In an earlier post I made upthread I was going to post that they had a high recidivism rate which would justify society keeping a close eye on them even after they got out of jail.
However, after a (admittedly quick because I was at work) search it seemed that their recidivism rates were low. Indeed the lowest of any type of crime.
In the above case I am not sure what constitutes a “sex offender”. I have heard of cases where some guy peeing in an alley gets on an offender registry.
I admit I did not look very hard at all because a quick search turned up a lot of contradictory stuff. I think it is because it is such a charged issue along with difficulty in making a bright line definition.
All that said, no matter how hard I try to allow that someone did their time and paid for their crime, I admit if I had kids (I don’t) I’d be pretty freaked out to find a convicted pedophile lived in my neighborhood.
As with all human attributes, likelihood to abuse children varies between individuals. Some are serial predatory pedofiles who abuse many children over a long period; others are only tempted to act once, usually with a family member or close social contact. Abusers of male children tend to be more dangerous in acts and numbers than abusers of female children. People whose primary objects of attraction are pre pubescent children are more likely to present a continuing danger than those attracted to pubescent children. Some are remorseful and able to be rehabilitated whereas others are incorrigible. Some commit horrific body changing acts, others pinch a breast or play with a penis. Some are unable to understand the wrongness of their behaviour, some act on command voices as a symptom of severe mental illness.
One size does not fit all. Many never enter the Criminal justice system for various reasons. Those that do face sentences from community treatment to life without parole.
Someone needs to make those decisions. It is left to criminal justice and health systems to make these differentiations and act accordingly.
What we have here, as noted above, is a clash of values between Europe and the USA. The USA is demonstrably more judgemental and punitive generally than Europe. We judge fewer and lighter, incarcerate less, don’t kill our criminals,respect individual lives of criminals, stigmatise less, believe more in rehabilitation, limit free speech to avoid harm coming to individuals and groups, and many other moral choices. It is a reflection of the mores of each society.
Within Europe there is a gradation from the UK, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria on one hand who tend to act closer to the American retributional model than Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Holland where the treatment of criminals would appal most Americans. This is reflected in their incarceration rates and the quality of the estate and programs in their prisons.
Fifty years ago the UK did not believe it had a physical or sexual child abuse problem. The facts are that every society has these problems, but each society recognises it to a greater or lesser extent. Much is repressed and ignored in many cultures.
I do agree that the right wing press in the UK and USA tend to enter moral panic mode when discussing the situation, but that does not mean that we should ignore the multiple cases of child sexual abuse in all societies.
Moral relativism rears its ugly head. Some pedophiles aren’t as bad as others. I reject that.
And parents, and anyone else who ever takes care of children, including teachers, babysitters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, older siblings, even neighbors (remember, it takes a village!) have the absolute right to know that Mr. Creepy down the hall in Apt 2B is a kiddy diddler.
By the way, I think it’s cute that someone assumes that newer laws are inherently better. Like how laws against Google Street View are so modern and advanced, or how the privatization of the UK’s rail system is a rousing success because it happened fairly recently!
My biggest problem with the ruling is that I don’t see what Facebook should have done differently. Facebook didn’t create the content; the guy who made the page did, and Facebook took it down when the court ordered them to. I don’t know that I like the idea that Facebook, which is a platform and not primarily a content provider, is responsible for all the content that people post.
Newer laws are not necessarily better - that is the false Whig view of history.
But laws made in compliance with the mores of different centuries reflect the problems and advantages of their times.
In the eighteenth century slavery was normal, people were executed or beaten or otherwise corporally punished for minor transgressions and prisons were hardly invented. Women were subjugated to men. Human life was short and cheap. Human rights were much more limited than currently the case.
So far as life and liberty are concerned, modern ethics gives greater protection to all than eighteenth century ethics.
It is not necessarily case that modern means better, but it can be true that modern ethics beat older ethics because of the increase in respect for the rights of individuals.
In 1789 the US Constitution and Bill of Fights was a great advance, but few would say that it remains a better guide to political and individual rights than, say the ECHR which gives far greater protection to the individual than the Bill of Rights offers.
It is a simple principle of law. The publication by Facebook of illegal material and their refusal to remove it voluntarily invaded the privacy and transgressed the human rights of the individual. He did offer Facebook the possibility to apologise and pay £7500to a child abuse charity, but hey decided to contest the case, thus causing a landmark decision that is now part of UK law which will enable any other person in the same situation to cite the decision as the determination of the law on privacy on the internet. As they lost the judge decided that damages of £15000 were due; it is not uncommon for a judge to simply double the offer to settle when the respondent fights it through the courts as an encouragement to future respondents to accept offers. Facebook gambled and lost badly having now confirmed UK law on internet harassment.
Closer to home we are witnessing a roll back of civil rights and freedoms we used to have.
“Modern” does not equal “good” or “better”. Laws are just how society feels about things and that changes. “Modern” is a reflection of the current will of the people. No more, no less and certainly not necessarily “better”.
US laws have hardly remained unchanged since 1789, you know. There are volumes of laws and Supreme Court rulings that modify and interpret the Constitution, with more passing each year. Saying that a fundamental law that passed in 1789 is somehow less “advanced” then one passed in 1946 is utterly meaningless.
Except that the amendments to basic rights are difficult to add. In many ways US basic rights are recognisably based on eighteenth century based and are an exception to the rest of the democratic world which has a more modern sentimentality.
Right to life and maintenance of many basic human rights such as the right to vote, the right to control ones own body, privacy, family life, torture, judicial killing and many other more modern concerns are better addressed elsewhere.
Claiming that the US Constitution is the best ever settlement, however much amended and interpreted, is rather difficult to uphold against more recent settlements. That is not to say that it is worse in every way than other such guarantees.
There are several areas where I would appreciate moving toward some US rights, but more that attract me to non-US sets of rights and responsibilities.
Don’t assume. Look at my profile. I also happen to know that we have an active pedofile on MAPPA (sex offender post incarceration probation) less than a hundred yards away.
I have felt the need to take no special precautions- there could be another one even closer that I do not know about. Supporting kids and protecting them does not require geographical knowledge of the possible perpetrators.
What would you do if you knew that the man next door was a pedophile, served his time, and had kept out of trouble for the last five or ten years? How much trouble would you cause him? How far would you go to harass him? How much sand would you throw in the engine of rehabilitation?
