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Megan's Laws - Out of Control?
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It's a state by state thing. Some are more lenient or capable of striking things from the record.
It's also funny to me (in a sad way) that at the federal level, Megan's law sort of took over Wetterling despite the intrinsic ideas behind the proponents of the two being exactly opposite.
Right, and we need that information why, exactly? I've never felt the need to know if every guy who moved into my building had a conviction for any other offense, but apparently with sex offenders that's important information. How else are we to ostracize them properly?
Private lists are a slightly better idea, but I would still argue that it's dumb to keep a list of "probable" criminals around, because that can only pollute an investigation. If someone's a suspect fine, check them out, and you'll find out pretty quickly what their record is.
edit: there is also a pretty big difference between supervised parole of possible recidivists (reasonable) and a sex offender registry.
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
Background checks are great for big things, like permanent employment. If you're dealing with some one on a shorter basis, or especially as more and more things become outsourced and you may not be the one directly hiring the folks who work for you, background checks become costly and unwieldy.
Honestly, I'm not sure.
I think that there is value to having it be public, but there are also huge risks that NEED to be mitigated if it is going to be public.
One solution is to make it less public, I'm not sure exactly how to go about that, while still making it useful, but no one has hired me to figure that out, so I'm okay with not having an answer.
Another solution could be done with a "Marl of Cain" style enforcement deterrent, where you create harsher penalties for vigilantes who go after sex offenders. Unfortunately, I think the emotional angle would end up seeing folks ignore this in sentencing (or even arrest), but I think it's an interesting angle to consider academically.
Unless you can somehow make it invisible to all but the most pure of heart, the only thing I can think of is notifying people of the presence of sex offenders in a certain radius without giving away any names. Provided people are too lazy to go on a witchhunt, it would let people know that they should be careful without violating privacy.
Really though, people should be careful by default.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Well, you could set in up in a way where you would have to query a name, instead of having it a complete open list. That would make it more difficult for vigilantes to just pick names off a list to hunt down, but I'm not sure it is really all that protective in the end, and it also would make it a bit more difficult to use.
I dunno
How would that work? One day you would receive a letter in the mail reading, "A sex offender is living within 1000 yards of your residence." Why, then you would just look for anyone who has recently moved into the neighborhood and there's your sex offender. That's a boring witch hunt!
Doesn't any argument you can make in favor just lead to keeping a registry of all criminals, ever (or at least, most of them?)
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
We didn't learn our lesson after blacklisting the communists and the homosexuals a couple decades ago, maybe? It's tradition to make up lists of undesirables?
No, I imagined that you'd check the website and that would tell you if there was a sex offender nearby. If you checked the site everyday, I guess you could catch someone moving in, but that'd only work if the site updated immediately.
But like I said, all the site does is promote caution, and you should be cautious with your children by default.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
The value of a sex offender registry is that it allows common folks the ability to know who they should be wary of. It is meant to be a tool for prevention.
I'm not saying that value is worth the risks, nor am I saying that I agree that they should be wary of everyone on the lists. I am merely answering your question directly, so please do not try to turn this to make me defend something I don't 100% agree with.
I think telling you "there's a sex offender nearby but we won't say who it is" would really just promote panic.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Sure.
Weren't you educated about that stuff as a kid? I know I was.
To me, that's preferable to outing sex offenders.
But anyway, I was just trying to think of ways to keep the registry around while minimizing the potential for violence. I don't actually support the registry.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I saw some commercials on tv, but I never learned about it directly, possibly because my school opted out of some kind of program.
Also, threats were always presented in the form of some guy in a car asking for directions or pretending to have been sent by your mom to pick you up. Nobody ever said that your relatives, or even your parents, were more likely to touch you like that.
More recently, didn't the right wing paint Obama's support of a program designed to teach kids about what to do about sexual abuse as a bad thing?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
my unofficial autobio will be accompanied with tips on how to smile
cause I've found that when they don't see you frown, they never know that you're a threat
and they don't sweat you when you came around
Because rapists are easier to identify than bad traffic.
