Illinois Bans Social Network Use By Sex Offenders

RobotsDinner writes "Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has signed into law a bill that bans all registered sex offenders from using social networks. '"Obviously, the Internet has been more and more a mechanism for predators to reach out," said Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington), a sponsor of the measure and a governor candidate. "The idea was, if the predator is supposed to be a registered sex offender, they should keep their Internet distance as well as their physical distance."'"

Comments

Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[Gorm the DBA]

I see this dying quickly to a challenge on the basis of rights of association and free speech.

Yes, you can ban them from talking to the punishment here is far too harsh to not be challenged.

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[Darkness404]

Except for the fact that guns are designed to shoot things. Honestly, I believe that disallowing non-violent felons from the right to bear arms or any other constitutional right is wrong, but social networks are simply talking, and honestly, you can't be molested online, despite what some people might think.

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[Hamilton Publius]

Agreed, but also not all convicted sex offenders are convicted for crimes that imply all of the outrage associated with the title "convicted sex offenders". As many other posters have pointed out, things like two underage people having consensual sex, public urination, texting a naked picture, etc require registation as a sex offender and apparently being banned from popular social networks. The Economist had a great article about this very subject (cover article actually). They pointed our rightly that the situation is unlikely to get better because no politician wants to be branded as being against coming down tough on "sex offenders".

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[hey!]

I doubt it.

After you've been convicted of a crime, you can certainly have civil rights taken away as a punishment.

But there's something else people might not realize: civil rights under our system can be regulated if there is a compelling public interest in doing so and the regulation is narrowly tailored to serve that interest. My freedom of speech does not entitle me to speak my opinions through a bullhorn at 3AM in a quiet neighborhood. I am required to find other means of expressing opinions. A law against talking at 3AM would be too broad; a law against talking so loud that people inside their houses are unable to ignore it is narrow; it doesn't prevent me from communicating other ways or at other times.

Telling a sex offender he can't communicate with his friends ever again would be unconstitutionally broad. Telling him he can't use social networking sites to do so is a more narrow restriction, what's more there is a rational justification for it. A social networking site provides access to many, many more potential victims than tradtional ways of making and having friends. Not only is there a "law of averages" effect, it's an ideal laboratory in which to hone a script for convincing a victim to put himself at danger. You can be rejected hundreds or even thousands of times, but if you try something different at or near the point of failure, eventually you'll have a diabolically effective approach.

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[schon]

Telling him he can't use social networking sites to do so is a more narrow restriction, what's more there is a rational justification for it.

No, the "justification" is most irrational.

Lumping violent repeat rapists in with people who pee in the woods when they think they're alone, and claiming that "it's for the children" is 100% completely and totally emotional, and therefor about as far from rational as you can get.

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[Shakrai]

but rape that involves no weapon or fighting is just not something I would call "violent."

Bullshit. It's rape if one of the partners doesn't consent to the activity. The fact that the rapist wasn't armed really shouldn't enter into the calculation, except in so far as that they wind up charged with additional weapons offenses in addition to the rape charge.

Mind you, I don't think statutory rape should be regarded in the same manner as what I described above, but to say that rape isn't a violent crime just because no weapon was involved kind of misses the mark, IMHO. You don't regard it as a violent act to have something penetrate your body against your will?

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[Shakrai]

Do not fight, shout, shove, or resist in any way

So we can only call a crime violent if the victim is willing to resist in same manner?

Are not being threatened with a weapon of some sort

Weapons are not limited to guns and knives. If you were a 100 pound female facing a 200+ pound male who has three or more times your muscle mass are you seriously going to argue that it shouldn't be considered a violent crime just because he didn't happen to have a firearm, knife or some other technological piece of weaponry?

Were not poisoned or endangered

Being raped is endangerment. Ever heard of STDs? Ever heard of the ones that can't be cured and which are eventually fatal? There's a reason why most states (even the liberal blue ones) allow for the use of deadly force when confronted with a would-be rapist. A rapist is arguably every bit as dangerous as a loaded gun pointed at your head or knife at your throat.

