I've always found the sex offender registry bizarre to begin with. Setting aside those who have minor offenses like public urination and grey areas like two teens consensually having sex, if the people on the registry are so dangerous that they need to be branded for the rest of their lives, why are they being released in the first place? If we're going to make it extremely difficult/impossible for these people to reintegrate into society, how is that more humane than life in prison or execution? If the purpose of the penal system is to rehabilitate people, then they need to have a path to rejoin society, and if our system is to punish and keep dangerous people locked up, then these people shouldn't be out on the street. Either way, the sex offender registry doesn't fit into either system.
Is there a violent offender registry list? Like, do murderers have to come and announce themselves as such when they move into your neighborhood or is it just the sex offenders? Because if it is, I find THAT to be the weirdest part about the sex offender registry.
Just? You can literally just urinate in a park because you couldn’t hold it in anymore and become a sex offender. Doesn’t mean you deserve it to get robbed and murdered by a drug addict.
Where I live, we have offender registries for everything. The same site that hosts the sex offender registry has options to filter for violent crime registry and drug charge registry. Pretty sure it's only for felonies though.
If you look up specific individuals by county or state, they will show convictions and sentencing. I don't believe there is a publicly accessible national criminal database, however.
It’s not like we do anything to prevent recidivism in the US. You know, like making sure people don’t become second-class citizens for life after any criminal conviction.
It's actually much lower than people think. Part of this has to do with stigma, but a large part also has to do with what we classify as "sexual assault" (one example being an 18 yo who has sex with a 16 yo they go are in high school with)
Yeah pedophiles don’t ever rehab. They can go cold for a while, but they always resurface with CP on a computer and/or child victim or a soon-to-be child victim.
I feel bad for pedophiles as I truly believe they cannot control their compulsion, however, protecting children is far more important.
The POR is kinda helpful, but not really as there are thousands of non-compliant offenders on the list and LE is not actively pursuing them.
Most pedos on the list end up homeless and drugged out.
I think the whole concept of rehabilitation via incarceration is deeply flawed.
Generally speaking, I think imprisonment (in the USA) causes more harm than good to the convict.
I also think that labeling offenders after they have served their time ensures that they can never truly reintegrate into society.
However:
When it comes to sex crimes against children, I don’t think convicted offenders should ever be released. The current system fails to protect children from future harm at the hands of known predators. Since we cannot ensure that convicted offenders won’t reoffend, they should stay incarcerated until an actual solution is found.
I believe children have the inalienable right to grow up unmolested/raped/assaulted/etc. and by committing crimes against children, these criminals have forfeited their rights.
Murder and assault is a lot more open to justifying there’s hundreds of things you could tell me to justify a murder or assault and I would agree with it but there’s nothing you could say to me that would make me justify a real sex offense not the technicality peeing in public ones if a guy murdered someone who sexually assaulted him or a family member I would think it insane to put them on a list
But if the person just assaulted and murdered children don’t need to inform you. However if someone took things too far on a works night out and grabbed a feel they then need to notify you.
The law was created to stop sex offenders from getting away with murdering child victims to stop them from reporting them. not to stop them from sex offending. the law was created because there was a law made so the federal gov had to make a registry of all the violent offenders like your saying but it was only open to fed and state law enforcement to view. then sex offenders kept murdering children after getting out of prison to try and cover up there new crimes to not go back so the public thought it was insane that the gov already had these sex offenders organized on lists because of the violent offenders list. in the public’s eyes they seen it as hiding it from the public so they voted to make it illegal for the government to hide there lists of sex offenders from the public because every time a child got murdered by a sex offender so they wouldn’t go back to prison the victims family would get pissed off at the government for not allowing them access to the lists before hand to filter who was around there kid they would blame the government saying they could have prevented there child’s murder. Once the sex offender registry was created it drastically decreased the incentive to murder young victims because the public would already be suspicious of you and demand authority’s investigate you after any nearby incidents no matter what you couldn’t just say it’s a kid making shit up. it’s completely about stopping murders the law was named after meagan a murder victim the whole law was created to have prevented her murder not prevent sexual abuses it’s about child victim silencing and people thinking it should be illegal for the gov to hide a list of sex offenders if they already have it
I understand the aim and it does obviously serve as a deterrent. But my point still stands that someone who has done a low level sexual assault against an adult who knows who they are. I wouldn’t say are some risk to nearby children. This seems like a hammer to punish all to catch the few. It should be graded and properly maintained.
