Cite as: 538 U. S. 84 (2003)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
to any determination of a particular offender's risk of reoffending, but to whether the offense of conviction qualified as aggravated. The reporting requirements themselves are exorbitant: The Act requires aggravated offenders to engage in perpetual quarterly reporting, even if their personal information has not changed. See ante, at 90. And meriting heaviest weight in my judgment, the Act makes no provision whatever for the possibility of rehabilitation: Offenders cannot shorten their registration or notification period, even on the clearest demonstration of rehabilitation or conclusive proof of physical incapacitation.2 However plain it may be that a former sex offender currently poses no threat of recidivism, he will remain subject to long-term monitoring and inescapable humiliation.
John Doe I, for example, pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of sexual abuse of a minor nine years before the Alaska Act was enacted. He successfully completed a treatment program, and gained early release on supervised probation in part because of his compliance with the program's requirements and his apparent low risk of reoffense. Brief for Respondents 1. He subsequently remarried, established a business, and was reunited with his family. Ibid. He was also granted custody of a minor daughter, based on a court's determination that he had been successfully rehabilitated. See Doe I v. Otte, 259 F. 3d 979, 983 (CA9 2001). The court's determination rested in part on psychiatric evaluations concluding that Doe had "a very low risk of re-offending" and is "not a pedophile." Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Notwithstanding this strong evidence of rehabilitation, the Alaska Act requires Doe to report personal information to the State four times per year, and permits the State publicly
2 For the reasons stated by Justice Souter, see ante, at 109-110, n. (opinion concurring in judgment), I do not find the Court's citations to Hawker v. New York, 170 U. S. 189 (1898), and De Veau v. Braisted, 363 U. S. 144 (1960), see ante, at 103-104 (majority opinion), convincingly responsive to this point.
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