A NYT editorial. Excerpt:
Far from protecting children and communities, the California court found, blanket restrictions in fact create a greater safety risk by driving more sex offenders into homelessness, which makes them both harder to monitor and less likely to get essential rehabilitative services like medical treatment, psychotherapy and job assistance.
Residency laws often lead people to live apart from their families, obliterating what is for many the most stabilizing part of their lives....
[N]ot all people who have been convicted of sex offenses pose a risk to children, if they pose any risk at all. Blanket residency-restriction laws disregard that reality — and the merits of an individualized approach to risk assessment — in favor of a comforting mirage of safety.
And let me recommend this episode of the Freakonomics podcast,
"Making Sex Offenders Pay — and Pay and Pay and Pay." Transcript
here. Excerpt:
LEVITT: I think that the registry is really, if you are a sex offender, the registry is just a brutal way of making sure you can never hide. For most other crimes, you’re essentially anonymous. There’s no really easy way for people to know that you’ve done the crimes. And true, when you apply for a job, you’re supposed to say you’re a convicted felon, but nobody really does anyway, and the worst that could happen to you if you don’t say it, is that they just fire you after awhile when they find it out. But the registry is really a different kind of beast because the registry means that no matter where you go or what you’re doing, there are easy, virtually costless ways for people to find out who you are. And it’s hard to say, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, from a deterrence perspective, you think it’s got to be a good thing. That if you know ahead of time that your entire life you’re going to be labeled as a sex offender, it’s got to have some effect in terms of trying to, you know, it’s gotta have some effect in terms of keeping you from doing the crime. But-
DUBNER: Well you said, “if it’s a good deterrent, then it might be worth it, as costly as it may be to the individuals.” What do you know about how much of a deterrent it is? The registry?...
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48 comments:
Why don't we just post a Registry of the home addresses of High School Cheerleaders so the sex offenders know where to stay away from?
I am Laslo.
The "crimes" for which people have to register is a crime itself.
If people are so dangerous they can't be let out without registration and monitoring because they are at such high risk to reoffend, then they are too dangerous to let out at all.
And of course for the "sex offenders" who aren't actually dangerous, the street-pee-ers and the sexting teenagers, the lifelong registration and monitoring is not only an outrageous penalty for them but an enormous waste of resources for society.
Wouldn't it be far more humane to snip off the offending bits and pieces? They could then live in anonymity, and the recidivism rate would plummet. Best of all, that would leave more cheerleaders for Lazlo that he could report back to us about.
- Krumhorn
Like any mental disease, these people should not be free ranging. These people should be locked up in special prisons. Some may be allowed day trips to the zoo, but many will need to be in a pen with armed guards to shoot them if they try to get out.
There should also be doctors and students in there trying to perfect the lobotomy.
Putting mental patients in prison with the same rules as a burglar, is a failed system. Mental patients should not be allowed to free range and live inside the peaceful village.
I've seen a few porn videos in my time, and I don't think I'm such a prude, but a loty of that stuff (just reading the titles) is pretty sick stuff. How anyone could reach an orgasm watching that shit is beyond me, and if they do, I'm convinced they have severe social problems.
Try going to bing videos in incognito mode, and typing in "sex" and then set moderation to "off". Just look at the titles, as clicking on one is apt to screw your machine.
Theirs urination, defecation, animals, and just about anything you want to put your poor brain through. I'm sure there's even some "snuff" videos in there.
People with an infantile brain are going to become mental patients watching this shit.
Yesterday CBS had a lead article on a mother who's daughter killed herself injecting heroin. I mean, in my day, we would go in the kitchen and make a cake. What kind of dumb fuck would inject heroin, and then expect to go out amongst the village if they survive.
I'd rather have 2 Syrian migrants than 1 of those dumb fucks.
Anyone without a healthy skepticism of government's ability to respond to the hysterical demands of its constituents should consider the "sex offender" punishments carefully. While the vast majority of actual "sex offenders"--by which I mean actual predators who should not be left alone with children--have committed their crimes against people they know (often relatives), these "sex offender lists" are filling up with people guilty of stupid stuff like public streaking.
There is also the issue of punishing someone long after they've served their sentence, and this is a bit different from employers not wanting to hire any felon, because government is the one limiting where sex offenders may live.