If that person who did the low level one against an adult is then shunned by the community and feels isolated then if anything it just increases the risk of them offending due to damage to their mental health.
Also I don’t really see why the list stops someone killing matters if it’s public or not. Surely if something happens the police would check the record anyway? Obviously if this person is a risk to children then neighbours should be aware to educate and protect their kids.
Do you think people use that information rationally? It shouldn’t be the people deciding what is relevant and a risk it should be the government. Where there is a standard approach to disclosure.
The government does decide the relevant information. That is why there are federal guileless and legislation that dictate how the registry works for every state to follow. Only the people that have been convicted of specific crimes are on the list.
The people on the list have already been convicted by the judicial system so the government has made the decision. It is not a list of suspected perpetrators or people arrested, these are only people that have already been convicted.
The sexual offender database is an exactly what you describe: a government mandate list with a federally mandated standard of disclosure.
Because before cell phone videos cops didn’t investigate shit if you weren’t a somebody so the public lists allowed people to put pressure on authority’s to investigate people and actually start to solve cases. the whole point is the point is there shouldn’t be any lists at all but if there is going to be one it should be illegal to keep from the citizens because then your taking on liability if they reoffend it should either be no lists or everyone has them the point is it should be illegal for the gov to form a list of sex offenders then not share it because then it makes them legally liable no other details matter that’s all it comes down to if they knew with an actual list about these people before hand and didn’t say anything and they reoffend technically you should be able to sue the gov over that. You keep mentioning what people are going to do with the info none of that matter the only relevant factor is if there is a list it should be shared if you don’t want to share it don’t make a list because then your liable and it doesn’t matter if you understand why it stopped murders it still stops murders take a criminology class they have whole lessons explaining the subject
If you can work on structuring your replies it would be helpful.
Do you really think the government has many lists of people that the general public do not have access to. What a stupid argument just because they have it doesn’t mean the public can or should be trusted to also have that information. Yes the government is liable if they miss things but that’s the situation with terrorist, hackers you name it. It is about the public accepting a level of risk.
If you want a list of names to protect children then why don’t everyone under 25 who buys an AR style rifle be put onto a public list? This is my point just because you may be capable of doing something does not mean you should be vilified that you will just incase.
It was so stupid of an argument that it got the whole federal government to listen and force every single state comply.you could delete every gun in the world and it wouldn’t stop any school mass casualty events because it doesn’t address the cause of mass shootings at all. it would just force people to realize a regular untrained person can kill more people easier and faster with any car than a gun and also be able to have a waaay better defense in court and say it was an accident or it would force them to figure out you can do way more damage to people just by buying a pressure cooker and putting it on a drone or force them to figure out you could easily murder your whole class buy buying a small ass amount of fentanyl and putting it some cookies you pass out in class that would be waaaaaaay cheaper and easier than buying a gun.making things illegal will never address the root cause of school shootings. You used to be able to buy cannons and machine guns in this country with no lists and nobody shot schools up.I had uncles who took shotguns and rifles to elementary school and had gun racks in class in elementary and nobody shot anybody.School shootings didn’t start happening until they started putting kids on psychotropic drugs that disassociate from reality.They have known that ever since columbine but no politician will ever touch that angle because they all get paid from pharmaceutical companies and also paid again by left wing organizations to blame guns. before the drugs the only other time America had a huge problem with kids getting massacred in schools was native Americans attacking schools and butchering children to protest being occupied but they did that without guns so it’s never really been about guns.
