That number of sex offenders may indicate an side effect of the sex offender laws. As there are now so many restrictions on where a sex offender can live they end up in deprived areas that don’t have any of the things that they can live near, and where landlords are less likely to use the SO database on the tenants they are leasing to. A friend of mine, with a young family, who had to live somewhere like that simply by virtue of not being able to afford anywhere else, and it was pretty unpleasant for her.
Additionally I know nothing about the case in question, but the simple statistics suggests far more likely to be a member of the family or a close friend, than any bogeyman “sex offender” who they randomly encountered.
This is my concern too. For every 1 convicted sex offender about 10-20 will never get caught. Most victims are too ashamed to come forward.
So basically we have a situation where there is tons of serious sexual abuse going on behind the scenes in our society that causes lifelong psychological damage, and nobody is willing to talk about it, but we are talking about putting people on sex offender registries because they urinate in public.
While most people would agree that a 40 year old man who, at age 18, got high and inappropriately touched his little sister, but has never had any serous trouble with the law since, and is now married with children and successful in his career, is far far less of a threat than a cold, calculating offender who slowly gains the trust of parents in order to get babysitting jobs, etc., can you imagine coming up with a rubric or something that could actually adjudicate reliably, reasonably, and fairly in real life? We as a society have this idea that sex offending is a black or white matter, you either are a sex offender, or you aren’t.
While I’d like to see some real life sense in sex offender registration that considers all aspects of the perpetrator and determines a “threat level” that can be lowered in the future as their offense fades into the past without reoffense or otherwise for cause such as successful completion of therapy, and that could be raised for cause if the individual is still on probation or parole, it would be a nightmare to adjudicate in real life. How about a guy who is ordered to a “sex offender treatment program”, but refuses because he claims he is “cured”, something that mainstream medicine claims is impossible? Are we now going to rate him a high risk even though he might either no longer have any deviant urges or might have never had them?
[QUOTE=AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet;11698491As is evidenced by the presense of Ceserio, rapists and child molesters have such distorted thinking that they NEED to be locked up forever![/QUOTE]
bolding mine
You are out of line.
If you havbe some great need to insult a poster, take it to the Pit; don’t bring it to Great Debates.
(And I am not open to an appeal that you were simply making a point. Unless you have specifdic evidence that the named poster has actually engaged in criminal activity, you are doing nothing but projecting your fears in an insulting manner.)
Apparently, many states in the US do have some graduation, in many cases (or at least the ones in my state) the primary determiner is the classification of the offense under which a person was convicted, not on “attendant circumstances” or whether or not a psychologist, doctor, probation officer, their mom, their original victim, etc feels the person represents a serious “threat”. E.g. a person who is convicted under a statute that is listed under the “sexually violent predator” classification may be legally a “sexually violent predator” for life, regardless of the circumstances under which they committed the offense and what they have done with their life since.
Wht I might not want to see, though, is a great deal of leeway in raising the threat level, e.g. taking that public urinator and saying “well, he’s a fan of the Olsen Twins so he must be a deve, therefore he gets the highest risk classification and can’t so much as come within 5000 feet of a public park and must physically wear a DANGER: SEX OFFENDER shirt” *
*I used to know a ~20 year old man about 5 years ago who was obsessed with them.
This debate was a hot topic in my city of Englewood NJ a while back. When someone rapes and murders two boys, then rapes three more boys, serves his time and gets released and moves into a neighborhood two doors down from a school bus stop, you bet the public should be notified.
The fact that this person was even released from prison is an outrage.
Something else to be considered in these gradations is the idea that, at least in some states, they’re one of the things that can be ‘bargained with’ when your attorney is ‘pleading down’ your sentence. A friend of mine is on the list. He had a choice of not doing any jail time (he was facing six months) and going on the list as a ‘level two’ offender for two years, or serving his six months and going on the list as a ‘level three’ offender for eight years. He chose no jail time, and the more serious listing. Now, he’s found out that he does not get automatically dropped after two years. Rather, he earns the right to petition the court to drop his name from the list after two years.
And of course, even in places gradations exist, many knee-jerk residents don’t consider them. They just look at the list and say “OMGPervz!11!!!”
The fact that this can be used as a ‘bargaining chip’ is reprehensible to me, and just one more demonstration of why the list, in general, is so wrong.
Texas wasn’t even on the Human Rights Watch list mentioned above.
