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Tracking Sex Offenders via GPS for Life
ecmcn writes "According to Yahoo! news, the governor of Florida just passed a bill that, along with increasing the jail time served for convicted sex offenders, requires them to be tracked for life via GPS. No technical details about the tracking, but it mentions "warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be". Maybe they can get Google maps to add red zones around all of the restricted areas."
"warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be"
Trolling is a art,
Track all you like. I'll be at the elementary school giving out candy if you need me. [fp]
Somebody needs a class in civics. The governor cannot pass a law. He can only sign it into law or veto it.
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
And what happens when the person takes the subway or is in a building? People act like GPS is the all-knowing eye in the sky. In reality, it fails in urban landscapes.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The proposed ammendment to the US Constitution was a similar strategy; the White House knew it didn't stand a chance, but it put the issue in the minds of voters and polarized people around the issue.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Too bad that any police department using AOL for e-mail won't get the alerts anyway...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Guy got drunk, drove drunk, stopped on the highway to pee on the side of a road at 2:00am.
The reasoning went something like, "well, if he's peeing in public, hes exposing himself in public, therefore he's a sex offender."
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I'm half-wondering what part of a civilized society even allows people like this to continue to consume food and oxygen?
That'll be the civlized part of a civilized society. If we were a little more civilized, we might realize that don't we can't become better people through punishing others.
(That's not to say that we shouldn't punish anyone, just that we shouldn't fetishize the act of punishment as if it somehow improved the character of the punishers).
Freedom is not increased by mere diminuation of government. Anarchy is freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak.
Someone else made a sarcastic remark about tracking other offenders as well, but I have to worry about this measure and related measures as well. (Earlier today there was a story about Ohio's drunk driver plates and the proposed pink plates as well.)
There are thousands of people falsely accused of crimes on a regular basis and while many (hopefully most) false accusations get cleared up, many do not and it leads to needlessly painful and complicated lifestyles for many unfortunate people. *I* am not one of the unfortunate, but I could have been had investigators not done their jobs investicaging properly. (If I were black or poor or both, I'm pretty sure I'd have been convicted quickly.) But the fact is, being accused alone is often enough to mark a person for life and the abuse of the system is way too prevalant in my opinion. (Countless divorcing men are thrown into jail while wives attempt to maintain custody of children by accusing the men of abuses of all sorts... way too common and sadly, women are rarely, if ever held accountable for making these allegations...and if a defendant cannot afford legal counsel? He's screwed.)
And now yet again people are having their sentances increased beyond judicial order by adding yet another portion of a life sentance. What ever happened to "pay debt to society"? As usual, fear is paving the way to law that abuses the people, their freedoms and rights.
Just to repeat, I'm not an unfortunate one, but I can so easily imagine how I or anyone else could suddenly become one without having deserved it. Hell, even a false accusation that never gets erased can cause irreparable harm to a person's reputation. I almost lost a job because it was found that my ex-wife had made accusations that were documented to be proven false later. I can't get those things expunged without spending a lot of money and I had done nothing wrong.
Why are we doing this? Does it help keep us any safer? Fear is driving people to crazy things.
In a similar opinion:
My problem is that the current regulations do not discriminate between offences.
1) Go to bar, get drunk, meet girl, bring girl home.
2) Learn next morning she is 17 (still looks like 25) and used fake ID to get in. Also learn her father is a lawyer.
3) Get listed on sex offender list; be tracked with GPS for the rest of your life.
A similar scenario occurred in my area, but with a bar accepting 25 year or older people only. The guy felt safe, she looked at least 25. Being a well known sport hero (making millions a year) the girl literally jumped on him. Next morning she left the hotel room (team was on the road), she bragged around, daddy heard about it and saw the opportunity.
It was explained the only way out would have been to have her and her legal guardian (daddy) sign an agreement for sexual encounter. The fact she used fake ID to get in the bar had no impact, she was a minor, and you are responsible to make sure she was of age, no matter how she acted.
Now calling your lawyer and meet all parties for a signed agreement is not the first thing on your mind when drunk with a girl grabbing your pants under the table.
