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Maine to Launch Internet Sex-Offender Registry
scubacuda writes "On Monday, Maine Today reports that officials plan to put info about the states 1,200 registered sex offenders on the Internet to allow residents to easily determine if a convicted offender lives in their neighborhood. Some jurisdictions - including Portland, South Portland, Saco and Kennebec County - already post sex-offender information on the Internet. But the new site will cover *all* sex offenders registered in Maine, and will include their names, ages and birth dates, where they live, where they work or attend school, and which offense they were convicted of. Photographs will soon be posted, as well."
The State of Texas has had this for some time now.. gives their picture, their crime, vital stats, etc ,etc.
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http://records.txdps.state.tx.us/soSearch/soSearc
Wisconsin for example already has this. You can enter a ZIP code to locate all sex offenders in your area. Actually, a sex offender recently moved into our otherwise quiet neighborhood. I found this out first through the website above, and a week later a town meeting was held about the very same person.
This is not a troll, but because of the sexual subject matter, it might look like one. How many of us are going to be surprised when we realize that nice old person down the road raped a bunch of kids? This registry is going to light up every neighborhood because it's built on the false premise that you can live in a neighborhood without sexual predators. These creeps are everywhere!! Maybe there are more than 1200 released convicted offenders, and they likely live all over the place, but what about the ones that get away with it every day?
/sarcasm
How many evil clergy are going to be skipped from this? We had a clergy scandal in my hometown for some time that went on in plain view of a local church, and they covered it up! The poor kids eventually got some justice, but only after a decade of systematic abuses.
With the right steps, this database could save lives. But it could slowly be abused by the system, or by unscrupulous people. Controls must be in place to prevent any foul deeds, but are they going to far? Let's bring out the branding irons, then? Give 'em all a brand that says "SEX OFFENDER" right to the forehead.
In all seriousness, how effective can this database be? Maybe it'll save lives. I don't know.
Is to segregate (because that's what you're doing, make no mistake about the consequences of this) and completely isolate a group of people.
... euhm ... cut off every legal option for a life they have and they'll ... get out and die ?
Expose everyone who's ever had any brush with justice at all, so they can't get any job at all. Then, without job and without a life they'll
What exactly do you think this will do ?
New York's registry requires that people using the search enter their own address. I think this might be a new feature, last time I saw the registry I don't remember having to give up my info.
I don't mean to be an asshole, but you are obviously not a victim.
I was a victim several times as a child to this type of abuse. Actualy most people who know my family, and my brothers and sisters think the world of me because I dealt with all of that crap and am living a normal life now.
I do not think that it is fair to ANYONE to put them in the lime light like this.
Also did you know that most sex offender victims have a better chance to become an offender when they grow up??? Isn't that fucked up! You were a victim to someone, and now society is making you another victim. It is no excuse, but it is not abnormal for offenders to have been abused as a child.
Bet you didn't know that!
Oh and yeah I have been through a shit load of counseling and all of that good stuff you just mentioned.
I still don't think it is fair to people to put them through this crap. Maybe for a little while, but they should be able to dig themselves out of the whole they are in and be rehabilitated.
If society doesn't think so then quit harrassing them and just put them to death!
It is okay to kill someone, and then get on parole in 5 years. You can then live a normal life and no one will bug you.
I'd say go for it, after all the sex offenders are the worst kind of scum.
Then I remebered the jokes that me and my wife made during our visit to US. She's been 17 and I was 28 at the time and we were joking that our marriage might have been perfectly legal in Europe (in most European countries 15 is legal age) but not there.
In US I would probably be considered pedophile or at least "statutory rape" despite her being legally my wife in Poland.
So with this kind of law standards, posting the list of "sex offenders" online looks scary...
The Coward
So who wants to start a pool on when the first sex offender will be lynched?
Today?
Kind of ironic, isn't it. One state announces its program as another country announces someone who was named was murdered.
Remember: It's only been within the last year that some states have been legally blocked from finding consensual, adult, homosexual relationships a sex crime - sodomy. Those who have been found guilty in the past, for crimes that still stand though are no longer prosecuted, would still be named. And, in many of those states, hate crimes against gays still result in people being murdered.
A quote from the BBC article really sums it up: "But whatever he has done in the past does not give people the right to attack and kill him."
I've seen both sides of this issue and seen that sex offenses are very hard to try from the courts standpoint. I'd like to point out to everyone that not all sex offenders are child molesters, yes, child molesters are the bottom of the bucket of socioty and should be treated as thus, but like any other form of crime, people are falsley convicted. A very close friend of mine was raped, but unfortunatly they couldn't get a conviction. The guy was loaded and the defense made the argument that she was after money, it sickened me. I wouldn't want this guy anywhere near me, and if i ever did run into him i'd probly bash his face in, but hes not on any list anywhere. On the other end of this, a guy i know at school was accused of rape, he was 18, she was underage. He was arrested in class, with much spectacle. It was all cleared up after the girls parents heard her on the phone talking about how she'd lied about the whole thing. But if they hadn't found out i hate to think what would happen to my of age african american friend in the courts system after being accused of rape by an underage white girl. His life would pretty much be over. Think about all the possible scenarios before you cry "Wont someone please think of the children!". If people are a danger they should be kept locked up, either in prison or in an institution, otherwise if they've payed their debt to society , they should be allowed to go on with their lives. As for child molseters though, people that sick dont change and should be kept under lock and key.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Looks to me like there's a good 55.7% that weren't reconvicted. While lack of reconviction doesn't necessarily imply recovery, I think that "sex offenders don't recover" is a bit off.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
First I want to say that sexual predators are terrible.