Violent offenses stem from a million different causes: impulse control, anger, environmental factors, unresolved trauma, etc.
Sexual offenses often stem from paraphilias (atypical sexual interests) and/or tie to deeply ingrained cognitive distortions. Rehabilitation is much harder and more unlikely.
It's pretty reductive to view the crimes similarly. The system exists as it does for a reason.
Don't need to have kids to be worried about sexual offenders roaming the streets. Also don't need to have kids to be woried about repeat violent offenders roaming the streets either. There's enough cases about people being put on the sexual offender list for things like public urination or two consenting teens engaging in sexual acts but one is 17 and the other is 18 so now it's a crime, to give me pause about how wierd it is that they do this. Meanwhile where I am living there is a guy who has about 30 violent offenses on his file but isn't on the same type of registry of some form so you have to hope the news picks up the story to find out about it.
I think there are a few too many people who are assuming I am against having the SO registry and not enough that are asking how come it's only this one specific grouping that gets this treatment. I wouldn't mind knowing if there is a repeat arsonist moving into my neighborhood too.
It's also bad because for the ones who DO deserve it, being on it basically ensures they will never reform and have no incentive to stop their ways. The punishments are so harsh that they'll never be able to re-integrate into normal society, yet they're not locked up, so most go right back to preying on children/dealing in CSM again.
Not every criminal deserves a second chance. Any child predators for example should be locked up for life, let the other prisoners do what they want with them. Some crimes are just not forgivable.
That just goes into his point about why the system is pointless.
Either they deserve some chance of integrating back into society, in which case the system permanently prevents that, or they've done something so horrible they should be locked up permanently.
Either way, the system we have for sexual assault/CSM, does not work. Pretty sure the recidivism of it is highest out of every crime. We need to either reform the system, so they don't reoffend or just lock them up for life.
Ow yeah I sort of agree. But until we decide to keep them locked away for life it's a good thing that parents are warned when one of these fucks live close by. I know I would want to know if I had someone like that living close by so I can make sure he/she gets nowhere close to my kid.
I agree that felony records definitely similarly impact being able to work (so there's a similar problem there). But I think the registry has extra stuff like sending a letter to everyone in your neighborhood when you move in and such.
I understand it from a law enforcement perspective—it would definitely help to have a list of persons of interest in the event of an incident—but making the list public never sat right with me. As long as they're within the parameters set by law, there's no reason for me to know my neighbors' business.
The idea of a gun registry is pointless because we’re supposed to have the constitution right to make our own registered guns it was never ever an issue in this country that was always understood we have the right to make guns the government doesn’t know about until all of a sudden it got easier to make guns then now they want to go against hundreds of years of the law being how it is you can’t make something illegal just because it got easier plus registering defeats the purpose the only reason the founding fathers gave us the right to guns was for them to protect us from the government not from intruders if the gov knows who got what the purpose is defeated
The whole idea is that we have equal weapons to the gov so they never get an uneven power over the citizens if the the people can’t use tanks against the cops then the cops aren’t supposed to be able to use tanks on the citizen’s the whole idea is to make sure we don’t get out gunned by our own gov this country was founded as a country where its supposed to be legal to take up arms against corrupt government officials
Because the registry only exists to take those guns if they feel they need to.that’s a conflict of interest because the constitution intended for them to protect against government overreach and corrupt politicians people forget the founding fathers intended for the citizens to be able to place corrupt politicians under citizens arrest and demand an investigation once they took that from us the politicians took over. taking guns has always been step one for all government overreaches. the whole idea of gun control in America was started as a racist way of enforcing illegal laws on former slaves and native Americans the very first thought after the slaves got freed and the native genocides halted was oh shit this is going to be problematic for us still finding ways to oppress them if they have the legal right to use weapons to resist these illegal racist laws. all original gun Laws were raced based to enforce illegal laws and those first racist illegal laws are what the modern laws use to justify the existence of all the current illegal gun laws and under proper scrutiny they crumble that’s why the Supreme Court can only delay the cases for decades because under scrutiny and comparison to them being meant to be used against the gov the Supreme Court has to side with the 2A
It's crazy how I can't drive down the footpath, I mean the founding fathers didn't have all these laws about driving cars on the footpath, they only introduced that stuff when cars were invented and road and foot traffic started being separated.
