Extremely harsh laws branding and shaming sex offenders for life seem very easy for politicans to pass, and wildly popular. Once they're passed, as the article noted, it's hard to imagine anyone mustering the political willpower to strike them down.
From the perspective of someone pretty young - why are these laws being instituted now, instead of, say, a hundred years ago? What's changed? Is it simply a matter of finally having enough central organization to actually effectively track and monitor them?
Is it possible that one thing that has changed is the media/entertainment world?
Most of what people know about people who commit sex crimes comes from movies and the evening news, and is not representative of the vast majority (90%+ ?) of people who end up on these lists.
Same with people in prison. People imagine that it's a bunch of murderers and career criminals, while it's mostly pot smokers and non-violent offenders.
That is a major factor; our communications technology does not immunize us from moral panics - if anything it can amplify them.
I wouldn't say 'most' prisoners are pot smokers or non-violent, although I think too many of the former are in prison. In California I think the rate of imprisonment for drug violations is about 20% - don't have time to looking up the stats now. That's not as high as people imagine, and of course many of those people are gangbangers or suchlike rather than hippies who were smoking peacefully on a mountaintop and suddenly got arrested.
But you have to factor in 3 strikes and so on as well. Unfortunately more people will vote for 'throw away the key!' than 'study and rehabilitiate!', and California has a very powerful prison officer's union which always heavily supports law-and-order legislation and ballot initiatives.
Although I too found this article very interesting, I do have to question if it really passes the HN smell test...the kind of policy questions under discussion here are not really amenable to technical solutions. No flag, but I urge you to be a bit more selective.
Citation needed. Here, let me Google "prison recidivism non-violent" for you -- a 1997 study which suggests that only about 15% of nonviolent offenders are returned to prison within three years for violent offenses [PDF]:
I suppose it's no surprise that people too lazy to use a search engine would also avoid putting in the effort to click through to the results, when it's so, so much easy just to reach for the downmod arrow. Sigh...
This from the ACLU article:
"In 1998, people convicted of drug offenses constituted almost one-fourth of state prison inmates and over half of the inmates in federal prison. While African Americans reportedly make up 13% of the nation's drug users, they are almost 60% of those in state prisons for drug felonies. "
And this the VERY OPENING of the Atlantic article:
"Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers"
Lmgtfy is kind of snarky, which is why I suspect you're getting downmodded.
Anyways, what exactly are you inferring from this? That those who commit drug felonies are not violent offenders? Even if that were true, your "citations" still don't support the assertion of the gp that "Most people are in prison for pot-smoking and non-violent offenses".
Well, it is an article by a journalist. While I tend to believe this statement I would want to see some hard numbers before committing myself to things like policy decisions (or even going to some sort of protests).
I have friends and family who have worked in minimum security prisons, and they are certainly not what most people imagine nor do they house the types of criminals most people think of when they think of the prison population.
Regarding medium security prisons, I believe you completely.
I've been in minimum security prisons and medium security prisons and just the difference in policies for visitors for the two are vastly different.
The policy that really struck me was that in the medium security prison, chewing gum was contraband for prisoners and visitors (IIRC it was actually a maximum of ~$1000 for bringing in a pack of gum). The reason for this is that the prisoners can use it to clone a key or jam a lock open, which meant potential escape of violent prisoners from secure areas. The staff actually have to check every lock before they insert a key (it jams the pins in the right position, allowing them to insert something as simple as a plastic knife and they're able to open the lock).
Minimum security never had that restriction, it's generally run on an honour system. The prisoners in there have all committed non-violent crimes, and generally they were more polite and respectful than people in the general public. At least that was my experience, there was a lot of polite people in the medium security, but the guards required a 10ft distance between prisoners and visitors at all times, just in case.
Note that the statistics only count the most serious of the offenses for which the person was sentenced, which means that some of the violent offenders may have also been charged with drug crimes.
Suppose every violent crime has a sentence of one year, and every drug crime a sentence of five years. You'll retain drug inmates and lose violent inmates, quickly yielding a situation in which there are more drug inmates than violent inmates.
(This is simply to demonstrate a logical contradiction in your proposed evidence, and is not intended to make a factual argument.)
It's not kosher to complain about a downvote, but this is a logically sound and complete demonstration of why the evidence posted above doesn't actually support the purported claim. It indicates, yes, but it is in no way, shape, or fashion proof. I'm not sure how a correction is liable for downvotes.