Some overweight guy that got arrested for child porn but never leaves his apartment probably won't go out and start raping children. He's a perv, sure, but we're going a bit overboard in oh so many cases, and that's a rather extreme example of the average sex offender. Most of them didn't do anything involving children, they're just on a list with people who did.
I mean we start getting into crazytown arresting people for lolicon and peeing in bushes.
I'll believe that to you personally it is preferable, and I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt in how rationally you'd handle it.
For the general public, though, it is a BAD idea to give out nebulous, non-specific warnings. It promotes unrest and paranoia, and ultimately creates new dangers.
So you're saying your parents never bothered to tell you this stuff? Sounds like the failing there is your parents, not society.
We shouldn't be relying on schools to do the parenting, man. They should be doing the educating.
And what if the parents themselves are pedophiles?
You need the schools to step up, frankly.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
So why are we only registering Sex Offenders then?
well, this is where the "for the kids" point is valid. The idea being that you don't know how your kids will react if a pedo offers them candy, so you want to remove the pedo from the equation up front.
Honestly, though, I don't know that other registries (for MAJOR offenses) are such a bad idea, as long as they are handled safely (like the sex offender registry is NOT being handled.)
How would you "handle them safely"?
If you had bothered to read my other posts you wouldn't be asking that question.
So you're not sure, or what?
On what are you basing this. My parents always told e that if ANYONE touched my "private parts", no matter who they were, I should tell them. I can't speak for society as a whole, but I'm not sure where you are drawing this reticence from.
And what if the teachers are the pedophiles?
What if the police are?
What if the judge is?
Ultimately, responsibility needs to rest SOMEWHERE, and our society has placed it with parents.
Okay, but relatives and close family friends are by far the most statistically likely people to molest a child, and when an adult in the family who isn't molesting them finds out about it the most common solution is to cover it up instead of stop it. We're talking molestation here, not teaching them to look both ways when crossing the street.
In any case, you address the possibility that the parents and the teachers might be engaging in wrongdoings by having both teach the kids about what to do rather than leaving things to one party, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Do you have statistics showing that the most common response is to cover it up, rather than stopping it?
The chance of that occurring, by the way, is the reason why teachers and doctors, etc., are required to report signs of abuse seen in children. Mistreatment of "sex-offense" cases after they've been reported aside, I think we can all agre that is a good idea.
Your "ideas" are all over the place.
If the point is public safety, then it's no good unless it's easily available.
If you've got to go searching with the person's name, it's no different then a background check and it's completely redundant.
I'm not even sure what your point is, at this point.
I have NOTHING against schools telling kids to be wary. I'm not arguing AGAINST that.
Exactly.
As I said, explicitly, I'm NOT here to defend the registry. I was ONLY defending the fact that there ARE benefits to it, which are CURRENTLY being outweighed by the costs, and possibly might ALWAYS be outweighed by the costs, but since this is a message board on the internet, and not anything that actually affects anyone's life, why not academically discuss possible ways to derive the benefits while reducing the societal costs?
Not a SINGLE person in this thread has said that things are good the way they are.
"2% of [adult sexual contact with child] cases are reported to authorities when child discloses to or contact is discovered by an adult."
"Detection, acknowledgment of abuse is somewhat more common when not an actual family member; 23% of cases are reported to authorities when child discloses to or contact is discovered by an adult." Human Sexuality Seventh Edition Lois J. McDermott
Even though the statement was only tangential, but there you go.
You stated that informing kids about molestation was a parental responsibility and then said that the schools shouldn't be expected to parent. Hopefully you can see how that gave me the wrong impression.
By the way, apparently only 29% of child molesters are relatives. That's a high enough number, but far from the majority I made it out to be. That said, the number is likely skewed by the smaller odds of a crime by a parent or relative being reported.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I'm curious to know how they could have gathered those numbers, but if that is the case then we really need to place a higher emphasis on encouraging adults to report these incidents.