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Florida Reduces Penalties For 'Sexting' Teens
SonicSpike sends word that Florida has changed how law enforcement deals with teenagers who send racy pictures to each other over their phones. Quoting CNN:
"Before Saturday, a Florida teenager who sent or received nude photos or video could have been charged with a felony and forced to register as a sex offender. But a new law, recognizing the proliferation of cell phones and computers, eases the penalties for 'sexting' infractions. A first offense is punishable by eight hours of community service or a $60 fine; the second is a misdemeanor and the third is a felony. ... Under House Bill 75, teens who receive explicit images won't be charged if they took reasonable steps to report it, did not solicit the image and did not send it to someone."
What about persons previously convicted? I doubt they're gonna retroactively "fix" those kids' lives.
It's still pretty fucking stupid to charge them in the first place.
At least it's a step in the right direction, albeit a small one...
Since there are penalties there... still no common sense.
"....teens who receive explicit images won't be charged if they took reasonable steps to report it"
Seig Heil !
So teenagers with breasts are not allowed to, well, be teenagers; but parents are still allowed to push their pre-teen kids into beauty contests complete with swimsuit competions and prostitute dress-ups?
The types of people who villify sexting are the dirty old men-types who jack off to teen porn and pop boners watching their daughters play in the pool while being pissed that they couldn't have the same fun when they were younger, then spend the rest of their time praying for forgiveness and validating their perversions by projecting them onto others.
But Puritanism is alive and well in the United States.
I find it ironic that some of those complaining loudest about the impending Sharia Law in the US and Europe are among those most likely to demand various Levitical Laws in the US.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
If it would have been me, most likely because I bragged about it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A fine step from very evil to ... less evil, but still very evil.
Under House Bill 75, teens who receive explicit images won't be charged if they took reasonable steps to report it, did not solicit the image and did not send it to someone.
So let me get this straight: A 16 year old's girlfriend sends him a picture, he is guilty unless he reports her to the police?
First, bite my shiny metal ass.
Second, good luck upholding that when it goes to a court above the Florida level.
Third, to expand on item one; holy shit are you a bunch of nasty assholes. Up until a circuit or the Supremes knock this foul law flat on its ass, it is going to put a lot of kids in really nasty quandaries about their obligations to the people they care about versus the state. Honestly, I figure it's safe to assume you will be creating thousands of anti-authoritarians in one stroke of your pen. I'm sure the year 2021 thanks you for the increase in civil disobedience you are creating.
Fourth, they're just body parts. They can't hurt you. How does it make sense to put kids into the ironically named "correctional system" because they received a picture of a breast? You think they are going to come out better people? That it will improve our future? You are bat-shit-looney if you believe that.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Did you miss the part where they have to report it? Meaning you have to share it with the law enforcement or you might get in trouble.
Whoever made that law is a huge wanking pervert.
From the summary, this still sounds ridiculously difficult. It's a crime if you don't turn in your girlfriend?
Take off every 'sig' !!
I don't know why you were modded down. I am not sure whether you are right in each and every detail but there is an incredible amount of hypocrisy in all attempts to suppress and control teenagers sex drives. I especially like the fact that all pictures have to be reported. I am sure that the number of job applicants for clerical police work will increase.
Pragmatic? You're asking for a pragmatic approach?
Accept the fact that teen's bodies are flooded with hormones, and they only think of sex for about 36 hours each day. (Yes, I know, for children and adults, there are only 24 hours in each day - teens live in a different continuum!) The little bastards are always going to be thinking of sex, they speak sex, they look sex, they breathe sex. Pragmatism dictates that we leave them the hell alone, to deal with their own demons, in their own way.
If YOU don't want to see pictures of naked teens, then DON'T LOOK AT A TEEN'S PHONE!
Dumbasses . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's ok. The police have set up official websites run by private contractors so that you can upload and register the pictures when you receive them, and there's even a facility for monitoring duplicates in case you accidentally upload something one of your fellow victims received already. To make it even easier to remember, the police have reserved a special domain called .XXX for those websites (three stick figures saying NO PICTURES!).