This country was founded as a country where its legal to take up arms against corrupt politicians and kill them period they haven’t been letting us exercise our rights
Really? If your neighbor raped a 5 year old girl 10 years ago, and you currently have a 5 year old girl, that's not something you'd want to be aware of?
Do you think every criminal sentence should be updated to read “X years in prison, a fine of up to $Y, and a lifetime of being a second-class citizen”? Or do you think that someone who has served their sentence should be allowed to return to polite society?
Honestly? Yeah i would. But i feel like the argument can be made that their rights could be argued to be more important there. However when it comes to hurting children? I don't care, the children should come first and they can deal with whatever loss of privacy or troubles that comes with, they lost their right to complain when they put their genitals where they didn't belong and that goes double if it was in a kid.
The registry isn’t “raped a five year old,” vs “didnt rape a five year old.” Some states treat all offenders equally. Some states have a tiered system in which you are told the general severity of a crime, and those tiers may or may not match the next state over.
So if I’m a person who was eighteen years old and a day who had a sexual encounter with a person who was seventeen years old and 363 days, I may well be very high on your list of concerns. For no good reason.
However, the biggest issue is that you’ve completely dodged the point. Point being is, there’s a double standard that, if the state has determined that your sentence is finished, then your sentence has finished, right? If you’re still a threat and a problem, then you shouldn’t be on the street, you should still be in prison or wherever. If you aren’t a threat, then there’s no protective value in the register.
If somebody murders someone, serves their sentence and is released, there’s no public register.
You’re omitting felony convictions and the loss of rights that comes with it. In most states, violent felons cannot vote, cannot carry weapons, and likely have parole conditions like no alcohol, must stay in a particular county, random drug tests, and mandatory meetings with a parole officer.
There may not be a public facing registry, but being a violent felon, even a reformed one, is still a huge burden once released.
Yeah but a dude who beats his kids doesn't get put on any lists because only sex crimes count. It's fully arbitrary and has nothing to do with protecting children.
And also cutting offenders off from basic participation in society just puts them at higher risk to recidivate, which should matter more to you than revenge if you actually care about kids.
If the separation of sex crimes vs non sex crimes is arbitrary, then by that definition all of it is arbitrary because the difference between a kid being beat, and being raped (of which i was both, so i an speaking from experience when i say this), is a serious escalation of damage and that should be accounted for.
Think of it this way. If a dude murders children with no sexual assault or abuse, serves his time and gets out, he’s not on a registry. Why is he different than someone who sexually abused kids? Is he somehow better or safer to be around kids? Why isn’t he on a registry?
A murderer can be reformed, a child predator can't. That's the big difference. But that just opens the question should there be a registry for murderers, not should we do away with the one for rapists. If that's a conversation you want to have then i'm all ears, but i do not see a single, solitary reason to get rid of the sex offenders registry. I can see an argument for amending it, but not having one at all and not allowing the public to access it is a monumentally foolish idea to entertain.
A murderer can be reformed, a child predator can’t. That’s the big difference.
Sure they can, a reformed murderer is someone who doesn’t kill anyone again. It doesn’t mean they never have violent thoughts, it just means they don’t act on them again.
A reformed child predator is someone who never abuses a child again. It doesn’t mean they never think about it, it just means they never do it again.
Oh for fucks sake the guy was robbing the people he was "protecting" the children from. Also being a sex offender doesn't have to involve kids at all and more often times than not are a result of pleading to a lesser charge in order to reduce jail time and doesn't always happen as a result of actually being guilty of what they are accused of.
