But don’t get caught thinking too much about the children, people will start getting suspicious as to why does someone think of children so much anyway.
The extension of the registry reporting laws to include nonpredatory cases is just classic “mission creep” and pandering to the public by being seen as “doing something” that’s “tough on crime”. If the registry is to exist, it should be tightened and narrowed. And yes, the really disturbed individuals should get more extended supervision.
I work with a former prison guard and they can tell pretty easy who is still likely to re-offend. For example this one sex offender who always kept asking questions about his daughter.
Children should definitely not be on the sex offender registry.
Seriously, abolish the registry. It does very little good and enormous harm.
If I HAD to act within the constraints of the OP, I would confine the list to convicted repeat offenders who are serial rapists and serial child molesters. No one else.
If we have to keep it…
I would require that communities publish definitive lists of all of the locations that sex offenders have to live away from. Each entry would have to be supported by evidence showing that an extraordinary number of children actually use the facility, and a minimum amount of the area’s housing stock would have to remain outside of the exclusion zones. The list would be frozen for a particular offender at the time he or she moves in. No more fake “parks” to drive offenders out of an entire city.
I’m afraid I cannot abide by the constraints of the OP. I don’t believe in registries for sex offenders or anybody else. I believe that once you serve your sentence, you’re square with the house and putting the scarlet letter on you makes it more difficult to become rehabilitated.
One thing that I would definitely do is educate the public better about it, so there wasn’t so much misinformation about what does and what doesn’t constitute an eligible offense for this sort of thing. There are certainly reasonable objections to the whole idea, but I don’t think it helps that lots of people are afraid that they will be literally placed on a list of perverts for life if they pee on a wall somewhere.
But in terms of reform, one thing that really grates at me is the notion of a pathologically violent sexual predator. The diagnostic criteria are so recursive as to be almost useless: if you commit a sexual assault (which you’re going to be punished for in the ordinary course of criminal procedure, in the manner in which the legislature decided people who commit those crimes should be punished), you get this evaluation that determines whether you’re a sexually violent predator. But one of the key diagnostic criteria that they’ll use in making that determination, when you boil it right down, will be that you committed the sexual assault! Not always directly, but more or less, i.e. they’ll say: well does he have any personality disorders, well, yes, I think so, he exhibits antisocial behavior such as raping people; OK, well, is there a likelihood of reoffense, yes, I think so, because this person has a personality disorder that causes him to offend, which you can see from the fact that he has offended.
It seems too draconian, I guess, to say that every person convicted of any of these crimes has, basically, a rapist disease, but it doesn’t seem too draconian to say that every person who is convicted of one of these crimes will be assessed to see if they have the rapist disease, and because by definition they’ve already committed the crime, they’re all going to be found to have it. I’d either get rid of the whole notion of the system depending on pathology, or I’d rewrite it all to rely on some harder science.
The restrictions in the OP are a challenge, as most posters would do away with the registry. I suspect that would be very difficult for politicians to pull off. Is there any politically feasible solution other than the status quo?
Just keep them in jail until you’re ready to let them out and live like normal people again. If you can’t trust them within 500 feet of a school, they need to stay in jail.
So yeah. Get rid of the registry. And that IS reasonable. And “replace” it with… more jail, if they deserve it. Or nothing if they don’t.
In which case, those people should probably be kept behind bars, if they can’t manage to control themselves.
(Personally, I wouldn’t mind an “animal abuser” registry, to keep certain people from owning pets. But that’s another thread.)
Maybe it would be politically feasible to institute a graded system where the offender is placed into a category based on risk. Romeo-and Juliet-types are low risk, register only for their term of probation, and don’t have any restrictions on where they can live or go. Full-on predators, the guys you have to worry about snatching kids from playgrounds, have lifetime registration, lifetime GPS monitoring, the state notifies their neighbors by registered mail, etc… or whatever. The rest of the people fall somewhere in between.