Violent crimes involve violence of some sort

I would argue that having your body penetrated against your will is an inherently violent act.

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[rjstanford]

Although ironically, having someone known to go around beating women into submission to brutally murder them being restricted from social networking sites has not even been proposed.

How reasonable is this again?

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[Shakrai]

This is also true outside of rape.

The person outside of the rape agreed to the encounter. There was nothing stopping them from making an informed decision about the encounter and taking steps to protect themselves. Of course not everybody makes an informed decision but that's a separate discussion.

The rape victim has had this choice taken from them. That's why it's different. I should think this would be obvious to anyone who was interested in paying attention to my point and not nitpicking it to death with comparisons with consensual activity.

I can't believe that I'm receiving troll mods for arguing that rape is a violent action. WTF is wrong with you people?

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[drinkypoo]

Reasonable? If your goal is to win the love of your irrational constituents, then persecuting "sex offenders" (which often includes public urinators and the like, and in any case is highly subject to selective arrest like everything else) who are an easy target (no one loves to speak up in their defense) makes a great deal of sense.

Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge

[hairyfeet]

But I have a friend in state police that says they are getting few if any actual child molesters through social networks. What they are catching there is what he calls the 'social retards' and says it is quite easy to spot the difference. The social retards will talk a good game online, but never meet anybody. When you raid their place there is CP alright, along with beastiality and brown and golden showers, and B&D/S&M, etc. You look into their background and most have gone out of their way to not have contact with anyone, kids and adults alike.

Contrast this with the child predator, which is says is actually really damned hard to catch online. They aren't trolling online for kids, because they are coaching youth groups, being active in the church, anything that will get them closer to their prey. He says he has seen plenty over the years that will go so far as marry a woman just to get at her kids. He says they know when they catch one of these guys as they often trade highly encrypted DVDs through the mail with other predators.

So despite the bogeymen stories according to him the hardcore child predators abandoned the net awhile back. There is just so much easier prey in their own neighborhoods, which is how they eventually get caught. I would argue that the social retards could probably be rehabilitated (I actually met one once. The sad little creature would probably have screamed if anybody actually touched him) and that the hardcores are gonna have to be caught the old fashioned way, with good police work. And as someone who had a fed in the past try to entrap him on IRC back in the day (I finally had to get ugly and tell them if they didn't quit talking dirty on a Windows repair channel they would get permanently banned) I find their methods on "catching" anyone on social networks dubious at best.

The whole thing IMHO went south when we turned rapist into "sex offender". After all, everyone knew what a rapist was and had a definition that was pretty consistent. With sex offender it could be anything from pissing on a bush on up. Right now the whole "child molester" bogeyman has gotten to be about as insane as the Red Scare of the 50s. Just see McMartin and Little Rascals day care for examples of normal people acting insane because the word 'child molester" was uttered.

Social Networks?

[homer_s]

And who decides what a "social network" is?

I wonder when we'll receive calls for govt. regulation of websites to keep it safe for children.

This is stupid

[the_humeister]

Either they've served their debt to society or keep them in jail. This half-assed "you're out of jail but you can only do X" is ridiculous.

Re:Punishment doesn't fit the Crime

[fearanddread]

what's wrong is a society that treats public urination as a sex crime.

Re:Punishment doesn't fit the Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

you seem to want to use facebook

What is a "sex offender" anyway?

[Manip]

"At least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure. Some prosecutors are now stretching the definition of âoedistributing child pornographyâ to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends. For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being âoeparty to the crime of child molestationâ because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married."

I'm glad you're banning all 600,000 people 2/3rds of which are said to be "no danger" according to a state's own review board.

Why are sex offenders treated worse than murderers

[Rosyna]

People labeled "sex offenders" (could be from mooning someone, urinating in an alley, having manga, and other little things) are treated worse than murderers in the US. Murderers don't have to tell the community after serving time that they killed someone. They can rent apartments almost anywhere. There's no online database anyone can browse to find murderers living in your area...