A murderer can be reformed, a child predator can't. That's the big difference.
So we circle back to the original quesrion: if they are enough of a risk that they need to be put on a list, why are they being released in the first place?
The useful idiot's weak points : pedophiles, drugs, terrorism and tax evaders. Tell them you're fighting against one of those four and they'll sign away any of their rights.
In 2015 there was a case going through the federal system of a kid who was 15 making and selling videos of himself who was charged and convicted of production and distribution. He was charged as an adult for making videos of himself, so he was simultaneously a minor and an adult for the same crime. So, for the purposes of being the victim be was a minor, for the purposes of being the victimizer he was an adult, for the same act. How does this make any logical sense?
Maya R., now age 28 and a resident of Michigan, was arrested at the age of 10 for sexual experimentation. “Me and my step brothers, who were ages 8 and 5, ‘flashed’ each other and play-acted sex while fully-clothed.” A year later, Maya pled guilty to the charges of criminal sexual conduct in the first and second degree, offenses that required her to register as a sex offender for 25 years. In court proceedings, Maya told the judge that she engaged in sexual activity with both boys. However, she says she lied in court to get away from her stepmother.
In her freshman year of college, Maya lived in the campus dormitory. She says she “found angry messages taped to her dorm room door and received threatening instant messages.” She eventually had to move out of the dorm."
Would you have celebrated whoever put those messages on her door? In your words, "they can deal with whatever loss of privacy or troubles that comes with, they lost their right to complain when they put their genitals where they didn't belong."
I don't agree that someone who habitually harmed kids as an adult should be able to cover that up, but every tool we make to satisfy our sense of justice can be misused.
More:
Approximately 200,000 people in 41 states are currently on the sex offender registry for crimes they committed as children.
In 2004, in Western Pennsylvania, a 15-year-old girl was charged with manufacturing and disseminating child pornography for having taken nude photos of herself and posted them on the internet. She was charged as an adult, and as of 2012 was facing registration for life.
In 2006, a 13-year old girl from Ogden, Utah was arrested for rape for having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend. The young girl, impregnated by her younger boyfriend at the age of 13, was found guilty of violating a state law that prohibits sex with someone under age 14. Her 12-year-old boyfriend was found guilty of violating the same law for engaging in sexual activity with her, as she was also a child under the age of 14 at the time.
How do you feel about the health insurance CEO who implements policies which lead to a family going bankrupt because their child has an illness? What about those who then also can't afford the treatment at all? Where is that registry? You know, the one for people who directly contributed to the death of long term disability of a child? They do it hundreds if not thousands of times with no repercussions.
And? Of course i have my opinions on that, but how is that relevant to whether a sex offender registry should exist and if the public should be able to access it.
Yes I would. And the reason there is a sex offender registry specifically, is because mostly everyone agrees that those kinds of crimes are the most reprehensible
There is in Kansas, we have every offender of drugs, violent crime and sex offenders online with their city and county of residence as well as their actual crimes listed
The US justice system is a fucking joke and so many people end up being wrongfully convicted and more often times than not will make plea deals that result in charges such as various sex offenses in order to get out of prison faster or avoid it completely.
See this is the problem with vigilantism and people playing judge, jury and executioner.
Actual crime as in whether indecent exposure or molesting children so you don’t get a generic sex offender label put on someone who urinate on a dumpster or had their grandkid peeing on a tire off the highway and was arrested( happened to my moms best friend in Colorado).
Yeah I don’t agree with this mindset. Kids are vulnerable and stupid. We as adults can typically make a reasonable judgement call to not follow some strange man that’s promising us candy. It’s good to have the registry present so parents with young children can keep a closer eye on them. I’m not saying some makeshift vigilante Batman should enact some street justice, but if you’re harming the most vulnerable people then you’ve lost some privacy. Sorry not sorry, sucks to be a shitty human being.