If so I'd have to dispute it. I do think the U.S. imprisons too many people for drug charges but I also think China and Russia have a lot of people imprisoned "off the books". Also keep in mind the statistics don't tell the whole story. We all know Russia doles out a lot of punishment via hit squad and China, who won't release their capital punishment numbers, admits to executing more people than any other country on earth (though not per capita thanks to Iran)
If China has fewer people in prison because the execute far more people than your argument isn't really a valid one
China executes at most a rounding error of the US prison population. 2005's high of 10,000 is less than half a percent of the current US prison population, and they would need to have been performing at that high for seventy years to hit the US population. Furthermore, they have a billion extra people! Nowhere close to the American rate(!) of imprisonment. (They'd need approximately five times as many their official imprisonment rate 'off the books' to equal US.)
Media is not the key. In fact, we can't change the media/entertainment world, but change perception of things in our society.
For example, a guy which has once visited a prostitute in his life is not a sexual offender. At least for me.
That said, it's a priority to set levels of "punishment" (like appearing on a public list that after becomes an iPhone app, and after all your neighbors know that you appear in a sexual offender list, when it's just some stupidity you did some day).
On another side, I find that the consensual sex ages may be a bit high. For example, 'we' (DISCLAIMER: I'm a 15y guy) do it around 14-16, not 16-18. And, why consider that like a crime, or something bad? (hey, we do have fun in secure ways, just avoid any unneeded intervention in it)
We need to get people to stop believing that 'tv == realism.' Watching "Law & Order" doesn't make you a legal expert. Watching "The Sopranos" doesn't mean that you know all about the mob. There are people that believe this though. Statements like, "the revolution will not be televised" are a reflection of this tendency in our society.
It's not just that the media has changed, there's much, much more of it. The problem with 24-hour news channels is they are 24 hours. Even if there's no real news to report, they have to talk about something. Hence they go in an entertainment direction, or harp on things that people have an emotional response to that is not in balance with the actual risk - such as child molesters.
The number of children that are sexually abused/kidnapped/murdered by complete strangers PALES in comparison to the number of children that are abused/kidnapped/murdered by family members/close friends/teachers/etc.
Yet people go all ga-ga about guy in the beat-up car trolling through residential neighborhoods to entice kids into his car with promises of candy. This image is largely a modern-day boogie-man. It does happen, and it is a tragedy. But there are MORE children that are raped by a parent/sibling/babysitter than there are by complete strangers.
Which is fine if you're considering general law making - the thing is that it doesn't matter one hoot to a parent, Ms. Dugar's mother say, that the chance of a car stopping at the side of the road and snatching your child is vanishingly small. If it happens at all it happens too often.
It's no comfort to know if you've been incarcerated for years with the threat of sexual abuse, torture or death hanging over you that very few people get kidnapped really.
It does matter to a parent, because parents (and people in general) should worry about things in proportion to their likelihood to happen and their impact. But we are irrational creatures, and we don't.
As a father, I can say that if someone moves in near me and they're a registered sex offender, I hope to know about it. I don't care how minuscule the crime is, the possibility of repeat offenses or misbehavior is too high to risk it.
"Is the punishment too harsh" is purely subjective, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but any inappropriate behavior around children (impressionable, gullible, naive) should be punished. If a person shows that kind of poor judgment they should suffer the consequences of their actions.
EDIT: A lot of this has to do with parenting practices and their responsibility in all of this as well.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but not trusting people until they've earned it has kept me out of more situations than the hassle it might have caused.
It's depressing we don't value our youth more honestly.
This is also not really related to HN, I expect to find this on digg/reddit/slash., but here?
EDIT: To the reply about the 15 year old giving a blowjob to a classmate, read the subjective part again, sometimes the punishment doesn't fit the crime, especially when you consider two minors, I'm addressing the adult indecent behavior, not the minors with minors, that's a parenting problem in my eyes.
> EDIT: To the reply about the 15 year old giving a blowjob to a classmate, read the subjective part again, sometimes the punishment doesn't fit the crime, especially when you consider two minors, I'm addressing the adult indecent behavior, not the minors with minors, that's a parenting problem in my eyes.
The problem is that you're not addressing 'adults with indecent behavior.' And even then, what is 'indecent behavior?' Pissing on a wall when you're drunk? Are you really and truly afraid of that person molesting your child? If so then you have serious issues...
> I hope to know about it. I don't care how minuscule the crime is, the possibility of repeat offenses or misbehavior is too high to risk it.
