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New Jersey Bars Sex Offenders From the Internet
eldavojohn writes "New Jersey just passed legislation making it illegal for sex offenders to use the internet. NJ congresswoman Linda D. Greenstein said, 'When Megan's Law was enacted, few could envision a day when a sex offender hiding behind a fake screen name would be a mouse-click away from new and unwitting victims. Sex offenders cannot be given an opportunity to abuse the anonymity the Internet can provide as a means of opening a door to countless new potential victims.' While they still can search for jobs, this is a major expansion over the prior legislation which barred them from social networking sites like facebook or myspace."
In my practice I see a variety of patients who have been convicted for sex offences - ranging from predatory paedophiles to people who made a simple bona fide mistake. The former are people who suffer from a mental illness - they need treatment and not punishment, and should not be released onto society before there is evidence that the treatment actually works. The latter usually get punished way beyond their "crime" and really should be entitled to living a normal life after serving their sentence.
I practice in Australia - another country of puritan heritage, but fortunately not as openly hostile towards sex as the US, and courts here tend to be less "Mickey Mouse" style. Nevertheless, one of my patients fell for a 15yo prostitute and had non-penetrative sex with her, one single time. Independent witnesses all reported they would have taken her for at least 18 if not older. The "perpetrator" had no prior offence and the circumstances were such that he was not actively seeking such connection but it happened spontaneously when she was allegedly actively seeking such relation
For that the man got 5 years of which he served 3. Since he was announced as a paedophile to his inmates when he was jailed, they scalded him badly with boiling water and beat him up badly before they had opportunity of learning the whole story. When he was released, he moved to my town. He is a religious man who confided into a local priest who had nothing better to do than walk from door to door and warn people about the dangerous paedophile who moved into town. A really nasty witch hunt started against him where even otherwise nice and educated people blindly joined in. Is this just? Will it improve anything? Will this protect any children?
The legislation mentioned in this article which deprives so called "sex offenders" regardless of their background of essential human rights is obscene, and the people producing such legislation either ignorant or criminal.
This one makes for an interesting turn of events.
FTFA:
Salt Lake City - Utah Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that they were struggling to wrap their minds around the concept that a 13-year-old girl could be both an offender and a victim for the same act - in this case, having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4783650
"A 26-year-old college student on federal disability, Whitaker doesn't fit most people's image of a sex offender. But, because of an ill-considered 10th-grade blowjob -- resulting in her conviction for an act that's no longer crime in Georgia -- she has spent nearly a decade on Georgia's sex-offender registry."
The sex offender registry laws are an absurdity. It's essentially a life sentence that applies to a huge swath of activity that we deem "deviant", not just child molesters.
In Georgia, the laws are so badly written, that no lawyer can really tell you what's required of an offender.
For example, I had a homeless client (registered sex offender) charged with failure to update his address after he had "moved". But the law says "homeless does not constitute an address." So does that mean that there is no address change and that he has committed no crime? (the position we took) Or does it mean that it's illegal to be homeless?
The court saw that ours was a plausible interpretation of the statute and dismissed the case. But the opinion of most lawyers in this state is that the sex offender law makes it illegal for a registered sex offender to be homeless.
I'm a parent, and I'm guessing that under your worldview, I want to be `soft on sex offenders'. But I don't see it that way -- instead, I want the punishment to fit the crime. If you're 17 and have sex with your 15 year old girlfriend, you should be grounded for a week, perhaps have your cell phone taken away. Peeing on the side of a building? $50 fine. Rape a 3 year old girl to within an inch of her life? Life in prison, perhaps even the death penalty.
`Sex offender registration' is a huge crock. All it really does is let us take some people, found guilty of certain offenses, and make them pariahs for life. I imagine the original premise was to protect society from these dangerous predators, but in many cases they're not predators at all! And why only sex crimes? I'd be FAR more concerned if the guy next door killed his neighbor in a fight 10 years ago than if he got caught diddling the 16 year old girl next door when he was 19 -- but guess which one has to register?
I might be better able to support registration as either further punishment or to protect society if it applied to all crimes of a certain level, not just `sex crimes'. But even then I can't really support it -- when you've paid your debt to society, that should be the end of it. And if you're too dangerous to be let out, then you shouldn't be let out -- the sex offender registry should not be a `last ditch' sort of thing.
And what good does the sex offender registry do? Sure, it gives people a list of names of people to harass, to run out of town, to lynch, to kill. And you can tell your kids to avoid these houses, but what good does that really do? Has anybody ever shown that knowing where the sex offenders in town were led to children (we're worried about protecting the children, right?) who were less likely to be the victims of crime (or sex crimes, if you want to be more specific?)
And the whole banning them from the Internet thing, even worse ...