Is it possible that your buddy was not forthcoming about the actual facts behind his conviction? Terxas law does not appear to support registration as a sex offender for public urination.
I am totally with you, but the state trooper arrested him for something else. He was just taking a leak though, instead of public uriniation. It was exposure or lewdness or something, but he wasn’t even drinking, just had a huge Dr. Pepper piss brewing. I believe him though, I know him to be a very truthful guy.
I am going to Facebook him to see if I can’t get him to tell me more specifics, or get the date when this happened. In Texas you can pull records on things like this if you have the date usually.
Agreed on the idea that we need some sort of definition of what constitutes a “sex offender.” We have one living in my neighborhood - apparently he’s not all there upstairs and has publicly exposed himself or whatnot to adult women. (I’ve heard rumors that he’s also groped some lady’s boob in a mall, but I’m not certain how factual that story is.)
While those incidents are regrettable, he didn’t harm anyone in any sort of a lasting manner. (Indeed, about the boob story - if he’d have done that at some other mall instead of the upscale one I heard the incident occurred at, he’d probably have been the one damaged!) As a woman, I have absolutely no fear of having him in my neighborhood and don’t feel I need to take any special steps to keep me and mine safe. I’m rather inclined to think that I probably shouldn’t know about the incidents I do know about, since no lasting harm was done. However, I’m certain I’d feel much differently if he’d violently raped someone.
I don’t mean to trivialize his actions - clearly, what he’s done is wrong and should be stopped, as much as is possible. I just don’t think that his crimes were of the sort that warrants public notification. I’m sure I have neighbors with other crimes like minor theft or DUI or what-have-you to their names, and I don’t know about them.
I know this is only meant to be an example, but a guy whose excuse for inappropriately touching his sister is getting high is still pretty creepy to me.
Some time ago we had an incident here. A convicted sex offender was released from prison and he was going to move into town here, living with his sister. He had an ankle bracelet and was not allowed to leave the house. Many people in town tried to keep him from moving into this town. But the problem was that he had the ankle bracelet, so he had to live somewhere, and with his sister was the only option (he had no place of his own to go back to and his parents were dead).
During the Bruhaha, I got an idea. What we should do with these sex offenders is simple: we should have separate communities just for them, places with no children for them to abuse. Of course, we’d have to build a wall around the communities, so no children get in, and have guards so none of the offenders get out. They would need jobs, so some of the offenders could do necessary jobs within the communities, like cooking food or washing laundry, the rest could do jobs that benefit society, like stamping out license plates. It’s the perfect solution, really. I mean, if we’re going to prevent them from living in normal society, we have to something with them.
In Oklahoma, at least, you can search the list with options: aggrivated, and habitual. Which would be the list of the actually dangerous people they let out, and none of the drunk college kids streaking campus.
I do note, however, that a good majority of the actually dangerous people DON’T REGISTER. That means they go back to prison the second someone finds them, but come on, people, assuming the registry is even a good idea, and assuming letting them out was a good idea, leaving the actual registering up to them seems like … a less than fabulous idea.
I wonder if he wouldn’t have been allowed to make his own sign right next to it that said something like “Yes, I was arrested and charged for peeing at the roadside in the middle of the night on a long car drive in the countryside”?
Agreed. The ONLY crimes on the notification list should be the obivous hardcore ones. I have to say that if Megan’s mom had known about Jesse Timaquadous, a death could have been avoided. I shudder thinking of what that poor little kid went through.
Maybe part of the problem might be that sex offenders might just be shipped to prison instead of treatment centers. I do think that if many of them underwent intensive psychological treatment (at treatment centers) that they could get better.
I do think that if someone is dx as a socio/psychopathic sex offender, or even a severe ADD or other mental issue sex offender that they need to be locked up.
Yes, many criminals are just people who made mistakes…but that still doesn’t negate the fact that there’s still a lot of very dangerous folks out there…Not to mention that some judges really aren’t all that great at judging whether or not a prisoner or patient is rehabbed.
Oh…and the reason I’m very vehement about this issue is b/c there was a case at my jr high where the gym teacher turned out to be a hardcore pedophile.
Yes, he served his time…but he was the creepiest dude I ever met. There was definitly something psychologcally messed up going on there.
Oh…and does anyone know if the sex offenders who rape/molest/whatever strangers are more dangerous then the ones who psychologically groom children or women?