Until we clearly discriminate between horny young girls and clear violent attacks or pedophile cases, I will have a hard time with harsh regulations imposed post-prison sentenced (debt to society paid and all).
This may not be a popular sentiment here, but what is done to sex offenders has gone way overboard.
Consider what 'sex offender' can mean. We're immediately led to imagine a child molester, but consider that a 'sex offense' in some less enlightened areas in the country can be things like
Sodomy (between consenting adults)
Public Urination
Now for those offenders that are the not nice things we are inclined to imagine, either the offender is a threat to public safety or he is not. There may be fine distinctions as to how an offender is considered a threat, but in the end it is a binary condition: Threat/Notthreat.
If the person is a threat, that person should first NOT BE OUT IN SOCIETY, that's what prisons are for! Second, it would be in the public's best interest that the offender be given treatment such that he is no longer a threat upon eventual release.
If that person is not a threat, LEAVE HIM ALONE! This increasingly public punishment of sex offenders makes even repentent, treatable offenders pariahs in any community. Look at what happened to the guy just recently released from Atascadero Hospital only to be bounced around from Mill valley to Oakland to Antioch, people picketing outside of his room, the location of which was released to the press.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
RTFA.
From the article:
You're right. That's why I've started suggesting to every potential molester I see that they wait till the kids are at least twelve and a half.
Honestly, the issue isn't if it's wrong or not, and it shouldn't really be about technicalities of who it is. It's about how right it is to track a person FOR LIFE. Do you really think it'll be that long before other crime punishments pick up the same nifty technology if it's allowed for this purpose?
When I was 16, I would of killed to have my face all over school saying I just scored. Unless the chick was ugly.
I remember thinking that when I got one of those police notices of a sex offender moving into my neighborhood. He was convicted of having sex with a girl of 17 while he was 18. The police also rated him as a "high risk to reoffend".
Depending on the state, the age of consent is anywhere from 14 (WTF?) to 18.
... uh... terrible.
Dude! Where is it 14?
I mean... um... that's
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Please pick one:
a) I am honestly in favor of locking up a 15 year old boy for the rest of his life because he had sex with his 15 year old girlfriend
b) Okay, well maybe I'm just in favor of locking up the guy who who has been falsely accused by his ex-wife during a nasty custody battle
c) Okay, I'll admit it--I don't know what the Hell I'm talking about and am just shooting my mouth off without thinking.
Thank you for your participation
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Under God, indivisible, with LIBERTY and justice for ALL"
Quoting the pledge of allegiance (not a real law mind you) is considered insightful in this discussion??
The Constitution specifically says when Liberty can be taken from someone. Ammendment 5 says that one cannot be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
So yeah- Liberty and Justice for all unless you are convicted of a crime in which case you forfeit the Liberty part in order to fulfill the Justice part.
People are on the sex offender registries - usually for life - for a variety of reasons.
Some are 20 year olds who impregnated 15 year old girlfriends.
Some are high school or college students who had sex with a drunk girlfriend in violation of the law that says a drunk person can't consent.
Some are 14 year old boys who don't know how to control their own hormones so they rape their 6 year old sister.
Some rape adults.
Some are child molestors who do it for their own jollies - "kiddie rapists."
Some are pedophiles - "child lovers" - who do it because they mistakenly think the child loves them and wants sex and they love, or think they love, the child. This also applies to cases where the child really believes he or she wants to have sex with the adult, as is the case with a few male teenage victims.
Each needs a different kind of rehabilitation. The first three will probably not re-offend after age 25 because either they will be interested in legal-aged women or are past the "youthful indiscretion" of having sex with drunk women.
The rapists and child molestors come in two flavors - the true sociopaths and those that will eventually buy into societal norms. The former group is probably dangerous for life, and the only thing that will help them is fear of consequences, along with public notification in case that isn't enough. The latter group needs an ongoing treatment program much like many alchoholics find in AA.
The "child lovers" need to be convinced that their conception of a child's desire for sex is mistaken, and that it is more loving to stay out of a kid's pants. Until that time, they fit into the same category as child molestors. Once they buy into this, they are no longer dangerous.
