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Chinadaily BBS - United States - Sex Offender Hysteria In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender list
Sex Offender Hysteria In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender list
Sex Offender Hysteria In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming.
America's unjust sex laws
Aug 6th 2009
From The Economist
An ever harsher approach is doing more harm than good, but it is being copied around the world
IT IS an oft-told story, but it does not get any less horrific on repetition.
Fifteen years ago, a paedophile enticed seven-year-old Megan Kanka into his home in New Jersey by offering to show her a puppy.
He then raped her, killed her and dumped her body in a nearby park.
The murderer, who had recently moved into the house across the street from his victim, had twice before been convicted of sexually assaulting a child.
Yet Megan’s parents had no idea of this.
Had they known he was a sex offender, they would have told their daughter to stay away from him.
In their grief, the parents started a petition, demanding that families should be told if a sexual predator moves nearby.
Hundreds of thousands signed it.
In no time at all, lawmakers in New Jersey granted their wish.
And before long, “Megan’s laws” had spread to every American state.
America’s sex-offender laws are the strictest of any rich democracy.
Convicted rapists and child-molesters are given long prison sentences.
When released, they are put on sex-offender registries.
In most states this means that their names, photographs and addresses are published online, so that fearful parents can check whether a child-molester lives nearby.
Under the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, another law named after a murdered child, all states will soon be obliged to make their sex-offender registries public.
Such rules are extremely popular.
Most parents will support any law that promises to keep their children safe.
Other countries are following America’s example, either importing Megan’s laws or increasing penalties: after two little girls were murdered by a school caretaker, Britain has imposed multiple conditions on who can visit schools.
Which makes it all the more important to ask whether America’s approach is the right one.
In fact its sex-offender laws have grown self-defeatingly harsh (see article).
They have been driven by a ratchet effect.
Individual American politicians have great latitude to propose new laws.
Stricter curbs on paedophiles win votes.
And to sound severe, such curbs must be stronger than the laws in place, which in turn were proposed by politicians who wished to appear tough themselves.
Few politicians dare to vote against such laws, because if they do, the attack ads practically write themselves.
A whole Wyoming of offenders
In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming.
The number keeps growing partly because in several states registration is for life and partly because registries are not confined to the sort of murderer who ensnared Megan Kanka.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure.
Some prosecutors are now stretching the definition of “distributing child pornography” to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends.
How dangerous are the people on the registries?
A state review of one sample in Georgia found that two-thirds of them posed little risk.
For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being “party to the crime of child molestation” because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend.
The young couple later married.
But Ms Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender.
Several other countries have sex-offender registries, but these are typically held by the police and are hard to view.
In America it takes only seconds to find out about a sex offender: some states have a “click to print” icon on their websites so that concerned citizens can put up posters with the offender’s mugshot on trees near his home.
Small wonder most sex offenders report being harassed.
A few have been murdered.
Many are fired because someone at work has Googled them.
Registration is often just the start.
Sometimes sex offenders are barred from living near places where children congregate.
In Georgia no sex offender may live or work within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of a school, church, park, skating rink or swimming pool.
In Miami an exclusion zone of 2,500 feet has helped create a camp of homeless offenders under a bridge.
Make the punishment fit the crime
There are three main arguments for reform.
First, it is unfair to impose harsh penalties for small offences.
Perhaps a third of American teenagers have sex before they are legally allowed to, and a staggering number have shared revealing photographs with each other.
This is unwise, but hardly a reason for the law to ruin their lives.
Second, America’s sex laws often punish not only the offender, but also his family.
If a man who once slept with his 15-year-old girlfriend is barred for ever from taking his own children to a playground, those children suffer.
Third, harsh laws often do little to protect the innocent.
The police complain that having so many petty sex offenders on registries makes it hard to keep track of the truly dangerous ones.
Cash that might be spent on treating sex offenders—which sometimes works—is spent on huge indiscriminate registries.
Public registers drive serious offenders underground, which makes them harder to track and more likely to reoffend.
And registers give parents a false sense of security: most sex offenders are never even reported, let alone convicted.
It would not be hard to redesign America’s sex laws.
Instead of lumping all sex offenders together on the same list for life, states should assess each person individually and include only real threats.
Instead of posting everything on the internet, names could be held by the police, who would share them only with those, such as a school, who need to know.
Laws that bar sex offenders from living in so many places should be repealed, because there is no evidence that they protect anyone: a predator can always travel.
The money that a repeal saves could help pay for monitoring compulsive molesters more intrusively—through ankle bracelets and the like.
In America it may take years to unpick this.
However practical and just the case for reform, it must overcome political cowardice, the tabloid media and parents’ understandable fears.