Oh the whole "save teh childrenz!" thing is royally fucked and we have been way past sane for quite awhile. Some examples include the guy who wrote the "pro pedo" book that is now rotting in jail. Nobody accused him of touching anybody, no pics or anything, just his thoughts and opinions on paper. I seem to remember someone writing about a time when people could be arrested for their thoughts. There is also the guy doing prison time for writing his fantasies in his journal which his shrink told him to do, another thoughtcrime. Then there is the guy who went to jail for dirty Jap cartoons, again no kids, just pen and ink. as a friend that works in the state crime lab told me these laws are so badly written you could draw a stick figure and scribble "nekked kid" on it and theoretically be guilty of child pron!
For one a little closer to TFA how is THIS for fucked up: In several states I can marry a girl as young as 14 with their parents permission. I can marry her, bang her any way my little heart desires, again completely legal, but if I take a picture of my wife naked I'd be a child pornographer!
This whole damned thing has become another red scare, only instead of commies we see pervs behind every tree. what we seriously need is some common sense laws but sadly politicians have learned they can stir up the rabble and get more votes by pushing the "save teh childrenz!" button.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The other terrible thing about the sex offender registries is all the horrible regulations one has to live with if you end up on the list. My dad has a friend who lost the lawyer lottery (and admittedly wasn't smart enough to realize it at the time) and was advised to plead guilty to a sex crime when his ex wife convinced their daughter to claim he had touched her inappropriately in the middle of their ugly divorce. He now isn't allowed to live within 5000 yards of any schools or daycare facilities. He just rented an apartment and was told after moving in that somebody living nearby is running a daycare in their house so he has 10 days to find a new place to live. There is a database of daycares you can check before you move somewhere, and the database said his new address was in the clear. It was only after he paid his non-refundable deposit and moved all of his stuff into the place that the sheriff came by and said "Oops, turns out there IS a daycare nearby. Too bad, get out within 10 days or you go to jail for a felony. have a nice day!"
Terrorist watch, no-fly, felony, and sex offender lists are the new yellow stars. Anybody who claims America doesn't have classes or a caste system is either misinformed or lying.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Someone getting nailed on kiddie porn charges for THEIR OWN PICTURES is what is ridiculous.
You can't get much more victimless than that.
The bestiality thing is a bit of a joke, because it was already effectively illegal under broader animel cruelty laws - and with the precident to back up that interpretation too. Making a law to explicitly outlaw it is really just moral grandstanding - publicly attacking some icky sex thing to boost the Family Friendly credentials of a few politicians, even though it doesn't actually change a thing.
Depends on the lawyer. Public defenders are generally kept overworked to the point where they just don't have time to make a defence. That's the way the state likes it - every time a person gets found innocent of a criminal charge, it makes the police look like idiots. Unacceptable.
They are getting a little less evil but only for "crimes" that could accidentally impact the lives of white, middle class kids. The only reason this law is getting a second look is that it happened to hit "good kids." The laws that impact brown or black people still stand.
Any teen who photographs their own body should be charged for possessing child pornography.
And any teen who masturbates should be charged with sexually molesting a minor.
Finally, all breast-feeding mothers should be charged with indecent exposure to a minor.
This whole law is fucking retarded in regards to teen sexting. Kids are going to be playful, curious, and they are going to send nude pics of themselves, and it's ridiculous to call it a crime. If the pics they send are of themselves, then it's none of the governments damn business. Leave it for the parents to take care of. Classifying it as a crime with tis graduated 3 strikes rule is over the top. What exactly is it suppose to accomplish. It is a distortion of the law to call it child porn to begin with. Instead of making exceptions for self pics from teens, they have again done the wrong thing, albeit it to a very slight lesser degree, instead of just putting an exception in to begin with.
It was intended to stop trade in child-porn - they thought a simple "the creation, distribution or acquisition of any semi-naked image of a juvenile under the age of 17" law should result in both the photographer and the customer being sent to a high-security federal penitentiary for life.