This right here says that you're not concerned with 'is the punishment too harsh.' "I don't care how minuscule the crime is," says that you don't give a shit about people that were too harshly punished. You would rather just brand people as 'good' or 'bad' and then avoid the 'bad' people. Sorry, but the world doesn't work that way. There are many shades of gray.
> any inappropriate behavior around children (impressionable, gullible, naive) should be punished.
The problem is that 'inappropriate' is subjective too. You're saying that the harshness of the punishment is subjective, so it can be ignored, but the 'inappropriateness' of the crime is paramount... only that's also a subjective measure.
> If a person shows that kind of poor judgment they should suffer the consequences of their actions.
So a person that pissed on a wall should have all of society treat him exactly the same as a person that spent a lifetime raping 7 year olds. Not only that, but someone that was 18 and had sex with someone that was 17 years old should be treated the same as someone that kidnaps 12 year olds and tortures them to death... You're a pretty vicious person.
{edit} Just to add, that someone that was convicted of raping a woman isn't necessarily a 'danger' to your child either. Even the people that 'deserve' to be on the sex offender list aren't necessarily all there for the same reason. {/edit}
I'd like evidence of someone pissing on a wall and getting on the list, first and foremost.
I'm not sure but I thought sex offender registries displayed the cause of the crime, which will allow you to judge if it could really be a threat, it's implied to me that if they're on the list, that some sort of reason will be listed, if this is not the case, it definitely needs to be there if people are going to be put on it for "pissing on a wall".
Also, I addressed the issue with minors earlier, don't rehash it out of context, obviously there are flaws when an 18 year old has sex with a 17 year old and gets put on the list, but like I said in other replies and posts, I'm not addressing that because it IS obviously flawed.
Just because I would like to know and believe I have a right to know, doesn't make me a vicious person, I've stated multiple times that I wouldn't keep my children in that situation, not that I would grab a pitchfork and be at their door screaming for blood and retribution, I wouldn't even have to confront them or make it known, I would just be leaving the situation, they can live their life.
>The problem is that 'inappropriate' is subjective too. You're saying that the harshness of the punishment is subjective, so it can be ignored, but the 'inappropriateness' of the crime is paramount... only that's also a subjective measure.
I'm pretty sure there is not a lot of gray area with the serious crimes. It's pretty easy to tell if someone acts inappropriately towards a minor, though I can see how even this can be abused, mainly by older looking teens lying about their age.
The law obviously has flaws, but without public records clearly stating the case and cause of them being registered to that list, I think it's still better to err on the side of caution when children are involved. Maybe it's because I'm a parent now and it's my responsibility to see to their well being and I want to be extra careful that I don't put them in a bad situation out of ignorance.
edit: Someone who was wholly convicted of rape, deserves to be on the list for the safety of single women who live alone, that is a fairly black and white situation depending on the ratio of false positives is now, with DNA testing it seems to be far less.
> Also, I addressed the issue with minors earlier, don't rehash it out of context, obviously there are flaws when an 18 year old has sex with a 17 year old and gets put on the list, but like I said in other replies and posts, I'm not addressing that because it IS obviously flawed.
I purposely used an 18 year old because an 18 year old isn't a minor. But we have this 'hard line' where a person having sex with someone even a month younger than them qualifies the same as a 40 year old raping a 7 year old.
> edit: Someone who was wholly convicted of rape, deserves to be on the list for the safety of single women who live alone, that is a fairly black and white situation depending on the ratio of false positives is now, with DNA testing it seems to be far less.
My point wasn't that they don't deserve to be on the list. It was that even among people that deserve to be on the list, there is wide variation of motives and the demographic that they are dangerous too.
I can see your point, and maybe I was misunderstanding the entire purpose of the discussion, I definitely think the law is playing on peoples fears and catering to them. Also that it's setup to typecast people as a group when as you did say, it's not that black and white and more refining is needing instead of more blacklisting.
Maybe I subscribe to some of that fear honestly, I kept going back to in my head: "What if the list went away completely?" instead of realizing it's not an all or nothing thing, and really needs work to be able to function as it should instead of just adding more to it, thus increasing confusion and destroying innocent peoples lives.
I would delete or retract my posts, but I feel the discussion was educational so I might as well leave them alone, thanks for the insight, definitely gave me food for thought on my own behavior.
