Sex registries are not just for perverts anymore
This is an interesting essay on the concept of sex registries and how what most people would consider innocent acts could land you on one. And given how the easiest way for a woman to get back at a man is to cry rape (just look at the Duke lacrosse team), whatever good they do is becoming clouded by the negative. What should those guys in Florida do who are on a registry and aren’t allowed to find a place to live?
Could You End Up on a Sex Offender Registry?
Lately I’ve been wondering if I’ll end up on the sex offender registry. Not because I have any intention of harming anyone, but because it has recently come to my attention that in a flurry of joie de vivre I might have broken a sex law.
You see, I keep hearing these stories of mild infractions that led to listing on the sex-offender registry alongside child molesters, rapists and abusive spouses. There’s the girl who bared her ass out a bus window in college and pled guilty to indecent exposure — and then couldn’t become an elementary school teacher because of her sex offense. Then there’s the guy who peed on a bush in a park and was convicted of public lewdness, a sex offender because he couldn’t find a bathroom.
I suspect these are urban legends that have yet to appear on Snopes. At best, they must be misunderstandings of what actually happened. We can’t really be that stupid, can we?
But then I remember that substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for … well, no one is really sure what for anymore, but it has to do with pornographic pop-ups appearing on the classroom computer and whether she did enough to protect the children. (She is scheduled to be sentenced on April 26.)
That she was charged with a crime at all is just as ridiculous as branding a college student a “sex offender” simply for being nakedly obnoxious.
Or if two 17 year olds have sex, they are both considered sex offenders if they are caught. Pretty antiquated laws.
Overboard, you mean Balance, you actually expect Americans to balance their thinking? Our thinking is so compartmentalize we don’t need to balance our thinking! The very act of thinking involves balancing and contrasting facts with data. We have TV and people in authority to think for us, let the experts think for us!
We have commercials telling us all the time, we can have it all. What do we need balance for. We compartmentalize our thinking to what the commercial is telling us, and ignore reality.
We despise politicians for thinking balance, more commonly referred to a compromise, no balance.
Doctors forced to maintain a brain dead on life-support because the family can’t face reality, again no balance.
We can’t understand where our body fat is coming from, we want our food more abundantly and not have to exercise, again no balance.
We invent our own War in IRAQ because we don’t want contrary information or thinking to dissuade us from what we want or feel we deserve, again no balance.
We have to do more then just keep up with the Jones down the street, we want to be better, again no balance.
Last night PBS showed a man convicted by a jury in a Federal entrapment scam, again no balance. The case was shown before the jury in a compartmentalized manner by the government showing only what the government wanted to show and the jury convicted.
I guarantee anyone can convicted if we compartmentalize their life, give the appropriate patriotic speech
we’ve had corporate scandals of CEO maximizing shareholder value, laid off 1000 of employees, later being convicted of fraud, again no balance.
I am sure I could keep on going. My point is we are not the America our founder envisioned, a country of checks and balance. Instead America is becoming a zero tolerance, totalitarian state.
We are approaching country not unlike shown in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (satire of McCarthysim paranoia).
And plz now you ask Have We Gone Overboard With Sex Registries?
The article was interesting but never actually addressed the issue which is apparent when you start looking at the various systems that highlight local sex offenders. Most are convicted of lewd behavior with a minor. What does that mean? And how does the writer of that article, after talking to the police explain this joker I found locally who was on the registry for oral copulation? This was a random flag I clicked on to see if the article was accurate. This isn’t about the sex registry, it’s about the tendency to criminalize everything we do in some way or another. Everything is a crime. And everyone is a criminal you just need to be caught. It’s a pure Soviet style of government we have developed. Exactly how this matches the ideals of conservatism is baffling.
I want to know where the out-and-out rapists and murderers are and I don’t want the map cluttered by these guys. Who cares about him? So what?
Only in America…
This really needs to be looked at. Felon sex crimes like rape, crimes against children, etc I can see.
Why do we care about indecent exposure, or soliciting, or what consenting adults do in private? If we label everyone a sex offender, the stigma of the label wears off.
We elect public officials with a “Tough on Crime” stance. And then they are tough on crime.
No prosecutor will ever be elected or appointed that calls for the brotherhood of man, forgiveness and innocent until proven guilty.
Those vicious bastards! Good thing I tested the linkz…
If you don’t know how to reach the individual records those links point to, do this:
Click on one of them & the offender site opens in a new window;
Then switch back to this window and click on the link. When you close that window, you should be back here, so click the next;
And so on… (with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut for borrowing his phrase)
…until you’ve had your fill of those lovely representatives of sunny Florida.
How come Wired mag and Dvorak civil libertarians never actually quote details from the Julie Amero case? From everything I’ve read, it really is a “where there’s smoke” case. Maybe she doesn’t deserve 40 years, but all this “innocent victim of popup” crap sure doesn’t disguise the need for some kind of court-mandated intervention, confinement, and treatment. Find another poster-girl.
yeah right
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=9366
I discussed the epidemic of sexual predators with a friend who told me a story of a man he worked with that was faced with likely jail time or accepting a plea bargain for exposure to a 4 year old girl.
The testimony was the now 6 year old, at the urging of the childs mother, against a former relative.
The man had lost almost everything he had, paying for legal representation. The DA told the man that the city would take the case to trial, even though the only testimony was based on a 2 year old memory of the now 6 year old. The man accepted the plea bargain out of fear for his current family’s welfare.
Welcome to Texas. Land of the free to go to jail, home of the broke.
Turns out the DA was using these cases to PROVE he was fighting for childrens welfare in his reelection campaign.
The lawyer going after the Duke LaCrosse players was only the tip of the iceburg in my opinion.
I have no respect for any lawyers.
Or any politicians.
Especially lawyers who are politicians.
They are as bad as child sexual predators.
They ruin lives and brag about it.
# 7, Good Grief, Lauren, those are some bad dudes. But check out some who were actually cleared by DNA evidence in Texas.
12th Texas prisoner cleared by DNA:
http://tinyurl.com/yoyd32
Innocent, and yet: “He began seeking DNA testing in 1989. Since his parole, he has had to register as a sex offender, but his lawyers are trying to get that requirement lifted.”
All morality or ethics aside — over-registration is a strategic mistake.
It’s like those minuscule DWI limits or broad racial profiling… if you get too many people in the system, you’re surely going to lose track of the really bad guys.
Many years ago, I audited the security of a government-run Sex Offender Registry. The computer was in a little room with an unlocked door and that was the extent of the security. Typical!
I asked what it took to get entered into this computer as a “sex offender” and I was told that even the suspicion of being a sex offender would get you entered into the system. You didn’t need to be convicted of anything. “Really?” I asked. “Yeah, really,” they told me.
If it was reported to anyone official, anywhere, a person would automatically be entered and they might not even be told they had been entered.
I pointed out my mother used to beat my ass when I was young and evil and I asked if she was likely to be recorded in their Registry. “Yes”, they said. “If someone reported it to anyone, that would do it.”
This questionable Registry, which has since been expanded, is not what freaked me out. It was the deadly seriousness of the keepers of the registry that really and truly gave me the creeps. They are scary people.
FORCED CASTRATION
thats the only solution for all dumb americans.
Heck, just castrate’em all…
I generally agree with John’s point. To be on a sex offender registry, one should have to have engaged in a crime of a sexual nature. Mooning someone or peeing on a bush, while perhaps legitimately indecent exposure, are not sexual acts and those guilty of this “version” of indecent exposure should not be lumped in with child molesters and rapists. They certainly should not have their life ruined by being prohibited from careers or places to live because of what could well be a youthful mistake.