State of Ohio Establishes "Pre-Crime" Registry

I*Love*Green*Olives writes to tell us the Toledo Blade is reporting that State officials have rubber-stamped a "civil-registry" that would allow accused sex offenders to be tracked with the sex offender registry even if they have never been convicted of a crime. From the article: "A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit. The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law."

Comments

Re:Worst idea ever.

[Scudsucker]

Of course we can blame Bush, if for no other reason than he has oppointed hundreds of judges throughout the system who will rubberstamp this sort of crap.

Re:not as bad as it sounds

[eddeye]

Yes, criminal conviction is a high bar. It's that way for a reason. If the state can't get over that bar, they lose; if they get to take action against the accused anyway (or without even trying), then all the protections in the criminal justice system have been eliminated.

The state has many remedies, and for good reason. Criminal conviction is just one of them, it's not mutually exclusive with any others. If a jury doesn't convict you of drunk driving, does that excuse you from paying the speeding ticket you were pulled over for? Just because the state can't throw your ass in jail doesn't mean they are (or should be) powerless. Shaping society requires many concurrent approaches.

The protections of statutes of limitations, evidentiary rules, etc are so high because the penalties for a criminal conviction are astronomical. Civil fines have much lower protections because the stakes are so much lower. This law is somewhere in the middle. Does it strike the right balance? I don't know, but I would at least weigh the harm to the individual, the safeguards against mistakes, and the benefits to society from knowing who these offenders are before reaching my decision. We can disagree where the result falls without decrying the end of the criminal justice system as we know it.

Re:In Ohio guilty gets YOU.

[Xymor]

Looks like bin laden is winning afterall...