I'm sorry to beat a dead horse, but I had a couple of arguments against your initial post that I still find valid, and that haven't been made yet. So please, pardon my late and probably obsolete commentary. My points are two:
1) While you were arguing for the 'safety of your children,' you don't see that the only threat against your children is being abused by the neighbours. They could just as easily be abused by the state. Given your (hypothetical) 15-year old daughter posts nude pictures of herself on the Net (as it is pretty common, I hear) your (hypothetical) 18-year old son decides to have sex with a 16-year old class or school mate or any other relatively innocent action. You would consider the first a 'parenting problem' I guess, but not the police officer/judge. They would put your children on this list, and that's were their names will always be. Googleable, on the list. Is this protecting your children? Maybe they won't be raped, but they will carry a mark of shame — their entire life long.
2) As a European, I am so totally shocked at how Americans can villify people on the sole basis on their past. Say, a person has some sort of mental disorder, or any other kind of illness or social circumstance that played a large part of their decision in, say, raping a woman. They've been to jail now, they're on meds now, they're trying to immerse into society. Trying to be normal people. The sex-offender list is the best way to prohibit just that. They won't get a flat in a decent neighbourhood, they will have a hard time finding a job. But without these two premises, how they ever going to change? Living in a shoddy neighbourhood, working on a shoddy job, how are you going to not believe that you are a social outcast, that this society has done nothing for you, and you owe it nothing in return? In essence: this will make rehabilitation for them somuchharder. Thus, instead of becoming functional members of society, they stay sick; maybe their mental disorder will grow worse, and then they're not a time bomb in your neighbourhood. They're off the leash in your entire town.
The key to safety is rehabilitation of ex-criminals, and making them feel like a member of society again. Not demonizing them and putting them on a social landfill.
so the girl in the article who gave a blowjob when she was 15 to a guy in her class...you think its appropriate now that she is 30 that everywhere she moves she has to announce that she's a sex offender? come on, that's ridiculous.
If we are putting sex offender registries online, lets put all criminal registries online as well. I should know if I live next to people with drug habits, right?
As a father, I can say that if someone moves in near me and they're a registered sex offender, I hope to know about it.
Why stop at sex offenders? I want a table-driven foodar that detects individuals who meet my filtering criteria and alerts me of their proximity as soon as possible.
Because if someone is for instance, a thief, and he steals something from me, I can handle that. If someone is indecent with my child, it's more than just a "thing". If someone's out on parole from a murder sentence (not man-slaughter based on hitting someone while drunk, et cetera) then yes, I would kind of want to know what kind of danger I'm living near so I can move.
Respectfully, your post/edit pattern in this thread exemplifies the problem of people voting for things before thinking through the likely ramifications. When this happens, it tends to be pretty harsh on the people who have to live with the consequences of poor decision-making.
Indeed, half the time I was editing was because I for a while I didn't get why the reply function wasn't offered to some posts, figured that out later on ;)
But yes, definitely ill-thought out by myself, and largely misunderstood the topic at hand, it's good though, I learned from it, and pyre made some very good points.
-A lot of the people on these registers are not considered dangerous (people who had consensual sex as teenagers)
-There's no evidence that these public registers reduce the risk.
-They ruin the lives of many people.
We don't believe in teaching science in the US, so it's no surprise that questions like "does this law have any effect" are never raised by politicians.
Democracy is a good idea when everyone is educated. When they're not, well, welcome to America.
How about evidence I can personally vouch for? My brother and his wife bought a new home and started making friends with their neighbors, a week or two pass and my sister-in-law finds out their next door neighbor is on a sex offender list, pretty good idea to keep an even closer eye on her two children wouldn't you think?
I don't care what the crime is, fix the law to judge youth's interaction with each other, but if you even expose yourself to a minor, you have shown horrible judgment and deserve the hassle. Again, this is why it's subjective, you see it as ruining that persons life, I see it as scarring a child or possibly worse for life.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I think the list is too big and has too much pointless things on it (like another poster's example of a drunk person relieving himself on a wall), but that's the judge's fault, not the lists fault, the list serves a very real purpose, though the ones passing judgment could use some common sense.
So you propose making a smaller list covering all the people who committed actually-serious sex crimes and who might pose a significant risk to the public?
If they really have such a high chance of recidivism, then why would you offload that risk onto parents instead of the system? Why not keep them in prison forever, if they can't be successfully rehabilitated?
I don't understand the place for a grey area of "person X is so dangerous he should be ostracized and branded so that people can steer clear of him, but person X is not dangerous enough to imprison him."
(Also, we must have very different definitions of "evidence." When you cite a sex offender neighbor who hasn't apparently done you or your family any harm, but who you've put on a mental blacklist because of the registry, that does not sound like evidence that the registry is helping anyone.)
Too many lists and then everything is saturated, no I don't propose that. I propose common sense when a sentence is being dealt.
