we will not award a prize.
We will continue to collaborate with the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking to address this important question.
That’s probably for the best.
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