Still maybe overkill, but it could probably fly politically, especially if the politicians give themselves cover by increasing the restrictions on the most serious offenders (who should be in prison anyway, but often aren’t, for various reasons.) That way they could still sell it as “tough on crime.”
I’m generally of the opinion that the registry has little to no value. As others have pointed out, there are plenty of examples of people on the list that get a permanent social stigma for a relatively minor infraction. If I have a registered sex offender in my neighborhood, that sounds really bad, but just based on that, I don’t know if he was a 18yo high school senior having sex with his 15yo sophmore girlfriend or a guy who was caught picking up neighborhood kids and doing his dirty deeds to them. If it’s the former, why should his life be ruined and why should I care. If it’s the latter, and he’s still a potential danger, how does a registry do anything to protect anyone from him?
Really, when we get down to it, a registry is just one more sort of punishment that we can put on people on top of jail time and fines and so, in much the same way how many will complain that some relatively minor crimes get harsh sentences, like drug possession, it seems to me that this sort of thing for a relatively minor thing could be the same.
So, yes, I would be generally in favor of getting rid of it and reevaluating the sentencing and rehabilitation involved with all of the crimes on the list. We don’t just throw a murderer in jail for 5 years then put him on a violent crime registry, he’s in jail for an amount of time that society deems is some combination of a reasonable punishment, deterent, protection of society, and rehabilitation. Why are sex crimes treated differently than other crimes?
For example, I used to work with someone who was convicted of sex crimes, distributing child porn and soliciting a minor online, among other things. He got, I think about 9 months in jail and put on the sex offenders registry. But if he had done similar things of non-sexual crimes, like distributing controlled substances and making violent threats or stalking or the like, he’d have gone to jail a whole lot longer.
And, really, what does the list even do to protect anyone? How does being on the list and scaring your neighbors and theoretically banning them from certain areas keep them from just doing something bad in another area or just doing those things anyway?
Instead, I’d rather see a lot more focus mental health evaluations, not just with sex crimes either, so we have an idea of knowing just how dangerous and/or rehabilitated people are and adjusting how we deal with their crimes.
The sex offender registry began because a girl named Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by a neighbor who already had two convictions for child molestation. The man’s name is Jesse Timmendequas, and he is now serving life without parole. He lured the girl into his house by promising to show her a puppy.
The theory goes that if her parents had known there was a sex offender on the block, they could have specifically warned their daughter away from him-- but one presumes they’d had the “Don’t talk to strangers, even if they have candy or puppies,” talk with her (she was 7), and it didn’t work.
The fact is, that the state repeatedly dropped the ball with Jesse Timmendequas. He had probation and psych treatment programs in lieu of high security prisons, and in spite of reports from supervising therapists that he was not complying with treatment, people stamped his releases. One therapist predicted that he would continue to reoffend, and didn’t think he should be released-- she didn’t predict he would commit murder, but there’s a possibility that the girl was seriously wounded accidentally, and that she was killed quickly when Timmendequas thought she might die anyway, or that he might be charged with attempted murder. At any rate, the murder probably wasn’t part of the “thrill,” but just silencing a witness.
In other words, a sex offender registry probably would not have prevented this. Even if it prevented this particular little girl’s murder, it probably would not have prevented this guy from eventually reoffending. However, better supervision and follow-through in revoking probation, etc., earlier in this guy’s career would almost certainly have prevented this little girl’s murder. A maximum sentence for his second offense probably would have prevented any murders, and a lot of people were prepared to say this guy was incorrigible, throw the book at him.
I’m not normally a “tough on crime” type, but when everyone who ever dealt with someone, including people dedicated to the idea of rehabilitation are saying “not this guy-- this is a bad apple,” I recognize that there are a few people like that. If we deal with those people on a case-by-case basis, we don’t need a registry.
Well since in the real world I don’t have to make choices within the constraints imposed by the OP, I’m all for getting rid of sex offender registries. However, the point that it might be politically difficult to just banish them just might be valid. However, even THEN I think the best political strategy might be to advocate for getting rid of sex offender registries, which might force legislatures to vastly limit them, in order to save them. That way, you either get rid of registries entirely or curb their abuses … a win in either case.