Should we feel safer with this regime? I'm not so sure--now when I hear "sex offender" I don't know whether we're talking about an 18 year old who had consensual sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, or a dangerous child rapist--they're both tossed into the same group. And for genuine pedophiles, I'd rather we detect and find treatment for these people early rather than force them underground where they can do actual damage.
But don't worry, we have tough on crime politicians like Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner on the case who can support such laws without irony.
Holiness means a separation. That is a God concept. The sinners are unholy.
But "sex crime" as a category is too broad. It's only value is that it creates a jobs program for government jobs and wins religious voters approval.
This is not a new piece of information.
That this is useless, that this is pointless in the vast majority of cases has been known from the day these restrictions were employed.
The restrictions on where someone could be living never made any sense, but nobody wanted to take the side of the sex offenders.
Sex offenders do not find people outside of schools. And this applied to every type of sex offender, not one who modus operendi or target group was children the same age as those in a particular school. This artivle does not mention that, which is the most glaring thing wrong with this, buit uses weaker arguments.
It was willful ignorance that made this possible - and willful ignorance keeps them in place.
At some point people may get rational, although maybe the courts may be first at that.
Oh, I don't know. Years ago, when the notification came in that a guy who did time for sneaking into women's houses at night, holding pillows over their faces, and raping them had moved in a few streets over, I thought that was valuable information. Probably better not to take walks in that direction.
The only problem with the registry is that it includes a bunch of people who shouldn't be on it, like "the street-pee-ers and the sexting teenagers" Gabriel mentioned.
And I agree with this:
"If people are so dangerous they can't be let out without registration and monitoring because they are at such high risk to reoffend, then they are too dangerous to let out at all."
I thought part of the point of the registry was to be a permanent punishment because we know that we don't lock up these people long enough. That would be worth fixing.
LEVITT: I think that the registry is really, if you are a sex offender, the registry is just a brutal way of making sure you can never hide
That's talking about the registry, not the restrictions on where someone can live. A
A court said the restrictions on living are actually the opposite. It means they must necessarily hide. Or constantly move around.
And what is the use of a "sex offender" registry that lumps all kinds of "sex offenders" together? You need the details of the crime. The restrictions on living were probably added because names mean nothing if you are not in posiiton to know someone's name.
"If people are so dangerous they can't be let out without registration and monitoring because they are at such high risk to reoffend, then they are too dangerous to let out at all."
California has banned castration, even voluntary, and this is what is left. There is pretty good evidence that castration is effective in most male offenders. The problem with research is that the data is lousy.
Pedophilia was not singled out.
A lot of it is contaminated with things like incest and exibitionism,
Just make 'em use a bumper sticker:
http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/bdsticker6sexoffender.php
Coupe said... 9/8/15, 10:05 AM
Like any mental disease, these people should not be free ranging. These people should be locked up in special prisons.
There are [--people--] men who need to have their sex drive cancelled, and there actually are probably ways of doing that without too many side effects. If imprisoned, it should be the mildest kind of thing. Maybe a special island, with good services and communications, but not an institution. Usually the sex drive is not so overwhelming, but it responds to opportunity.
Nothing reasonable is ever done. It's always the same old, same old.
In the 50s, sex offenders must have been all over the place, yet nobody noticed them, when I was a kid.
That was before it was a public problem.
Pedophiles should be made to live in Florida retirement villages or volunteer on the Hillary campaign. In such places they will not be subject to the temptation of being around young people.
This whole issue is actually much worse than Ann Althouse, Steven Dubner and the New York Times editorial staff might think.
Thanks to the Obama Administration's political strategists and their functionaries in the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, we are now developing a cadre of "sex offenders" whose status was not determined under any rule of law (or at least no recognized rule of criminal procedure) but rather by ill-defined university disciplinary panels, in many cases without a right to counsel or any right to confront witnesses.
Don't think that persons so disciplined by institutions of higher education escape "sex offender registry" sorts if stigma. The University of Michigan disciplined a football player -- expelled him from the University -- years after his case was investigated by the police and no charges were referred. The complainant refused to cooperate with police; the football player agreed to be interviewed without counsel and told police in a recorded interview that he'd submit to a polygraph. And yet three years later, because of the Obama Administration's "sexual assault on campus" political obsession, leading to a change in investigative standards dictated by the Ed Department's OCR, the player was belatedly hauled before a panel and expelled.
