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Sex Offender E-Mail Registry Signed Into Law
As noted in Wired yesterday, tragedy in chaos writes, "Senator and Presidential-hopeful John McCain has managed to get a new bill signed into law, in the hope of ridding online social networks of the sexual predation of children. The 'Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008,' as it is called, calls for a database to be made in which all registered sexual offenders must also register their e-mail addresses so that MySpace, Facebook, etc. can run current and hopeful users through it, and eliminate access to the offenders. Though a noble goal, this is not very well thought out in methodology. They are asking known criminals to be honest, and are expecting them not to utilize any of the free and readily available e-mail services that exist so as to circumvent the system. There is also a potential for the crafty sex offender to possibly cause false positives by just registering an address that does not belong to them, thereby drawing in innocent bystanders."
Seriously? Anyone else think that's a bad name?
I see it as a way to tack on more charges in the future. He didn't register?! That makes him a CRIMINAL!
And it's computer related so there goes all your electronics.
Anyway, god forbid they keep dangerous people in jail. I mean, that's what it's for, right? If they're still a danger to society at large, why the hell are they not behind bars?
Then why not just make the sentence more harsh for second time offenders rather than create another law to increase the time in jail?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Yes, and the best way to do this is to place a blanket law over all sex offenders that makes it impossible to do normal things on the Internet, like starting a myspace page.
Despite what you think, not all registered sex offenders are evil people. A 19 year old kid can go out and get drunk with his buddies and moon people out of a moving car window, get caught and convicted of indecent exposure (a little girl said she saw the guys butt!) and has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, despite being no threat whatsoever to children.
I'm not trying to defend child molesters here; that is probably one of the worst crimes imaginable. I'm just saying that just because you're a registered sex offender, it does not always mean you're a kiddy porn hungry pervert.
Perhaps a better law would be one that provides funding to help teach kids on the Internet about sexual predators and give them the information they need to avoid them.
The Internet is generally stupid
I don't know. I thought justice was more than punishment and retribution and revenge and vengeance. ...but of course, we'd have a lot more resources without the war on drugs.
The point I'm trying to make is that jail is the stated place for dangerous people, right? Where they can be kept, supervised, and (in theory) made into a productive member of society? They were held, judged unfit to be free with the rest of us, and um... released before they were deemed safe to the population?
I'm just a stickler for definitions and people holding true to doing what they say. If jail is for dangerous people, then keep dangerous people in jail. If jail is for rehabilitation, then people to be released from jail should meet whatever criteria is set and be considered free thereafter.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-431
Sponsor: Sen. Charles Schumer [D-NY]
Co-Sponsors:
Cosponsors [as of 2008-10-15]
Sen. Ted Stevens [R-AK]
Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]
Sen. John Kerry [D-MA]
Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D-CA]
Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-NY]
Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL]
Sen. Jon Kyl [R-AZ]
Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I-CT]
Sen. Olympia Snowe [R-ME]
Sen. Michael Crapo [R-ID]
Sen. Arlen Specter [R-PA]
Sen. Tim Johnson [D-SD]
Sen. Mary Landrieu [D-LA]
Sen. Amy Klobuchar [D-MN]
Sen. Charles Grassley [R-IA]
Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]
Sen. John Cornyn [R-TX]
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-VT]
Sen. David Vitter [R-LA]
Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D-MD]
Any reason you feel like mentioning McCain but not Hillary, or the fact that they were merely co-sponsors? Or the fact that the vote was in fact, unanimous?
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
The problem with sex offenders is that no matter what kind of rehab/psych treatments the offender gets, they do not change their sexual preferences. As a father, I'm torn. I'd like nothing better for the skinners of the world to be locked up forever or put in general population and let the other convicts take care of the problem to protect children like mine. On the flip side, they have their rights as well. (Flame-bait disclaimer: to have a sexual preference, not break the law and abuse children) From what I understand, most of these predators are born with their preferences and develop them throughout adolescence. You might as well ask me to stop being heterosexual, or a homosexual to just stop being gay. I don't think a registry is going to work. There is simply no reasonable way to insulate these people from those they prey on. It's all just political posturing anyway. I wonder what else ended up on that bill.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Well, there's also the problem that stupid little things (like pissing against a building, or taking naked photos of [i]yourself[/i] under 18) can earn you the "sex offender" label for life. I agree, the dangerous ones should be in prison, but the label is carried too far to the extreme in many cases.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I hate jacking a high-up post, but it needs to be said that both McCain AND OBAMA were co-sponsors of this bill. "tragedy in chaos" is a hypocritical jackass, and this article's blurb needs amended.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Agreed. More to the point, I suspect if you really went down the rolls, you'd find that a large percentage of the sex offenders out there are guys who did something with a high school girl when they were in their 20s and got caught. You can't tell me that most of them are "dangerous" or deserve to be treated as second class citizens for the rest of their lives. (Until they mature, perhaps, but....)
Sex offender registry laws should be reserved for the extreme cases---cases of rape in which neither party was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs (or in which the injured party was unknowingly/unwillingly subjected to drugs with intent to rape), cases in which someone over... let's say 21 intentionally and knowingly engages in or attempts to engage in sexual contact with someone under... let's say 12, etc. That gives a wide enough safety margin that it weeds out everyone but the people who truly are a danger to society.
Without such limits, you're just ruining the lives a bunch of otherwise normal people who did stupid things when they were in high school or college. That doesn't make much sense to me (or, frankly, to anyone with half a brain). If anything, this is why laws that don't give judges any leeway in sentencing are universally bad. They create an environment in which a judge is forced to give a punishment even if the circumstances clearly do not warranty that punishment. Unfortunately, without those laws, we get problems on the other side---idiot judges who keep letting out repeat offenders who progressively work their way up to heinous crimes. I don't know what the solution is except perhaps to pass laws that would require all criminal sentencing to occur by a vote of... say seven judges who are all required to read the complete decision of the presiding judge prior to enacting sentencing (with harsh criminal penalties for any judge who regularly fails to read the decisions before voting).
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I consider myself an idealist. I want a prison system that...
1) Renders capital punishment un-necessary. We're not a small island nation, we truly can afford to lock up the heinous forever and we can achieve it.
2) Treats rehabilitation as second only in priority to containment for prisoners who are physically dangerous. They should not be released at all unless we can be reasonably certain that they are no longer a threat.
3) Does not double as a housing project for lots of non-physically-dangerous offenders. Let them go, employ them in something productive, do whatever, but don't feed them three squares a day while they're sat on their ass doing nothing but learning how to be better criminals from the other cons.
decades of "get tough" cheap politics have done little to make people safer, have run up huge bills, and fucked-up a lot of people.
Nullius in verba
Yep sex offenders could be high school kids _consensually_ having sex with each other.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_v._State_of_Georgia
"and later being offered and receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old girl" = "aggravated child molestation" = mandatory 10 year jail sentence.
Imagine if your friend got jailed for 10 years because you voluntarily initiated sex with him. Talk about mentally scarred for life, and so who was doing the scarring - your friend? No. The State.
Then there are cases of high school kids sending naked pictures of themselves to others... Kids do that sort of stuff. They're silly, but they never expect that the State might jail them in order to "protect them".
Who needs protection like that? The State ends up being one more threat to your children's safety - if not a bigger threat.