It saddens me as, basically, it's better for the perp's punishment to rape a child, kill them, and dispose of the body than just raping them.

America's unjust sex laws

[Mr_Blank]

From the most recent Economist

America's unjust sex laws

Aug 6th 2009
From The Economist print edition
An ever harsher approach is doing more harm than good, but it is being copied around the world

IT IS an oft-told story, but it does not get any less horrific on repetition. Fifteen years ago, a paedophile enticed seven-year-old Megan Kanka into his home in New Jersey by offering to show her a puppy. He then raped her, killed her and dumped her body in a nearby park. The murderer, who had recently moved into the house across the street from his victim, had twice before been convicted of sexually assaulting a child. Yet Megan's parents had no idea of this. Had they known he was a sex offender, they would have told their daughter to stay away from him.

In their grief, the parents started a petition, demanding that families should be told if a sexual predator moves nearby. Hundreds of thousands signed it. In no time at all, lawmakers in New Jersey granted their wish. And before long, "Megan's laws" had spread to every American state.

America's sex-offender laws are the strictest of any rich democracy. Convicted rapists and child-molesters are given long prison sentences. When released, they are put on sex-offender registries. In most states this means that their names, photographs and addresses are published online, so that fearful parents can check whether a child-molester lives nearby. Under the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, another law named after a murdered child, all states will soon be obliged to make their sex-offender registries public. Such rules are extremely popular. Most parents will support any law that promises to keep their children safe. Other countries are following America's example, either importing Megan's laws or increasing penalties: after two little girls were murdered by a school caretaker, Britain has imposed multiple conditions on who can visit schools.

Which makes it all the more important to ask whether America's approach is the right one. In fact its sex-offender laws have grown self-defeatingly harsh (see article). They have been driven by a ratchet effect. Individual American politicians have great latitude to propose new laws. Stricter curbs on paedophiles win votes. And to sound severe, such curbs must be stronger than the laws in place, which in turn were proposed by politicians who wished to appear tough themselves. Few politicians dare to vote against such laws, because if they do, the attack ads practically write themselves.

A Whole Wyoming of Offenders

In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries--more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming. The number keeps growing partly because in several states registration is for life and partly because registries are not confined to the sort of murderer who ensnared Megan Kanka. According to Human Rights Watch, at least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure. Some prosecutors are now stretching the definition of "distributing child pornography" to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends.

How dangerous are the people on the registries? A state review of one sample in Georgia found that two-thirds of them posed little risk. For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being "party to the crime of child molestation" because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender.

Several other countries have sex-offender registries, but these are typically held by the police and are hard to view. In America it takes only seconds to find out about a sex offender: some states have a "click to print" icon on their websites so that concerned citizens can put up posters wit

Re:Punishment doesn't fit the Crime

[jDeepbeep]

I took a leak outside the bar one night when I was drunk and now I'm banned from Facebook for life.

What's wrong with this picture?

That's not the worst bit. You would be banned from Twitter too. At that point, there is little left to live for.

Here's the Economist article.

[Dr. Manhattan]

Illiberal Politics: America's Unjust Sex Laws.

Re:Punishment doesn't fit the Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

A murderer, however. He's free to use Facebook all he wants to track down new victims...

Re:Those are old and short-horizoned

[ring-eldest]

10 years? Here you go.

http://voice-of-reason.pbworks.com/f/CA-Ten%20year%20recidivism%20study%20CDCR%206-17-08.pdf

We bounce these guys back to jail for nitpicky violations of parole pretty much exclusively. A 3.38% cumulative recidivism rate for sex offenses is INSANELY low. The odds are probably much better that a slashdotter will commit a sex crime during that same time period.

betterunixthanunix (980855) is willfully spreading misinformation either because he's a massive idiot or because he has some kind of agenda.