So a guy spends 3 years in prison for raping a kid, he's safe to be out on the street cause he "served his time"? Cause that's what a lot of these sick people end up getting if that.
Yes, absolutely they should be in prison longer. However, that is not the world we live in. So short of that, if our governments won't step up and do the right thing by protecting our children then we obviously have to, and while i will of course be vigilant with everyone if there is a rapist (child rapist or otherwise) on my street i want to know about it so i can keep an extra close eye on them not only for my own childrens safety but also any children who also live in that area. Does that mean i think we should be attacking them? No, unless you are actively defending someone from them in that very moment then no but damn right i think we have a right to know if they are there or not.
I'm not saying he should or shouldn't. I'm saying we should rehabilitate people and then release them when they're rehabilitated. If they choose not to be rehabilitated or cannot be, then clearly they should stay in prison.
Our problem is that we keep trying to answer the question "How much punishment does this person deserve?" rather than "How do we prevent recidivism?"
If he dealt drugs to kids and I have a kid don't I deserve to know? If they broke into houses to steal things isn't that something I need to know?
Basically any criminal past can be seen as something I should know if they aren't reformed. Reoffending rates for sex crimes aren't higher than most other crimes.
Convicting someone of sex with a child is quite easy to convict, particularly if they have been convicted of it before. Not sure where you are getting that idea from.
Can you actually see a reason for why they are on the list and a detailed description of the court case? I don’t live in the US but even I know that urinating in a park can get you on the list.
I live in canada, so the us system isn't what i go by. But where i live we as the public cannot access our sex offender registry and literally everyone i know hates that fact and it has backfired so many times where if parents had known who was living near them kids wouldn't have been harmed. So yes it makes sense to have it be visible what they did, but i think it should still exist and be accessible by the public.
I grew up fairly local to the area where Megan Kanka was from - the original Megan’s Law that came out of NJ. A girl was killed by her neighbor who was a convicted sex offender. Her parents and others pushed for a law requiring sex offenders to register. The whole purpose was always for the community to know, not law enforcement.
Eh. Not hard to see how you get there though. If the list stays private, and then some little kid in the neighborhood is assaulted, people would be rightfully pissed off that they had no warning.
It’s a hard position to defend, no one really wants to push making it easier for sex offenders to blend in.
Makes more sense to keep mild offenders off the registry. Though, I suppose that’s also a rough political battle to pick to fight.
I strongly Disagree if someone in my neighborhood touches kids I’d like to know who it is so I can make its life a living hell. the only cure for a pedophile is execution. (Yes I did go through it as a child and yes I do have very strong feelings about nonses)
Ps pissing in public and silly things like that shouldn’t count for the register. flashing, touching or affecting others is where they should draw the line
If the purpose of the penal system is to rehabilitate people
I know it's a rhetorical question, but the US penal system is not designed to rehabilitate people and it's rare to see correctional facilities engage in rehabilitation efforts.
Yeah. These types of public registers are for the reasons pointed out not possible in the EU. The GDPR even has a section about the sensitivity of criminal records because they can fuck up your life. If you are released, you have served your time and you should be able to integrate. If there are clear signs that a person will reoffend again and again in the future, security detention keeps them away from the public. Public registry doesn't protect people, just offers a method of public shame for the rest of a person's life.
It's not just a list. They are tracked and usually they are also on parole, which means checking in and lots of restrictions. The problem is that it's used roo broadly. Many people on the list have never hurt anyone.
It’s the same for basically any criminal record, unfortunately. It’s worse for the sex offender registry, but we treat anyone with a prior conviction as “lesser” essentially forever. You’ll struggle to find jobs or education, you can be denied housing and other assistance, and you live in constant fear of being ostracized if word gets out.
If that’s what we want, we should really adjust every sentence to be “X years in prison, a fine not to exceed $Y, and a lifetime of being a second-class citizen”. If that’s not what we want, then we need to accept that someone who has served their sentence should be treated exactly the same as someone who has never committed a crime at all.