The letter to the player (with copies to interested parties) was then leaked to the press. A leak that clearly and absolutely violated the football player's FERPA rights. And in the leaked letter the university told the player that in any future professional contact where his degree (he had already earned hi undergraduate degree and was in a graduate program) he should disclose his expulsion and the reason therefore.
It's an Obama world; we just live in it.
We have about a million names on the sex offender registries nation-wide. That's about 0.3% of the population.
These are the untouchables of American society. The current wisdom is that sex offenders can't reform, can't repent, and mustn't be allowed loose without heavy restrictions.
As Michael K and Freeman Hunt suggest above, if they're that bad, why not lock them up? Are we too wussy to do that?
This is just another skirmish in the war on men.
I've seen a few porn videos in my time, and I don't think I'm such a prude, but a loty of that stuff (just reading the titles) is pretty sick stuff.
There's probably nothing else wrong with them except the targeting of their sex drive, so it's probably ncorrect to call them mental patients.
How anyone could reach an orgasm watching that shit is beyond me
This is no different than homosexuality (except sometimes because of the target of their sex drives) It's all the same thing. The male sex drive can get mistargeted in many different ways. I certainly do not believe that anybody was born that way, although I do believe that they often cannot change.
I believe it is imprinting. It's what they did near the time of puberty that caused this. Permanent, or close to permanent, changes in the brain were made.
Some of these guys were busted for doing stupid shit with their siblings and half-siblings when they were kids themselves. Things that used to be cured by sending the boy off to the military sooner rather than later.
And no it's not that easy to get your registration requirement rescinded as an adult. You can't live in public housing, you can't do this, you can't do that. So they're all concentrated in the trailer parks, you know, where poor families tend to live. So the rotten areas of town are really, really rotten now.
I don't know the answer but this is what the voters wanted..and local candidates are always seeking new hobby horses to get the vote. It's all emotion and hysteria.
Not tracking or paying close attention to sexual predators will free up resources to focus on financial contributors to conservative groups.
It's always safe to question the timing of The Times. Are prosecutors going after Lena or something?
The local township just sent word around that a climate-change-denier closed mortgage on a house half a parsec away.
There's a kid who is about to be tried as an adult (because he's old enough to be tried as an adult!) for having pictures of a naked minor--- himself!--- on his phone.
With each outrageous case like this, you think the madness is going to be cured. But no, we just keep pushing forward with these ridiculous punishments.
A man who admitted having pornography involving a fish on his phone has been given a six week suspended sentence.
I think that editorial is well-intentioned but short-sighted.
If we don't "drive tens of thousands of people to the fringes of society," then we're never going to get really nifty songs like "Aqualung."
When the SJW's try to guilt you about "homelessness," just remember that you can't get into cheap public housing if they have a record of sex offense, or bad credit, or bad rental history. Market rate housing is really expensive even here in flyover, and they them you through a credit check too. At some point it just makes more sense to live on the streets.
But, we're all supposed to DOOO something about the homeless!
Targeting of their sex drive? That's why they make tramp stamps.
I am not Laslo
Expose yourself to some ladies in the park? You're on the sex offender list forever, buddy!
Out of the Pen after 20 years for good behavior after taking a meat cleaver to your girlfriend while in a drunken rage? Be quiet & stay out of trouble, okay?
@Ferdinande,
"I thought you said he [Troy McClure] was dead."
"I didn't say that. I said he was sleepin' with the fishes."
The Simpsons, A Fish Called Selma
"Oh, I don't know. Years ago, when the notification came in that a guy who did time for sneaking into women's houses at night, holding pillows over their faces, and raping them had moved in a few streets over, I thought that was valuable information. Probably better not to take walks in that direction."
But you could agree with the editorial, which doesn't say there should be no registry and notification only that it be particularized. It would work better if things like this were singled out than if it were mixed in with every adult who once, as a teenager, had consensual sex with a too-young other teenager and every adult who was caught having sex in a public place and all those other things that may or may not be properly criminalized but could be left to fall into oblivion after the criminal sentence is served.
