I live in Michigan. And we have a unique sex offender registry law. And I am not even sure if it is typical.
The third time you get caught urinating in public, you have to register as a sex offender.
Are public urinators really a danger to little children? Plus, homeless people will usually be the ones caught committing this particular crime–and doing it the third time (the first time is at the discretion of the judge, BTW). Plus, we penalize people for not having an address, as I understand it. Again, the homeless will be the people who primarily fall into this particular dragnet.
Also, have you ever seen the website for the Michigan sex offender registry? I have. Even in the rich and middle-class suburbs, there are several sex offenders on every city block. Are there really that many sex offenders?
Anyways, I have given this some thought. And I have a simple question: Why don’t we just limit the sex offender registry to sexual assault and child molestation? NOTHING ELSE. Wouldn’t that better protect communities in Michigan?
Seems sensible enough. The primary point of such a registry is to protect the public. It doesn’t really help anyone to pedantically add all crimes of a particular type whether there’s a public safety issue there or not.
A secondary point of such a registry is as a deterrence. So if peeing on the street was a particularly heinous crime, then putting offenders on the registry is one way of deterring people from doing it. But I doubt anyone thinks it’s that serious a crime.
Of course I’m just talking about public peeing as outdoor peeing where you find a secluded spot and try to conceal yourself as you do it. Getting it out in plain sight where there are people about is a whole different matter.
I do wonder if registries might serve as a detriment even for rape and molestation. With rape and molestation, you always hear stories about families and friends covering it up or bullying the victim, laying on empathy about how the victim doesn’t want to “ruin their [the rapist’s] life.” I wonder if the presence of registries exacerbates that. Certainly most jobs will still ask you to disclose if you’ve been convicted of a felony, so there’s still branding, but I wonder if having registries deters reporting more than if there wasn’t one.
On the other hand, most rapes (not sure about molestations) are done by an incredibly small number of serial offenders, so given the fact that most people who do will do it again, having them on a registry has more of a purpose than it does for, say, murder.
That said, I agree if they exist at all they should be limited to rape, molestation, and probably violent sexual assault that’s shy of rape.
There is simply no purpose to the list if it’s going to lump together 1)those guilty of sexual assault, 2)those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, 3)those guilty of child molestation, 4)those that have just broken a flower vase, 5)those guilty of public urination, and 6)those that resemble flies from a distance.
I’m against all registries, be it the sex offender registry or the proposed animal abuse registry. We have a justice system, when you’re convicted you pay or serve your time, then you’re paid up. The offender list is just a means for others to punish you above and beyond what the legal system already did. It opens the door for vigilantes and serves to prevent people from reintegrating into society. If we absolutely have to have one (which we don’t), putting public urination into that category is crazy.
What is the point of charging a rapist with a crime if you would refuse to do anything that might prevent them raping anyone in the future, out of fear that people will refuse to subject the rapist to such countermeasures?
First of all, I would ask if there’s a reliable cite that Michigan law is as mentioned in the OP.
What would be more likely would be that the way the law is that any time you whip your unit out in public, regardless of the reason why, constitutes an indecent exposure. “Per se” offenses are defined in order to spare the state having to prove lewd intent or that someone actually felt threatened. Normally simple exposure is a misdemeanor and in most states does not put you in the registry.
That said, hell yeah, the registry should only be for dangerous conduct. Our legislatures have grown too eager to pile it on with the registry and with upgrading the degree of severity of specific acts in order to make them qualify, just as a way of showing off how Tough On Crime they are and how much they Think Of The Children.
That’s a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year, or a fine of not more than $1,000.00, or both.
Sex offender registration:
However, it’s important to point out that public urination is not against the law. The law is violated when a person knowingly make any open or indecent exposure of his or her person. In other words, a person urinating in public has some choice to make about how he positions himself. Standing against a tree peeing, so that one’s back is generally visible, is not a violation of 750.335a. The genitals must be visible.
Thank you, Bricker. So, go into the bushes or behind the shed and conceal yourself and you should be OK.
One can see OTOH how being caught waving your whang in the direction of the schoolyard more than once could be seen as a sign that you may be a risk for worse things in the future and worth keeping an eye on. I believe in having context count when making these judgments.
Trying to rationalize the way the registry is compiled and used is a challenge, as nobody wants to be the one who’s protecting the rights of perverts. Too easy an attack come the next primary.
The first clause of this sentence doesn’t imply the second clause. It may be, for example, that 70% of the rapes are caused by 10% of the rapists, and that 90% of rapists are not recidivist. Do you have a cite that most rapists will rape again?
OK, let’s say you have young children. You wouldn’t want to be advised that a serial child molester had just moved in next door? Registries, imperfect as they are, help to keep kids safer.
Well, y’know, there’s still those other things like prison. There’s a balance that needs to be struct: the punishment has to be effective in preventing future offenses, but also palatable enough that reporting is high. Crucifying all rapists in front of the courthouse would be rather effective at preventing recidivism due to that whole “they’re dead” thing, but it would probably deter reporting because it’s a tad cruel.
There are, of course, other factors that keep victims from reporting, especially victim blaming. Those need to be tackled too, but if having no registries would increase reporting, we should repeal registries. Note I said if, I don’t support repealing them because I have no evidence it would do anything. I was idly wondering if that may contribute to lower reporting rates.
Okay, I slipped up a little bit here because where I got that from was specifically about assaults among college students.
I don’t know how it is for the non-college population at large. This:
Suggests that only 27% of rapists are reconvicted, and only 24% of those who committed non-rape sexual assault are reconvicted. This analysis of that BoJS release also brings up the point that convicted rapists tend to serve longer sentences and thus may not have the opportunity to recommit due to the length of their prison sentence. I’d also add that rape has really low reporting levels, which could contribute (if only a small number of rapes are reported anyway, it’s plausible that many serial offenders are only caught once or twice). So for rapists in general, I don’t think it’s conclusive.
The solution to serial child molesters is to put them in prison, until such time (if any) that we’re confident they won’t reoffend. If for some reason we’re not doing that, that’s a problem, but the solution doesn’t involve a Public List of People Who Need To Be Punished More.
However the other side to this is that registries make it difficult, very difficult sometimes, for people to pick up their life and live in society. I’ve heard that many people on the registry end up homeless because nobody will rent to them (even if they have money), broke because nobody will hire them (so they run out of money pretty quickly if they weren’t broke already), and there are so many restrictions on where they can live, work, or travel to that many opportunities are already unavailable, even if they could get an offer. Many of them also have mandatory therapy they have to go to regularly and that takes a big chunk out of a potential working day.
Sure, you can say “they deserve it”, and it’s true that they deserve to be punished. But punishment needs to be rational, humane, and have an end. The registries set people up to fail. In a way they are better off in jail or a mental institution where they can be cared for in a humane way. But if you’re going to let them out, don’t shoot them when they try to pick themselves up. Hitting someone again when they’re down is not cool.
if the registries went away what’s stopping somebody who raped somebody years ago from becoming a foster parent when people want to know that somebody fostering or adopting a child or taking care of children had prior record involving violation of children?
Er, people still have criminal records and generally go through rather extensive background checks before adopting or being in the foster program. Nobody is talking about abolishing criminal records or background checks for jobs, just that extra level of sex offender registries and restrictions where you can go onto a website and look up all the offenders in your area and you have to tell your neighbors you raped your secretary. Sex offender registry or not, it’s not going to make that “have you ever been convicted of a felony?” box go away on forms.