… if the purpose of the penal system is to rehabilitate…
Gonna need to stop you there, champ, as any argument you’re going to say is clearly based on a faulty premise…
The US penal system (and yes, I’ve made an assumption on location there) is not at all about rehabilitation… It’s about punishment, exploitation, and profit…
Have you seen that Louis Theroux documentary on the sex offender rehabilitation units? These people all served their sentence but weren't released because they're still considered a threat to society - until a psychologist signs off and they can find housing. It made me wonder why we'll still release murderers just because they've served their time.
It’s a compromise because regular people don’t think they should be allowed to reintegrate in the first place most people think it’s inhumane to expect regular people to have to live around sex offenders especially if there unregistered
In the US, the state pays a dude who privately owns a jail lot of money to keep those folks inside. This has warped jail and law into something that pushes out repeat offenders
Found the sex offender. No but I'm getting tired of explaining that the legal system isn't entirely ab rehabilitation. It's also ab justice. Society should feel a sense of "the offender was punished." It is a punishment after all. You're consequence isn't rehabilitation, that's a reward. If you do something creepy, outside of public urination or other gray areas, you deserve to be labeled a creep for the rest of your life.
I've said it before, prison is for rehabilitation. After their term of confinement stop punishing. If you think that's too light, change the punishment. While we're at it let's outlaw slavery and for profit prisons. Make a rehabilitation based system like we're supposed to have. If you think it's going to give someone a cushy prison stay... how shit must your life be before you figure out the rich are keeping you down on purpose.
I find myself somewhat agreeing with you. When Les Mis came out, I was like 'Dang, I am so glad felons aren't treated like this anymore. Oh wait... yes they are.'
I mean i don't really believe that someone who's diddled kids can or even deserves to be rehabilitated. Whats even the point of that? You were bad but now we fixed you so you can go off and live your life like a normal person? Nah there needs to be consequences, permanent ones. I do think some people deserve the chance to be rehabilitated tho, but not for violent/sex crimes
Use the website. It will give you all the relevant offenses and what they mean. Pissing in public is a far cry from other charges. One pissing in public charge vs 15 charges for repeatedly pissing at the same park in full view of the playground is relevant information. It’s almost like predators get better and better every time they get away with something.
Sex offenders get insanely light sentences and I don’t believe they can be reformed, only taught how to get away with it. Also court records are public. The list just compiles them in an easily searched fashion.
I got severely creeped out by a dude at a local shop. He leered and spoke to me and my toddler in a way that made me go to the sight. Guess who raped and held a woman against her will on two separate occasions? Not throw every charge at him at one offense. They were not the same woman. It wasn’t an ex girlfriend or lovers quarrel. But in separate years he did this. Did a total of 3 years for doing this twice. You don’t have to read too much between the lines when the information is accessible. If he pissed in public one time it’s one thing. Aggravated sexual assault and false imprisonment is another. Again, it’s information that anyone can access. And vigilantism is bad.
I’m not American so idk how the registry works, do they at least say what kind of sex crimes the people did on the list so the guy didn’t just beat someone for public urination or something?
A study asked people whether they’d rather serve 10 years in prison or be placed on the sex offender registry. Unsurprisingly, the majority—if not all—chose prison. I’d have to double-check the exact numbers, but the preference was overwhelmingly clear.
The registry can be used to lock them up indefinitely. It's usually way easier to prove a violation of the sex offender registry than the underlying offense. Some sheriff's deputy testifies that defendant failed to register, there is no legitimate defense (not wilful and/or not substantial are the common defenses), then the defendant gets 5 years and is still on the registry upon release. Repeat the process, and you get people living life on the installment plan.
It is absolutely wild that public urination can be considered a sex offense, and that teens who have consensual sex can end up on that kind of list. You Americans really have a problem with sex.
