The Sex Offender's list

[BFizzle]

While I get the intent, the system is a hot fucking mess. On one episode of True Life that I saw, the guy was 18 and the girl was 16 and he's in the system for life because her consenting ass reported him after they broke up. It's bonk.

 

[Telstra]

I grew up in the town where Megan's Law originated. In 1994, seven year old Megan Kanka and her family lived across the street from Jesse Timmendequas, a convicted sex offender. Timmendequas kidnapped, raped and murdered little Megan. Had her family known that a sexual predator lived in the neighborhood, they could have ensured their daughter stayed away from him, or so the argument goes.

There are several levels of sex offender each requiring a different level of notification. Neighbors aren't aware of the presence of a sex offender in every instance. The problem with the law, is that people are now sex offenders who wouldn't have been 20 years ago. For example, someone who runs naked across a school campus would now be a sex offender. Someone urinating in the woods who is observed by a child can be considered a sex offender. These are obvious flaws in the law.

Yeah, some people want less government control and want more government control.
What an irony. And some law in the US is so stupid that is embarrassing.

 

[Telstra]

While I get the intent, the system is a hot fucking mess. On one episode of True Life that I saw, the guy was 18 and the girl was 16 and he's in the system for life because her consenting ass reported him after they broke up. It's bonk.

Thats another example of a stupid law gone mad.
The judges should go to jail for that.

 

[Kulindahr]

In my area, the city mails a picture, name, address, and description of the offense of sex offenders that move within a certain distance of your neighborhood. I personally don't care for it, being the single male with no kids. I just throw them in the trash. And in all likelihood the person has served their time and are just trying to get back on their feet. I mean, if society wants to make it impossible for them to function normally in society again, even after serving their sentence, then why not just keep them in prison forever or use capital punishment?

To be fair, I cannot personally view this from a parent's perspective. But still, this system seems to be at odds with itself.

Yes -- it causes real offenders who are trying to control themselves to give up, because jail is better than outside, and to re-offend to get back there.

Interestingly, of all crimes, sex offenders are the second least likely to commit the crime again. Setting them up to fail is crazy.

BTW, a sex offender case made it to the Supreme Court last year, and Scalia lied about the information in a Justice Department report to support his position.

 

[Kulindahr]

While I get the intent, the system is a hot fucking mess. On one episode of True Life that I saw, the guy was 18 and the girl was 16 and he's in the system for life because her consenting ass reported him after they broke up. It's bonk.

That's extremely common, even when state law has a "three-year rule". Another common one is a mother finds out her underage daughter is having sex and accuses the boyfriend. That the girlfriend denies it is actually (I kid you not) taken as proof that it wasn't consenting.

Then there are the rape cases that never happened. I know of two; one is here locally, where the gal actually brags about having sent a guy to prison that she never even kissed! But her statements like that aren't admissible, even if caught on tape, so he's stuck with this for life.

 

[Asenath]

Then there are the rape cases that never happened. I know of two; one is here locally, where the gal actually brags about having sent a guy to prison that she never even kissed! But her statements like that aren't admissible, even if caught on tape, so he's stuck with this for life.

I find the last situation hard to believe. Women don't false report rape, the statistics say somewhere between 2% and 6% of all accusations are false, and that includes the ones where the women recant under pressure. (And not necessarily from the accused, either. I had a friend who was raped, and the police officers did not believe her because she was fat and they refused to believe the rapist could force someone 'her size' against her will. Law enforcement and prosecutors will disregard women's reports out of hand, if they believe they're not a good candidate for prosecution. That's why somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of sexual assaults against women go unreported and an even smaller number of those reported go to trial.)

 

[Level27]

Asenath, with the most upright respect, I would infer that you live in a neighborhood with a great level of the benefit of the doubt; because all of those reports at the other end of innocent "sex offenders" who went to jail for a crime they didn't commit and then branded for life, even killed by idiot vigilantes (like what I brought up earlier), are not un-real neither.


I think everyone who has replied in this thread so far agrees that the bottom line is, much of what the registry is, what it does, and who uses its info is shits. Rest assured, like the silly, nonsensed yet horrid tales of people being burned or having their heads severed, so too will the registry be mentioned in future high-school history textbooks; the story will be mentioned hand-in-hand the historical period when kids who wrote with their left hands got their left hands chopped off.

 

[Kulindahr]

I find the last situation hard to believe. Women don't false report rape, the statistics say somewhere between 2% and 6% of all accusations are false, and that includes the ones where the women recant under pressure. (And not necessarily from the accused, either. I had a friend who was raped, and the police officers did not believe her because she was fat and they refused to believe the rapist could force someone 'her size' against her will. Law enforcement and prosecutors will disregard women's reports out of hand, if they believe they're not a good candidate for prosecution. That's why somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of sexual assaults against women go unreported and an even smaller number of those reported go to trial.)

It was an easy conviction. She had a clear story, her friends said they'd either witnessed it or comforted her in the aftermath, and there was supposedly forensic evidence. And with the sex offender law, prosecutors pursue every case with anything resembling evidence, because the moment "sex offender" is mentioned, a jury is already nearly won over, and win or lose, the D.A. has fuel for campaign for further office. The mere allegation of a sex offense now will get you thirty days in jail while the judge decides if you're a flight risk, and then sets a minimum mandated bail of fifty thousand dollars or so, and if the powers that be decide there's not enough to prosecute, your life is already ruined. And then the cops will watch you like a hawk, looking for any new excuse to throw you in jail again -- so next time they can come up with a sex charge, they'll have all those arrests to point out to the jury... because being arrested means you're a criminal, right?