Author Topic: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread  (Read 22250 times)

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Offline chitoryu12

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #75 on: March 25, 2013, 07:40:52 pm »
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Colorado's tough sex offender laws are supposed to keep predators under tight supervision.

But a series of lawsuits claim that the system is violating even minor offenders' rights to free speech and association, prohibiting contact with family members -- and, in one particularly bizarre case, telling a 62-year-old man that a discussion with a stepdaughter about her pregnancy constitutes unlawful "third party contact with a child."

http://congress-courts-legislation.blogspot.com/2013/03/civil-rights-lawsuits-attack-excesses.html

Can anyone here who supports such "one size fits all" approaches to sex offenses tell me what purpose is served by forcing a woman to remove all pictures of her grandchildren from her house when her husband is convicted of an offense that doesn't involve children? Of calling discussing an adult's pregnancy "unlawful third-party contact with a child"?

For that matter, can anyone here tell me what purpose is served by treating all sex offenders as if they were violent serial pedophiles?

It makes the politicians look as if they're doing something about those few who are violent serial pedophiles.

People need to remember that laws aren't necessarily passed and written for maximum efficacy. We're a very reactionary people, rather than preventive. It's why laws discussed after something violent or otherwise bad occurs are always in the "What do we ban?" or "How much more do we punish?", rather than "How do we keep this from happening in the first place?"

The problem is that something that isn't reactionary doesn't look like it's doing anything. People can always see measures taken after a crime occurs, like demands to ban particular firearms or firearm accessories or new restrictions on sex offenders. Things like better mental health systems and better education don't have visible effects, sometimes for years after they're implemented. It makes it look like nothing is being done.
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Offline Rabbit of Caerbannog

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #76 on: March 25, 2013, 09:12:16 pm »
Though everyone remember to wrap a bandana around your face, we're jacking this thread!
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Offline Scotsgit

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #77 on: March 25, 2013, 09:47:53 pm »
Hard one this for me, I've worked with prisoners in the past.  Some have been genuinely remorseful (one refused early release because he said he should serve his time), others have delighted in their crimes.  Now, it has to be said that these weren't sex offenders (the ones I worked with were lifers), but I have to wonder if the attitude was the same amongst all criminals.

Take the Moors Murderers:  Here we have two people who, had they been convicted a few months earlier, would have done the hemp fandango.  As it is, both were sentenced to life imprisonment.  And both have continued to play mind games with both the public and the families of their victims, Myra Hindely was notorious for this and would play on the naivete of people like Lord Longford (who supported her release) and who she could dance rings around claim that she was reformed and it was the nasty Government keeping her locked up, why weren't Amnesty coming to support her....  And Longford believed all her claptrap.  He was even siding with her when she said that she would give up the location of the last two graves if she was given early release.  Which doesn't sound that reformed to me.  Her boyfriend, Brady, has been on Hunger Strike for about ten years, claiming he wants to have the right to die, thus making sure he gets the limelight of publicity shone upon him.  Both he and Hindley were acutely aware how much distress it caused the families of their victims each time they did something to end up in the papers.  As I said at the beginning, a few months earlier and they would both have hung and I can't say the world would have missed them.

But, of course, what if someone does reform?  What if, when they get out, they want to make amends for their crimes?  If we execute them, then this chance is taken away from them.

I can't answer it, I'd say that putting someone on a sex offenders register for life should help, but that each person put on it should have their convictions looked at to see if it actually warrants it, which to me at least, pissing in a back alley doesn't!
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Offline R. U. Sirius

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #78 on: January 21, 2014, 10:59:04 am »
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“If it saves one child….” Even though we cannot know if “it” has, that statement is responsible for the abuse and even death of many children.

There is no actual evidence that the registry has saved even one child; however, we do know that many, many thousands have had their lives made a living hell because of it. These are the children of those on the registry, some of whom committed violent crimes, but many, even most, who did not. All on the registry, with their families, are subject to the whims of local and state restrictions including, but by no means limited to, severe restrictions on where they may live; denial of access to libraries, parks and beaches with their children; and restrictions barring the registered parent from often even being within a 1000 feet of the school his child attends. Very recently a woman took the picture of a registrant that she printed from the Internet to the school where the registrant’s five-year-old son was a kindergarten student; she showed it around, warning children about this man. His little boy stood and cried. The registry doesn’t differentiate. It doesn’t make it clear to people who threaten, harass, and do physical violence to registrants, their property, and their families whether daddy raped someone or whether he had sex with mommy before they were married when she was a year too young or whether he looked at an illegal image on a computer or whether he was innocent and falsely accused. And, sadly, most don’t really care. The perception is that everyone on the registry has committed a serious crime and that most if not all offended against children. And if they have children of their own who are harmed, as so many have been and so many more will be, it is just collateral damage because the registry might—MIGHT—save one child.