On the other hand what about wrong information. If the government has incorrect information. What if there is an innocent john jones whos picture shows up on the site because the mistook him for the bad john jones?
Not to mention the whole cracker problem. Put someone you don't like on the list for fun. Who cares if it ruins someone's life.
I just don't have a lot of faith in the law enforcement system and their technical ability.
Not to mention this is open season on sex offenders. Remember that statatory rape is a sexual offense. What about sodomy. Someone who commits these crime goes on the same list with repeated child molesters.
How about a young man who is convicted of statutory rape with a consenting girlfriend? He's 19, she's 17 - he's listed on the net for the rest of his life. There are a hundred variations of this. What are you gonna do, explain to each of your neighbors that you were convicted of a sex crime with a woman you later married? Scary thought.
Standing on the shoulders of giants.
Whilst I guess that the people doing this will counter with "you give up your rights when you take it upon yourself to play with little kids bottoms", it kinda flies right in the face of concepts of rehabilitation, etc.
Most psychologists and psychotherapists agree that it is not possible to rehabilitate pedophiles.
I don't have a problem with lifelong parole or probation for them, but something like this will empower other unstable people to strike directly at them.
What happens if someone is raped murdered in the same neighborhood where one of the listed offenders lives? There will be people with torches and pitchforks lined up outside their houses and jobs. What if it is someone else who did it?
Tell the police who and where they are. Make them report to a PO for the rest of their lives. Don't paint a bullseye on their backs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And hey, I just had a great idea:
:-)
Sex Offender Text Alerts!
and an arm band. I forgot that. (or a bell if an arm band is unacceptable.)
Brilliant. You get a text message every time a sex offender is in the same geographic location as you. Then you just look around to see who's wearing an arm band
"Support our kids", and "it's unamerican to be a sex offender", and other good slogans will also be needed. This brave new world is gonna kick ass. No one will ever oppose this, "you don't support sex offenders, do you?". This will be nothing at all like a witch hunt.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Are these people are being publicly humiliated because they have committed a crime, or because they might commit a crime in the future? The fact that sex offenders are singled out seems to suggest the latter. This is a disturbing movement towards alternative philosophies of justice. Even the idea behind the "pre-crime" unit in Minority Report is less repulsive, as there seemed to be a greater probability of the anticipated crime actually taking place in that movie.
I live in a neighborhood with multiple registered sex offenders (100+ in my zip code in Baltimore-- walking distance from my house).
Its really great to push for hard time and appropriate punishment for criminals, but the reality is that the jails are bursting at the seams with all kinds of violent criminals. The justice system in Baltimore and in many other cities has become a farcical failure. Violent offenders are routinely released by judges who inappropriately exercise their discretion to release offenders far, far before their sentence is up.
It is simply foolish to put trust in the "system" to keep the thousand upon thousands of repeat violent offenders under control. Trusting the system might be fine in small communities but everything falls apart in distressed urban environments.
The sex offender registry is simply a good tool for community associations to keep an eye on what is going on. Every little bit helps.
Oooh what a wonderful idea, indefinite incarceration with freedom at the whim of the authorities. No checks and balances, goody goody.
I'm sorry aren't US forces currently fighting to 'liberate' Iraq from exactly this sort of thing? Or is it a case of "do as I say not what I do"?
Why just sex offenders? I know they are most likely to re-offend, but as a homeowner, I sure would love to be able to search and check if anyone living on my block was convicted of burglarly, for example.
If I were a parent in that situation, I'd be hysterical, bitter and resentful, and most of all, completely irrational. I can't see why my opinion should matter with me in that state. It's not like we ask the opinions of socker moms for what a law should say just because that law concerns children.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
That is because not nuch gets reported in the US which is not of 'local' interest. Ireland has had several cases, Austria had a very high-profile case a few years ago and several other ones have made the local news. Paedeophile priests are actually not big news any more.
Going off-topic - American reporting:
A few years back (I think it was September '89), two aircraft crashes happened on the same day. One was in NY, some plane overshot the runway and ended up in the East River - 4 dead. The other was a terrorist bomb in a French plane over Africa - around 280 dead if I remember correctly.
The bombing hardly got a mention on CNN, the E River incident got wall-to-wall coverage being repeated every few minutes. The US media are very parochial, although it will have helped that CNN could cover the whole pathetic incident live.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
In Canada, there is something called "Circles of Support and Accountability" (COSA) .
I have a few friends that have worked with this project, and basically a sex offender is with someone from the community pretty much 24/7; they are also re-integrated (job, volunteer activity), so they are less likely to re-offend.
