People repeat this anecdote all the time, but I'd challenge you to find a single person who has ever been put on the sex offender registry for nothing more than public urination. (Let alone being charged with sexual assault, which is nonsensical -- look up how that crime is defined in US law.)
[] e.g., he was driving across country and stopped for a couple of days at a friend's house in Illinois. He was in a traffic stop and while talking to the cop, the cop realized he'd been in Illinois for over 72 hours and was given another prison sentence for failing to register.
Cases this small probably don't get articles written about them often. That's why we have the phrase "falling through the cracks"
As someone whose main knowledge of the US prison system is only from TV and not from first person (thankfully), I think I don't understand what "solitary" is. I thought the whole point of it was that the detained person didn't have contact with others?