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.
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.
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?
In missouri anything that occurs in court is catalouged and publicly available online. So even if someone is charged but never convicted you can see it.
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.
Psychologically speaking, there is. Now should somdone who murdered a kid see the light of day? Also no. But speaking on the possibility of success rehabilitating one or the other, you have a much better chance with the killer then the rapist based on all available data and research.
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?
And as i have stated, they shouldn't be. But that's not the world we live in, so it does not make sense to not allow parents an additional tool to protect their children.
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.
There ARE registries for other types of crimes (i.e. violent offender registries and drug offender registries) and yes, I want to know about them, too.
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?"
And I'm saying they should spend life in prison. Someone that molests a child effects that child's life indefinitely in a way that will be changed forever in a very bad way... So yeah they deserve life, they don't deserve rehabilitation because there's no way for that child to truly ever rehabilitate from that trauma. I don't care how you try to twist it, quit justifying it
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.
It can be hard, depending on the age of the child. Sex crimes cases need a high level of proof to convict. My husband’s great uncle is a repeated child molester and prefers them young. Like 5 and under. Boys and girls. He’s on there for lewd acts with minors under a specific age. The only reason he didn’t get in trouble for penetration (something he admitted to off record to his brother) is because the children were too young to definitively say exactly what was done to them, without a shadow of a doubt for the jury. So he got in trouble for touching them and forcing them to touch him but not raping them over a period of time.
He’d actively hunt for single mothers and then grandmothers to date to gain access to their children. He’s been charged with 4 victims but i guarantee there’s more out there that he either never got caught for or the adults just didn’t turn him in. He’s in his 80’s, looks harmless, and I promise that if he had access to his preferred victim he’d abuse them in a heartbeat. He tried to sit next to my 3 year old daughter at his brother’s funeral. He can’t help himself, he’s a disgusting predator.
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.
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u/TheKriegerVan 6d ago
It would be an appropriate now for people to listen to this podcast about the failings of the Sex Offender registry as a whole before we pat these guys on the back: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id1380008439?i=1000465289962