On the real hardcore criminals, I didn't say I didn't want them in prison, rape and harming a child are horrible, horrible things, if they're going to be released from prison though, they should suffer consequences of their actions, I don't care if they choose to move in near me, but I will be packing my bags if I deem the threat too high. Notice I didn't say I would be knocking on their door asking them to move, I would take action to get out of the bad situation myself, this doesn't affect them.
EDIT: Yes, I will mentally, and willingly blacklist someone if they're on a sex offenders list. If I know what the crime is, I can adjust this blacklisting accordingly, but there is no reason I should be care-free when I have children at home and know there is a possibility, no matter how small or "rehabilitated" the chances.
"Too many lists and then everything is saturated, no I don't propose that. I propose common sense when a sentence is being dealt."
That's the whole point of the article. Common sense wen't out the window because there's an arms race among politicians; everybody wants to look tougher than the others on sex crimes, and nobody dares criticize the system because "the attack ads write themselves".
So we have tons of people who had consensual sex or urinated in public that can't live within "1000 yards of a school, park, library, bus stop, playground, etc" and can't find jobs. Not to mention that they become the victims of harassment and vigilantism.
I can see your point, and can't say I disagree with you, what worries me is that we'll swing too far back in the opposite direction the same way we went into a panic and went overboard with the law.
I can see where I misunderstood the point being presented though.
I think the risks of "going overboard in the other direction" are very very small.
It will take a miracle (and tons of political courage) just to get something a bit saner, so I don't see how a total 180 degrees could be even possible.
Have no fear, real violent sex offenders won't become popular any time soon.
Not necessarily. In some states, you are mandated to be added to the registry for certain crimes.
If you really believe that the sex offender list is too large, then what are you doing to rectify this? Are you calling/writing your local/state legislature? If not then you are willingly ostracizing a group of people based on a premise that you know is faulty (that everyone, or even most people on the sex offender list are dangerous) because you "don't have the time" to be bothered to help those people out. One of the evils that abounds in our society is the indifference of 'good men.'
Good point about the mandated law, I forgot about that/didn't realize it, so I retract the statement about the judge's fault.
I honestly have never looked in detail at the sex offenders list or the law surrounding it, I can say that when my brother told me about his neighbor I made the comment that I didn't feel we should judge him solely on that since it's easy to get convicted and put on that list wrongly, but that a little caution is in order to err on the side of safety.
And you're right, complaining about it on HN instead of writing the state officials is definitely not the productive way to handle it, but this is also the first time I've had to really THINK about the law in detail. I can see why the law would need to be adjusted to actually better protect people instead of blacklisting whenever remotely possible.
I'm not personally attacking you, but that's the point of the articles. According the Georgia law (the blow job example), that woman is on the sex offender list and her offense is listed as "sodomy". Georgia's creative definition pretty much causes that woman to be on the receiving end of a lot of reactionary hatred and possibly puts her in danger, because people have no idea what her actual "crime" was. A lot of people don't think beyond hearing "sex offender" and "children".
There's a constant climate of fear concerning sexual crimes, especially ones that involve children, that are making us do very irrational things to feel safer.
Also, I appreciate your commentary on your personal feelings about this issue. It's a complex issue and I think some of the down-votes might've been a bit too hasty.
So now your sister in law is suspicious of her neighbor and likely uncomfortable about her living situation. Her kids will likely lose freedom and probably be restricted to more inside play time. Running background checks on everyone you come in contact with doesn't make you safer, it just makes you more paranoid.
"background checks .. [don't] make you safer, [...] more paranoid"
That will be true in most cases, but not all. Some people revealed in a background check will pose a significant risk and indeed some criminals who would have appeared in a local register have reoffended (sex crimes and otherwise) and killed, raped, mutilated, etc..
If a check reveals no known risks, would that make you paranoid? I suspect not. If it reveals only one of your neighbours was convicted of a sexual offence, you check the court records and find that the offence was underage sex when they were a minor - wouldn't that assuage your fears somewhat?
Knowledge is power but you do have to use it wisely.
Backyards are a great thing, no she doesn't spend her life living in fear, and neither do I, you take the information and make some adjustments to account for it. You don't have to let fear rule you to still be careful. You still should exercise responsibility when raising children though and not put them possibly in harms way, only slight adjustments are needed and they still interact with their neighbor just fine.
From the perspective of someone pretty young - why are these laws being instituted now, instead of, say, a hundred years ago? What's changed? Is it simply a matter of finally having enough central organization to actually effectively track and monitor them?