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Post by 912thamwuser on May 19, 2013 13:38:58 GMT -5
California has one of the most aggressive and draconian sex offender registry systems known for extreme collateral damage and doing little to stop more grave sex offenders in their tracks. An offence as petty as urinating in the bushes is punishable by lifelong sex offender registry, and thus addition to a federal no-hire list and a federal no-housing list. Simply put, California's registry doesn't know a petty bush urinator from an up-and-coming next Alexis Flores. The first reform that's needed is a tiered system, where Tier I is for relatively petty violations and Tier III is for a continuous pattern of severe sexual abuses. Also, California's sex crime system sees the only boundary between child and adult as the stroke of midnight on one's 18th birthday. The second reform that's needed is a series of staggered windows, where relations between 15/18, 16/19 and 17/20 are allowed, in order to stop punishing the more innocuous teenage lovers. Why, one might ask? California would charge an 18 year old kid with statutory rape for relations with someone a few days before their 18th birthday, and carve his name in stone on a sex offender registry, and federal no-hire and no-housing lists, and then what? Whose life would be spared? Who would be done a favor? The goal of statutory rape laws was to protect teenage youth from sexual abuses by middle-aged and far-older violators, but the law was very poorly drafted, and caused a lot of collateral damage by putting thousands of youth on those bad lists, far outweighing the effectiveness against middle-aged+ offenders. Sex offender registries in and of themselves are usually a good thing, but vague wording with such extreme side effects are not the answer. Many people who got overpunished for petty offences believe that after some high-profile kidnapping sexual murders of children, the media sensationalized the stories, but the problems at hand all started when the legislators rushed their drafting and cast a lot of relatively harmless youth out of society. Our youth should be reprimanded for having relations at such a young age, and receive health care, therapy, and counseling for the dangers they're putting solely each other into, not treated like the next up-and-coming Dennis Melvyn Howe. What I'm calling for is not just any loosening of sex offender registry laws, but a polishing of the wording so as to clean up the collateral damage side effects. Thank you.
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Post by HeadMarshal on May 19, 2013 15:20:08 GMT -5
I'm not an expert on California's system specifically, however I can comment on the overall sex offender registry system in the US. You do bring up the excellent point regarding youthful offenders and how there seems to be a one-shoe-fits-all type of punishment for curious teenagers. This is the same argument some people make about youthful narcotics users or young people who's peer(s) are caught with narcotics. It can be argued that it is too dysfunctional and costly to group all of them in the same social stigma of being serious threats to the public. Besides, the 15-24 age bracket needs skills and job opportunities to compete in the global economy, and there are times when they are unfairly designated by the law enforcement system and have to live a meaningless life.
I have brought up the stats from both the Canadian and US governments on how only boy-victim molesters and rapists have a high reoffense rate while incest and girl-victim molesters have a very low reoffense rate. This does not mean someone can post a story about a registered incest molester who sexually murdered a child and say all of them are public enemies to the good of society. That isn't proper debating. Therefore, I fail to see why the majority of the incest and girl-victim molesters even need to be on the registry in the first place. Besides, sexual abuse against young males is extremely under-reported anyway. It should also be noted that a large number of the predatory sex offenders that victimize women and children are family members or prominent figures in a community and/or the workplace, and usually don't appear on the registry anyway.
The sex offender registry got revamped starting in 2005 because of the stories of children being sexually murdered by repeat offenders. The parents of those victims have the right to be angry but that anger in part caused the state and federal legislators to rush updates to the registry without considering if the revamps would be useful. The reason why no discussion happened was because going against tougher laws for sex offenders would mean a lesser-chance of being re-elected. Besides, violent crimes between 1993-2011 steadily decreased, including rape. Another point to consider is that convicted offenders who are forced out of housing by the registry and become homeless, actually are more likely to re-offend.
I don't approve of rape and child sexual abuse. However the point of a registry is to make the public aware of offenders who pose a serious threat to society. Why have we never had public registries for paroled murderers, domestic violence abusers and other career criminals if we have gone to such lengths to make the public aware of sex offenders. This whole belief that every sex offender will have at least 100 victims is mainly baseless and not supported by federal government stats.
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Post by Scumhunter on May 20, 2013 7:46:14 GMT -5
I'm glad we have the National Sex Offender registry as a whole and it does keep children safer but there are some parts of I'd like to see improved. There's a huge difference between an 18-year old convicted of statutory rape and a 35-year old convicted molester of little boys or girls.
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