The biggest problem to deciding how to separate "curable" and "treatable" sex offenders from those who aren't is that people lie and people can be fooled. Even 1 out of 10 "false positives" of "cured" or "in treatment and not dangerous" sex offenders means for every 9 who are allowed to resume normal lives, 1 is let out on the streets unmonitored who is a danger to society. Compare this to the estimated 1 out of 1000 people out there who have never been convicted of a sex crime but will commit one later in life.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How much more "erosion" of your civil liberties is this compared to being thrown in to jail? We accept that as due punishment for a crime, why is tagging someone with an RFID chip not an appropriate sentence? If people know that this will be a possibility maybe they won't commit the crime. Doubtful I know as it's not much of a deterrent really but than would you have had the same reaction if the change in law was simply to make the sentence automatic life in prison?
My point is of course, that we certainly do accept the erosion of civil liberties for criminals exactly because they have shown that they are unable to accept the responsibility that the liberties require.
However, there also must be a way to remove these tags should it be later "proven" that you didn't commit the crime. As long as that's in place I don't see that anyone has an argument.
This is simply a case of whether or not you agree that the punishment fits the crime. For child sex offenders many would say this is letting them off too easy.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
Do you have a cite for that statistic? I could only find this:
but that only gives data for up to three years after. It doesn't say anything about recidivism after 3 years which may or may not be significant.
These are not people that can be rehabilitated. Sex offenders have amongst the highest rates of recidivism.
Bah! Where do people get this info?? Sex offenders have some of the *lowest* rates of recidivism. Just google "sex offender recidivism" and you can parse the information yourself.
They're wired wrong. They're defective people. What society needs is to protect itself from these people.
There are many issues with that thinking, but simply going from a security aspect, it's not a good use of resources. A child is significantly more likely to be molested by an individual who has never had any previous sexual offense, either reported or unreported. Further, a child is astronomically (I use that word for a reason)more likely to be molested by an individual who is well known to the child and the family, is therefore trusted. The serial molester cases that the media like to drool over are rare and distracting us from more much more risky issues.
I think you wont disagree with the premise that we need to prevent/decrease cases of molestation, but if we know that it is most likely to occur from a person that has never offended, shown any signs of offending, and is trusted by the victim and their family, then clearly, we are approaching the problem from the wrong side of things.
And on a final note, I heard some sorta research (but can't locate) that there's about a 2% disposition toward child porn. That's 1/50 of Americans. In your book, that's quite a lot of people to lock up.
Look, all of these knee-jerk laws have been in response to some convicted sex offender taking a kid, doing Lord-knows-what, killing the kid, and disposing of the body somewhere. All of the knee-jerk laws, however, fail to actually prevent this from happening.
Would parents being able to find out about sex offenders in their area result in irresponsible parents taking better care of their kids? What if that sex offender just happens to drive through a neighborhood that isn't his/her own? Do those laws somehow help prevent that?
And GPS tracking? Give me a break. That helps you catch the guy after the fact. In all these cases, they've caught the guy anyway, so all that does is reduce the civil liberties of lots of people to capture a handful who would have gotten caught anyway. What's the point?
No, what we need to do is mandate that a tracking device with a lifetime battery be implanted in a child at birth and removed at age 18. When a child goes missing, five minutes later, the police converge, shoot the person who kidnapped the kid, and the kid arrives home alive, rather than in a body bag dragged from the mud of some swamp in Florida.
If you're going to pass a law that reduces civil liberties, at least pick a group that already has no right to privacy. If you're going to pass a law to protect children, at least pass a law that will actually protect children . Makes a heck of a lot more sense to me....
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Only in western societies (or "advanced") societies is teen sex known as a "bad thing".
Teen sex was quite the norm not all that long ago, mainly due to the fact that you'd be lucky to make it to 30 before you died.
Young marriage was quite common. You were considered an old maid if you weren't married by 20. So on and so forth.
The problem, as you put it, is the fact that our society is so puritanical about anything dealing with sex. Frank discussions about sex are still something very rare in this country.
Mix this with the media with the "sex sells" mentality and you've got a few million horny teenagers who think that scoring is the next best thing to having their own car for their rep.
If their parents don't talk to them, their TV will.
~X~
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