“Common sense” is frequently synonymous with “my personal prejudices.”
Pjen, do you start these kinds of threads for the sole purpose of clubbing Americans over the head with them?
Neither. It is to discuss the conundrums surrounding the subjects of treatment of people guilty of sex crimes and discord on privacy rights between different jurisdictions.
When did you stop beating your wife…
So you’re unwilling to defend British privacy laws? Interesting.
The rule with some people seems to be that any comparison of ethical responses in different countries is only acceptable if discussed in terms of the overall correctness of the American system, despite the US being regularly an outlier among modern democracies.
You really must stop making posts that beg the question by assuming an incorrect answer.
I am interested in the conflict between different jurisdictions. In some I tend to the US system (libel and the free press) and in others I tend towards the European (privacy and protection from harassment.)
Neither system is perfect but we can learn from the differences.
So, yes?
Table 34 notes that the percentage of people rearrested for sexual crime on a child within 3 years of release is 2.2%. That’s from 1994. There is a caution that they may be undercounted but confident its under 5%. I’ll let you look up anything further.
So, no.
What I would like to know are:
- Direct answers to my questions, and
- A link to where you got that dubious statistic.
Would you mind quoting the part that supports what you claim?
Page 20 in the PDF, which is labeled as page 12 in the document, contains the data in a easy-to-read chart as well.
I would not be surprised if there is a higher recidivism in a 20 year span but to nitpick some: that study covered 1960-84. I would like to think treatment and/or surveillance options have improved since 1960.
When it comes to pedophiles, forever would be long enough as far as I’m concerned.
In an earlier post I alluded to a study I remembered from college(early 90s) which found convicted sex offenders actually had lower recidivism rates than people convicted of armed robbery, assault, and a whole pile of other violent offenses which don’t require registration.
For that matter, even convicted murderers don’t have to register with some government agency once they’ve served their sentence.
If a given sex offender is judged not to be safe to return to society, then the solution is to keep them in prison. Not release them into society anyway and then let any potential landlord, neighbor, employer, love interest, or friend ensure they can never live a normal life, get a decent job, decent housing, and so on, so that they are driven underground where they no longer have the least incentive to even try to live by society’s rules. If the real goal is to keep children safe from predators, then denying sex offenders who have already served their time the opportunity to build even the semblance of a normal life is counterproductive. If the real goal is revenge against the predators, then just keep them in prison. But taking sex offenders who have served their time and subjecting them to a lifetime of vigilantism doesn’t help anybody.
This is an ironic choice since convicted murderers don’t have to register so you have no way of knowing if they are or aren’t living near you.
Is this meant to justify using “pedophile” in place of “child molester” or “child sex offender”, or…? Certainly, our knowledge of the subject is imperfect and evolving, but it’s not as though we know nothing.
:smack: Pedophilia isn’t a crime.
Well if you really look into this you see that it can be broken down into different types of assaults to determine chances of recidivism. The age of the victim, whether it was a family member, etc. That study D’Anconia linked I believe focused on non-family molestation which is one of the higher risk categories.