It would work better if things like this were singled out than if it were mixed in with every adult who once, as a teenager, had consensual sex with a too-young other teenager and every adult who was caught having sex in a public place and all those other things that may or may not be properly criminalized but could be left to fall into oblivion after the criminal sentence is served.
Agreed.
Yes Ann, it would be nice if our unlimited government used their energy in an efficient manner. But they don't. They make rules with emotion. You have spoken in favor of that so live with it.
All should be assigned to live within the city limits of Sacramento, on the capitol grounds. Problem solved. Maybe Wisconsin could send over some Solidarity Singers???
As Freeman says, the registry discloses some useful information. But it also perpetrates many injustices and thereby ruins thousands of lives.
When a sex offender is listed on the registry, that means his family's address is on the registry--his kids' address. Imagine planning playdates with your addess on the registry. It won't be only the sex offender's car listed on the registry, it will be the cars driven by his daughter, son, wife. When his garage is spray painted "PERVERT" or 'PEDOPHILE', his kids will see that. When the sex offender is killed by vigilantes, his family is put in grave danger, too.
850,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S. and yet the next arrest for a sex offense is far more likely to be of someone NOT on the registry than of a registered sex offender.
Sometimes a Tickle is Forever.
I am Laslo.
Amerikan kids will be in grave danger once they make the Pied Piper register as a sex offender.
Bob Ellison said...As Michael K and Freeman Hunt suggest above, if they're that bad, why not lock them up? Are we too wussy to do that?
The actual answer, Bob, is that having too-lengthy prison terms for these offenses would be challenged in court (as cruel-ly long, etc).
Ann Althouse said...But you could agree with the editorial, which doesn't say there should be no registry and notification only that it be particularized
The sex offender registry in my state (GA) does show the offense or offenses that got a person on the list, so you can see who's there for exposure and who is there for rape. If that was the only problem it would be easily solved.
The major paper here (AJC) did a series a while back about the problems people on the list have in finding housing and keeping jobs--state and local rules prevent them from living within X yards of schools, gyms, playgrounds, etc, and in some places that means they can't legally live anywhere within a large radius--maybe the whole city. It's a problem.
I wonder how many politicians rode to power on Meghan's Law or Three Strikes or whatever the latest copycat fad was. Gotta have a hook, ya know? something to get the voters' attention..
With all due respect, the lack of knowledge re: sexual offender registries, and sex offenses generally displayed in this thread is rather astounding.
Although each state maintains individual (and different) standards, for instance, review Florida's sexual offender registry, and you can see that generally, only violent offenders, those who offend against or in the presence of juveniles, or those who offend against those over whom they had some custodial authority, such as the elderly or the disabled. The pee'ers in the park and the like aren't on it, unless they deliberately chose to do so in the presence of children, in which case they weren't just answering the call of nature, were they? Certainly, there will be an occasional person who probably shouldn't be listed, but they got on the registry by violating the law. And the vast majority of those on the list are there because they are sexual predators.
"...committed their crimes against people they know (often relatives)"
True sexual predators spent most of their waking hours looking for and planning for potential victims. They deliberately create situations that place them in familial or friendly positions to their victim demographic. So, to say that they know their victims...that's how they planned it. It's not an accident. You've got this backwards. They don't offend against people they know. They get to know people they want to offend against, because it gives them easier access.
"Sex offenders do not find people outside of schools" (meaning in close proximity to schools)
In fact, they do. They look in schools, playgrounds, scout groups, little league, martial arts and anywhere children congregate. Cops will tell you that they will find sexual predators lurking around schools and playgrounds, using the most devious of scams to hide and/or disguise their interest and presence. But they're around. They can't help themselves.
Calling an 18 year old who slept with his 16 year old girlfriend a sex offender is not legitimate. I think any reasonable person can see that. The 18 year old is guilty of something, because he broke the law. But decrying about sex offender registries on the 18 year old's account? Sorry. The registries provide a valuable service. Find a way to remove the lesser crimes from the registry, sure. But leave the serial criminals right where they are.
"...committed their crimes against people they know (often relatives)"
True sexual predators spent most of their waking hours looking for and planning for potential victims.