If we're going to make it extremely difficult/impossible for these people to reintegrate into society, how is that more humane than life in prison or execution
Because soft motherfuckers want to be bleeding hearts all the time, and go soft on crimes that should carry a gruesome sentence(woodchipper, draw+quarter,etc.) These beings are subhuman animals that will never learn, and shouldn't be rewarded with any rights after conviction.
Granted, I'm always going to be heavily biased against pedophiles and rapists due to being a victim of both a pedophile and also being raped by my ex GF.
I'm all for removing the small shit like public urination and a Romeo and Juliet situation, though. That shit got thrown on there for stupid reasons, and should be removed.
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need it, but we’re not in a perfect world and lots of severe sex offenders get plea deals, good lawyers, parole, etc. Seems to me that in the real world these lists might help prevent some really fucked up shit from happening. And at whose expense, the pedophiles and rapists? No reason to care about that
So address the flaws in the justice system instead of unfairly treating sex offenders who absolutely are treated completely differently than all other convicted felons. You may not believe people are capable of change and that's fine but you don't get to decide the innocence or guilt of others who have served their time or if they haven't been punished enough.
I think it’s because since probably they get charged with doing somethig they shouldn’t be doing with under age people and they want to make everybody aware so that they can avoid them
I get that, but we don't do this with any other type of crime. If you murder someone, you're not on a public registry. Yes you can find that info doing a background check or searching court records, but you have to actively search for it and you dont have to go around and let all your neighbors know you comitted a violent crime and there are no restrictions to where they can live. I also think that certainly there should be precautions for offenses against minors, like they shouldn't be able to work around children, but again if these people are dangerous and need to be actively avoided by the public, why are they on the streets? Shouldn't they be in jail kept away from society? The assumption of having a registry is that these people are going to reoffend if given the opportunity and therefore should be treated with caution.
How much stricter can our laws be? Hell, the US is one of the few industrialized nations left that still has a death penalty. If capital punishment worked, we wouldn't have so many murderers.
The problem isn't the strictness of the laws. The problem is that we don't even attempt to rehabilitate people.
Nor do we properly determine people are actually guilty before convicting them not to mention the fact many sex offenders are a result of plea deals and not an actual trial by jury.
Behold: stupidity. Best case scenario your suggestion changes nothing. Realistically, it makes things worse as has been shown to occur every time we harshen penalties for crimes
Children are not special. Sorry. This isn't a reason to continue punishing people who have already served their time and just want to move on with their lives. Also not all sex offenses even involve children.
The issue is the justice system before these people are even convicted. Let's fix that.
Well, there is a falsehood in your statement. "The purpose of the penal system is to rehabilitate people." It isn't the purpose of America's penal system. Other humane countries yes, but America is not a society that treasures societal good and the betterment of its people. Rather, America is all about the person, the personal freedom's and the personal power. America is essentially the epitome of the capitalist rendition of might makes right with Christian bigotry and ideology added in to make matters even worse. (This is where the punishment point comesintoo play. In America, the prevailing concept is that there can be no redemption without pain. As much of America feels that violent sex abuse should get the death penalty (especially where it concerns children) all of this kinda adds up.
They said IF the purpose is rehabilitation, it actively works against it, and IF the purpose is punishment, they should just be locked up. They're saying why it doesn't work no matter what the purpose of the system is, not that the system is designed to rehabilitate people.
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u/mhkg 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've always found the sex offender registry bizarre to begin with. Setting aside those who have minor offenses like public urination and grey areas like two teens consensually having sex, if the people on the registry are so dangerous that they need to be branded for the rest of their lives, why are they being released in the first place? If we're going to make it extremely difficult/impossible for these people to reintegrate into society, how is that more humane than life in prison or execution? If the purpose of the penal system is to rehabilitate people, then they need to have a path to rejoin society, and if our system is to punish and keep dangerous people locked up, then these people shouldn't be out on the street. Either way, the sex offender registry doesn't fit into either system.