Which I agree with you. And I’m also saying that if you have someone who’s too dangerous to be allowed around kids, you don’t let him out of prison. You don’t let him out and then keep him on some kind of “list”.
a name should not be on the registry beyond the end of their parole or probation. Once that is complete the name should be removed even if it is only removed from public view.
Antisocial personality/orientation coupled with sexual deviance are two of the most salient predictors of sexual recidivism, but the mere existence of a conviction for a sex offense standing alone isn’t going to be enough to establish Antisocial Personality Disorder or psychopathy. An antisocial orientation arising to the level of a personality disorder has to be a severe and pervasive pattern of criminal behavior, violating the rights of others, rule breaking, callous outlook, etc. Offenders who offend against children are frequently less antisocial than many other offenders (that’s how they get to be Scoutmasters and little league coaches). When you have a pedophile who also engages in assaults, robbery, burglary, check fraud, DWI, etc. in addition to molesting children, that’s a guy you should be worrying about.
There’s actually a pretty robust body of sceintific literature studying what offender characteristics are associated with recidivism: things like a sexually deviant attraction to children, antisocial orientation, use of weapons, force or violence, having male victims, attitudes tolerant of sexual assault, offending while on supervision, persisting in offending even after punishment, etc. If you’ve got a guy who offends against a female child, gets probabion, offends against another male child while on probation, goes to prison and then offends against male and female children while on parole from prison, goes to prison again and still believes all of these children are coming on to him, that guy is significantly more dangerous than your reprehensible-but-garden-variety one time date rapist.
That’s the kicker - many advocate abolishing registries altogether, but much like ending gun violence by banning gun ownership, extremely difficult to make happen. If someone pushes legislation through banning registries, as soon as an awful crime gets committed that could have been prevented by a registry, that person’s poitical careers is tanked. I can think off the top of my head of at least one offender who could have been prevented from reoffending if someone had just consulted a registry - he beat and raped a woman, then raped a fellow inmate in jail while awaiting trial. When he got out of prison he moved next door to a daycare and frequently offered to watch the place while the owner ran errands. When he did he forced oral fellatio on several four year old girls. The registry didn’t prevent him from offending (and we can’t know about the ones that it does prevent because they don’t happen), but it could have, and when stories like that start coming to light after registries are abolished the pitchforks and torches are going to come out for the legislators that ended it.
That said, there have been several reasonable reforms offered here, some of which are taking place. More and more stories are coming to light about people who just plain don’t belong on a registry and efforts are being made to look at qualifying offenses more carefully. Alternatives to lifetime registration such as expiring ten year registration periods for lesser offenses are being implemented in some jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions are also implementing programs in which lower risk offenders can go through a “deregistration program” and apply to be removed from the list after therapy and evaluation.
The daycare owner used to go run errands and just leave some dude in charge? I don’t care if she consulted the registry and he wasn’t on it-- that’s staggeringly irresponsible of her. When you leave your child in someone’s care, and are paying them for it to boot, you have a right to expect that she won’t hand them off to a neighbor so she can run errands. Short of falling and breaking a leg, or some other emergency, the children should remain in her care and no one else’s (which is why daycares where only one adult is present are to be avoided).
No, he shouldn’t have raped a bunch of four-year-olds, but the person who left him in a position to be able to do so bears a lot of the blame.
Our society is often way too harsh on “sex offenders”; the harshness of sex offender registries is to lump them all together, as if a 19yo guy who had sex with his 16yo GF is just as dangerous as a serial rapist.
Yes, of course it was. Even had he not been a sex offender, leaving a whole daycare in the hands of an untrained and unlicensed neighbor is not only staggeringly irresponsible, it’s completely illegal even if nothing happens. Her gross negligence and illegal conduct notwithstanding, the fact that a registry could have prevented his reoffending is politically exploitable. Im not saying that’s right or wrong, that’s just politics.