“If it saves one child….” Children themselves are registrants on sex offender registries. Nine years old is apparently the youngest at which children have been put on the registry (Delaware; Michigan). (1) Several states, including but not limited to Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, and Texas, register children as sexual criminals at ages ten and eleven. By the time twelve is reached, it isn’t even a rarity. And the fifteen year old who is the child victim for having consensual sex with an eighteen year old partner becomes a predator and registered sex offender when his or her partner is fourteen. In Wisconsin last year a district attorney did everything he could, and bragged about it, to have a six year old prosecuted and targeted for sex offender registration for “playing doctor.”(2) Three year olds caught looking at and touching each other in a daycare bathroom were reported and investigated for “sexual fondling.”(3) Some of these children, after several years of being on the registry and treated as monsters, have committed suicide. The registry didn’t save any of these children; it destroyed them.

http://www.corrections.com/news/article/30787-if-it-saves-one-child

This is a thread necro, but I felt this article would be better placed here than starting another topic.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am on the sex offender registry. My crime was online viewing of child pornography, and I'm not going to try to defend or justify what I did. I was so desperate to feel anything other than anger and depression that I did a terrible thing; that's not a defense, that's just context. I am not a monster.

As I stated in the past, I would have no problem with the registry if access were limited to law enforcement-if a new crime is committed, it makes sense for them to look at people they know have committed similar crimes first. But the public registry serves as an almost insurmountable barrier to successful reintegration into society. I've been turned down for jobs that have nothing to do with children or computers because of my crime. I've been fired when employers who hadn't asked any questions about my criminal history at the job interview found out, and I count myself EXTREMELY lucky that my current employer didn't do the same. I just recently finished fighting false criminal charges that were predicated SOLELY on my registry status; every piece of forensic evidence supported my defense, and the prosecution even went so far as to tamper with and destroy some of it because of that, trying to push forward on the accusation of a single "witness". If it weren't for my past or if it were any other crime, the charges would have been dropped long ago or not pursued at all.

The public registry falls under cruel and unusual punishment by any reasonable definition, driven by fear, myths and media hype. The definition of what constitutes a sex crime has become so broad as to be useless, and even those who have committed actual crimes are given little opportunity to show that they have changed and get off it. It brands them a danger to the community for years or decades after they've been rehabilitated, and the fact that there are sites which post information on sex offenders even after they get off the registry means that many are still haunted by it long after they actually manage to get off. Legislators constantly extend the time a person is required to register because it's an easy way to score political points, and they get around ex post facto laws by claiming it's not a punishment.

The children and families in the article above would beg to differ.

http://www.corrections.com/news/article/24500-facts-and-fiction-about-sex-offenders
« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 11:05:22 am by R. U. Sirius »
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Offline gyeonghwa

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #79 on: January 21, 2014, 12:02:35 pm »
Hella necro.
That may be the single gayest thing I have ever read on this board. Or the old one. ;)

Offline mellenORL

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #80 on: January 21, 2014, 08:02:52 pm »
I started reading the comments in the first linked blog post cited by Sirius....holy whargarble! This one commenter is - I dunno what he is. He's all over the map on the fundie meter.

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Offline JohnE

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #81 on: January 21, 2014, 08:17:41 pm »
That was an entertaining read, though I can see a somewhat cogent point burried under the whargarble. i.e. Teenagers aren't the same thing as children, and maybe we ought to be giving them more legal autonomy and responsibility than children to help the transition to adulthood, rather than just saying, "18th birthday? You're an adult now. Deal with it."

On the other hand, it sounds like the poster was caught banging a 14 year old and is just bitter about it.

Offline Cerim Treascair

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Re: Sex Offender Registries and Further Punishment: The Thread
« Reply #82 on: January 22, 2014, 02:37:17 am »
I'll poke my head in here (and probably get my beak lopped off for it)

... I was put on the sex offender registry at 13 years old.  I did something I will regret for the rest of my life.  I won't go into details.  That being said, when you're raised that 'sex is bad' and your mother is a fundie Christian, and she's the first one to make sure the courts put me ON that registry (again, at 13 years old... I hadn't even had sex ed yet, that didn't come until my sophomore year in high school), and then I couldn't find work until I was 18 because of being on that registry... I had to get my record sealed by the court in order to have a hope in hell of ever making a living.

So... yeah.  The thing is incredibly terrible.  There's better ways to do things than this.
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