Nearly all felony sex offenses and many misdemeanor sex offenses in the United States require the defendant to register as a sex offender. One way to avoid sex offender registration is to negotiate around a sex offense charge through plea bargaining. This study examines how prosecutors and defendants navigate around the sex elements of sex crimes charges during plea bargaining to avoid the severe collateral consequences of sex offense convictions. Through analysis of serious sex crimes cases resolved by guilty pleas in two Ohio counties, we document how cases initially charged as sex offenses ultimately result in convictions for nonsexual crimes or significantly reduced sex offenses. Our findings challenge traditional assumptions about plea bargaining. First, while pleas typically move \u201cdownward\u201d from more serious to less serious charges, we identify cases involving lateral moves between charges of similar severity, and occasionally \u201cupward\u201d movements to technically more serious offenses. Second, we provide the first systematic examination of \u201cfictional pleas\u201d\u2014plea bargains bearing no factual relationship to the original charges\u2014in sex crimes cases within a specific jurisdiction. Our detailed analysis of these pleas reveals common patterns and circumstances that predict when parties are likely to employ fictional pleas, including their frequent use to facilitate (often lateral) charge agreements in cases involving young victims. Our findings suggest that the avoidance of sex offender registration often takes precedence over traditional sentencing considerations, raising important questions about whether current registration schemes may inadvertently undermine their intended purposes by incentivizing plea bargains that remove sexual elements from charges entirely. Finally, the paper reframes the very concept of punishment in sex crimes cases. The harshness of registration and the stigma of being labeled a sex offender impact how the parties view other parts of a defendant\u2019s potential punishment, making bargaining in sex crimes cases fundamentally different from other crimes of violence.<\/p>\n