This is a restorative rather than retributive approach, and it works a lot better.
Keeping dangerous offenders who refuse to go through therapy in prison, usefully re-integrating ex-offenders in the community with appropriate support: that is a solution that works, doesn't cost a lot, avoids lynch mobs and privacy issues.
PS: As for those who ask why sex offenders should be treated differently than murderers, it's really simple: murderers are the least likely to re-offend.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Please tell me I'm misinterpreting what you wrote. If you think any aspect of a sex crime is victimless, you should go out and get yourself raped, then tell us what you think. If I misinterpreted you, then I'm sorry to come across so brash, but you really need to work on your presentation.
You forgot the "crime for the fun of it" and also "crime for hire" and "crime for money" aspects in your opinion. Barring things like taking drugs, crime almost always has a purpose (usually monetary gain), and I'd bet 99% of the time, crimes aren't committed by mistake...
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Personally, I feel that when you have paid your debt to society you should be no longer have to keep paying for the rest of your life with this public humiliation.
On a (somewhat) related note, a paedophile was found murdered in Teeside in the UK yesterday. Once you've been labeled a paedophile, there is no hope for you - your life is over.
Public attitudes in the UK view paedophiles as inhuman and throughly evil. There never seems to be anything about what psychological help these people receive afterwards.
> Would you say that if it was your child that was molested?
Initially, definitely not. Once I can see beyond the emotions? definitely yes.
What you do is a very bad way of reasoning btw. People do not think in reasonable ways when in a strongly emotionally stressing situation. Because of this, peopel are also not able to make good judgements in such a situation. As a result, your question is simply irrelevant, you know the answer you'd get, and you know it is a response without reasoning, so why bother asking?
As horrible as sex crimes are, and as useful a tool as such a registry may be, I recently read that a study was done on repeat offenders, and sex offenders had the lowest rate of recidivism. Shouldn't murderers and carjackers be put on a registry like this, too?
But why ONLY "sexual offenders" (which includes anyone arrested for taking a leak in the park, or as happened to an acquaintance of mine, looking at porn, on a laptop, IN HIS CAR). It's completely out of hand. It's all part of the feminist's (and their willing tool-boys) demonization of men as a class...and NOTHING else.
I vote that I get to know if a proven danger to my children is living next door.
Let's suppose one is. Then you do... what?
A young girl (a couple of weeks before her 15th birthday) confided in me that she'd been with her 16-year-old boyfriend only twice, but she thought that she was pregnant and she was considering running away from home. I tried to talk some sense into her head, but then a couple of her friends AND her boyfriend told me that she was also considering suicide. The boyfriend asked me to help, one of her girlfriends pleaded with me... and I, in complete naivete, decided to try to "do something" to help.
She spent the night at my house. We spoke to her friends on the phone several times, I even offered to talk to her father (she freaked and threatened to leave if I did). Later in the evening, when she'd talked to her best friend again, and after a trip to the bathroom, she announced that she had started her period. So she wasn't pregnant after all.
So I'd talked her out of running away from home. And I'd kept her from thinking about suicide, and she'd started her period, so the reason she'd been so upset had been resolved. The next morning, I took her home and talked with another friend of hers who thanked me for my help. She told me that she'd actually been fearing for her friend's life.
Her father was pretty pissed, to say the least. And he wanted me arrested for something. But the original charge would have been "contributing to the delinquency of a minor". Sex never crossed his mind. But when the county's newly-formed Sex Crimes Unit got wind of it, it changed quickly into Child Molestation.
Never mind that there was no sex involved, confirmed by her gynecologist. The doctor's report was deemed "inadmissable" by the Assistant DA. Can't have us talking about the girl's sex life in the courtroom! We have to think of the victim's rights! Talking about the suicide threat was disallowed, too. We can't pretend there's something wrong with the victim! So, by the time it got to court, there was nothing left but the single event: she spent the night at my house. What other reason could there have been? SEX!
Isn't there something in the law about being able to confront your accuser? She wasn't going to be allowed to testify. Indeed, she wouldn't even have been in the courthouse.
They kept me in jail for eleven months before getting near a courtroom. It could have been another year or two to go to trial. I was offered a plea bargain, and I took it. What I pleaded to was "Enticing a Child for Indecent Purposes". My conviction isn't for anything that I did, it's for something that they think that I maybe thought about doing.
A sex crime. One equal to the child molestation charge, in the eyes of the court.
I've been through three years of counseling (at my expense), and eight years of probation. And in two more years, I have to apply to have my name taken off the sex offender registration. Five years after that, I can apply to get my civil rights back (voting, etc.). I'll never be allowed to own a gun. It's downright difficult to find or keep a job. I'm currently self-employed, mainly because it's just easier than dealing with the FUD in the job market.
Sex Offender registration has very little to do with sex offenses. It has even less to do with protecting the community. Its only function is to appease the media and the politicians, and the parents of kids who truly were abused, molested or killed by a parolled sex offender. I'm sorry that these things do happen, but erring on the side of caution and sending an innocent person to prison is not the way it's supposed to work in this country.
I'm paying the price.
AC for obvious reasons.