Other countries, though, have no excuse for committing the same error.
Sensible sex laws are better than vengeful ones.
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And Now for something Completly differant!
Quote: : at 2009-8-17 02:33
Anglos are plain sick!
A message from the
"Outer limits"
Que theme music
do do do do
do do do do
[ Last edited by Aussie Aussie A at 2009-8-17 09:39 AM ]
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So 2% of Americans are on the list.
You know in America you can actually search for how many people on the list live nearby.
I am sure sexual predators don't live in China, and I am glad to know that.
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Mechanic and bubba would be tossed in prison if they openly spouted such racist insanity in our country
and then they will find where we put all the perverts as they would be locked-up with all those nasty people we don't tolerate in our bation nor amng our people!
You see, boys, we have laws, not religious thuggery as you preach (while your leaders have their vile little vices and practices including your Propagation Minister, no doubt an abusive masher of any and all he can beat and push around, sorta like the ugliness that eats at your souls and makes you such an ugly physical specimen!
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The problem that is being pointed out very wisely here is that there is not a differentiating label between a grown man who has raped 7 seven year old girl and a younger couple who has had consented sex a few years before they were legally allowed.
Imagined that you and your girlfriend have had sex when teenagers (as i imagine many of you have) and are caught of doing it by anyone mentally unbalanced enough to report it to the authorities.
That law would publically classify you and your girlfriend as equally dangerous as a kid rapist.
You would both appear on an state sponsored internet site as sexual predators, for all your family, neighbours and friends to see, and it would not be clearified in any way what you have done.
That law reaches such an absurd level of madness.
It's unbelievable.
It actually protects sexual predators at it mingles them with regular people making you unable to know if the person that lives next door and is classified as a predator is indeed one or just one unfortunate girl or guy that as a teenager was intimiated with his/her couple.
[ Last edited by Aleh1811 at 2009-8-17 08:23 AM ]
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Quote: : at 2009-8-14 07:02
Sex Offender Hysteria In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming.
America's unjust sex laws
Aug 6th 2009
From The Ec ...
There are a lot of people on the list whose crimes does not fit your typical sex offender.
For instance in my state, if a 20 year old has sex with his 16 year girlfriend, that is rape and will get you on the sex offender list.
Now 20 year olds should not have sex with 16 year olds, but it is not the same crime as beating and raping a women in an alley or moIesting 7 year olds, but they all get the same label sex offender.
Exposing yourself in public is also a sex offender, certainly wrong but the crime is not the same.
My university caught a homeless guy masturb@ting on a park bench, he was labeled a sex offender.
I dont mean to condone his actions, but should he face the same label as some father who has sex with his 8 year old?
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Quote: : at 2009-8-16 21:05
There are a lot of people on the list whose crimes does not fit your typical sex offender.
For instance in my state, if a 20 year old has sex with his 16 year girlfriend, that is rape and will ...
Don't forget that some states label "streakers" or someone caught "mooning" sex offenders as well, even teenagers doing it .
I'm no fan of seeing someone's butt sticking out a window, but they hardly deserve to be on a sex offenders list for hijinks.
(A severe talking to, but not a lifetime of punishment.)
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Quote: : at 2009-8-17 09:16
The problem that is being pointed out very wisely here is that there is not a differentiating label between a grown man who has raped 7 seven year old girl and a younger couple who has had consente ...
"unbalanced enough to report it to the authorities".
Indeed, you do have problems, serious one on top of it.
Common sense and joy is gone unfortunately it does seem it's lost for good
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Quote: : at 2009-8-17 08:16
Imagined that you and your girlfriend have had sex when teenagers (as i imagine many of you have) and are caught of doing it by anyone mentally unbalanced enough to report it to the authorities.
If you're talking about the West, you're probably right.
People treat you like a freak if you're still a virgin at ...
18?
If you're talking about the East, you're probably wrong.
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Quote: : at 2009-8-17 13:36
Don't forget that some states label "streakers" or someone caught "mooning" sex offenders as well, even teenagers doing it .
I'm no fan of seeing someone's butt sticking ...
Yeah its sick.
Like the 3 million people that are in Jail, many for crimes such as smoking pot.
Is it wrong, yes, should it be punished yes, but put in Jail as hardened criminals, no.
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Quote: : at 2009-8-17 17:42
Yeah its sick.
Like the 3 million people that are in Jail, many for crimes such as smoking pot.
Is it wrong, yes, should it be punished yes, but put in Jail as hardened criminals, no.
Sick indeed, so sick that I'm sick of mentioning it.
Poor people over there, that's all I can say.
It's your game isn't it.
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