Are they all "true sexual predators?" Isn't that a very distinct minority?
They deliberately create situations that place them in familial or friendly positions to their victim demographic. So, to say that they know their victims...that's how they planned it. It's not an accident.
But still, they know them for a long time. You are talking about the Jerry Sandusky type. They don't find them by lurking around schools. They have jobs there. Now, background checks could avoid that. This has nothing to do with living near a school. The whole idea there is that there will be an incidental encounter.
"Sex offenders do not find people outside of schools" (meaning in close proximity to schools)
In fact, they do. They look in schools, playgrounds, scout groups, little league, martial arts and anywhere children congregate. Cops will tell you that they will find sexual predators lurking around schools and playgrounds, using the most devious of scams to hide and/or disguise their interest and presence.
If they are using devious scams, they spend a lot of time there on purpose, so it is not a chance occurance, and this has nothing to do with living within 1,000 feet of a school. More important would be having a job within 1,000 feet of a school, having a social services organization there, having a drug treatment there, having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting place there, in fact any place they might regularly go to that isn't too near where they live, even having a church there or a supermarket or a gym or a laundromat.
Unless you think most people rarely travel further than 1,000 feet from their place of residence.
Bob Ellison said...As Michael K and Freeman Hunt suggest above, if they're that bad, why not lock them up? Are we too wussy to do that?
HoodlumDoodlum said...The actual answer, Bob, is that having too-lengthy prison terms for these offenses would be challenged in court (as cruel-ly long, etc).
That's not true.
The problem is ex-post facto laws. Also, that's it is lot easier to ut some people on aregiistry or include more offenses, without nbothering to analyze them, than it is to actually hand out a long sentence. The latter is an individual decision, the former is some general policy.
A friend of mine, on a drunken Saturday night in his early twenties, went for a nude bike ride around the block as a dare.
Everyone thought it was a laugh. Even the cops who turned up and took him down to the station had a bit of a chuckle. He got a small fine and that was the end of the matter. Except that.... yep.... he and his mate (who also did it) were both put on sex offender lists.
About twenty five years later, when he had completely forgotten about it, it caused problems.
@ Sammy -
Ex post facto laws generally refer to conduct which was legal at the time it was committed being judged illegal at a later time. Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional in this country. No such thing is happening to convicted sex offenders. As convicted felons, they, like all convicted felons, face restrictions on their liberty, like losing the right to own firearms, the right to vote, etc. Because their specific criminal conduct means they may be likely to reoffend, they face specific restrictions on their liberties unique to sex offenders.
Don't like it? Don't get convicted of certain specific felony sex offenses.
Can the system be improved? Yes. Is the present system protective of potential victims? Again, yes.
"A 16-year-old girl, was charged with two felony sex crimes…against herself. Her crime? Taking a nude selfie of herself for her boyfriend... the warrant listed Brianna Denson as both the perpetrator and the minor victim in two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor."
Yet, the age of consent in North Carolina is 16, so her boyfriend could see her naked in person, but not in photograph. She and her boyfriend could legally engage in just about every consensual activity their thoughts allowed EXCEPT to send each other nude selfies.
BTW, one commentator said "Just wait until they catch her masturbating and charge her with child molestation."
Another point is that if she is a minor and a victim of sexual exploitation, shouldn't her name have been kept private?
This is yet another case of; to protect teens, we must destroy them.
No such thing is happening to convicted sex offenders. As convicted felons, they, like all convicted felons, face restrictions on their liberty, like losing the right to own firearms, the right to vote, etc. Because their specific criminal conduct means they may be likely to reoffend, they face specific restrictions on their liberties unique to sex offenders.
Don't like it? Don't get convicted of certain specific felony sex offenses.
In some states, people who committed sex offenses decades before registry laws are now required to register. That is ex post facto. So, yes, that DOES happen to convicted sex offenders.
Sex offenders, as a group, have a reoffense rate around 5%, and some specific offenses have an even lower rate. Felons as a whole have a reoffense rate of 65%.
The facile advice not to commit specific felony sex offenses can be difficult to follow when there are over 200 "crimes" in the US that will land you on the registry, depending on jurisdiction.
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