That was when you needed expensive professional camera equipment, access to commercial CD manufacturing, print facilities to make and distribute any kind of static or moving imagery.
They didn't quite think that Tammy the cheerleader would use her mobile phone to send a picture of her new comfy-fit underwear to Jock, the local high-school football team star.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
A lot of districts make those laws to be deliberatly impossible to obey, with the intention of driving sex offenders as far away as possible.
The law doesn't always make sense. I got to see a police representative come to give teens a school lecture on sexting a couple of weeks ago - and he confirmed to them what many suspected: It's legal for them to have sex at seventeen, but illegal for them to see it. He jokingly suggested they wear a blindfold during the act.
It can get a lot sillier in the US though, due to the potential for federal, state and local laws to interact. You end up with situations where it's perfectly legal for a couple to have vaginal sex, but if they have oral sex then they can both go to jail for statutory rape.
The US thinks it is the government's business what a teen sends their bf or gf on their cellphone. The US thinks that when you travel, you give up all privacy rights. The US thinks that getting angry with a border guard is a crime. The US assassinates its own citizens, believes in torture, and incarcerates people indefinitely without a trial. And I could go on. But the amazing thing about all of this is that the US thinks it is a shining example of freedom and democracy around the world. How insane is that?
Americans used to live in a great country, but honestly, that country is gone, now. It's a shame. They need to collectively get their heads out of their asses and learn to question the government, because it is not getting any better. I am not an American, and boy am I happy about that, because I live in a country that is actually an example of freedom and democracy, and that feels great.
Yes, but the problem is that now that they DO know that this is what happens, and it's relatively harmless, they refuse to fix the law with a little sanity and instead seem totally incompetent and out of touch with reality.
Not that I know if he was correct or not, but asking a police officer for legal advice is akin to asking a blind man for a description of the Mona Lisa.
The sad part is, while you may be able to prove innocence of any crime once you're in front of a judge, you still have that part where you get locked up in jail, lose your job (if you're unable to bail out), have the press label you nasty evil things (if the charge involves kids, drugs, or some other item considered to be a moral outrage), suffer financial damage defending yourself against it, etc.
That said, most cops I know of have enough of a working knowledge of the law (mostly by dealing with it daily) to get it right about 80-90% of the time. It's that 10% you have to worry about running afoul of.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Did you miss the part where the penalties if you don't report it are very very minor?
Did you miss the part where currently those penalties involve registering as a sex offender because you're in possession of and/or distributing child pornography?
The hell dude. The hell. You don't even need to RTFA, you just need to have half a fucking brain. This is a good law.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Less incompetent, and more vicious, cruel, and evil. The prosecutors could choose not to prosecute cases between teens, but they do, and with gusto, because it helps their careers.
Couple points of order:
* You don't define "back then", so...
* before 1900, it was fully expected that half the children born would die of something before the age of five, and that only 1 in 5 would make it to puberty.
* before 1800, puberty was pretty much considered to be adulthood insofar as sex was concerned in most nations and cultures - and before 1900, marrying at sixteen was considered normal. Children were expected to work as soon as they could gain enough mental acuity and strength to do so, be it on the family farm or in the factory. The only exception involved kids of more well-off parents, who were expected to get an education that would scare today's kids.
* before 1700, the prohibitions on fornication (notice that sex for procreation isn't considered that) were put in place by church authorities, but was widely ignored unless it became politically expedient to pay attention to.
Some other cultural bits...
* Back then, what would be considered as teen sex usually happened after the teens were married, or in a house of prostitution. Girls were kept from "fornicating" because potential suitors by and large demanded a virgin bride. OTOH, many teen boys of affluent parents were encouraged by their fathers to visit a brothel, if only to get some experience in the matter.
* For most guys, you either did it with your wife, did it in a brothel, or you hadn't hit puberty yet. Any outliers in that data set usually involved adultery, which was harshly dealt with. What you had left was not enough to be statistically significant., and if you had sex with a girl but didn't marry her, she'd be the first one to scream to the authorities demanding marriage (else you either faced charges of rape, or an outright lynching by her family).
* Speaking of brothels, they were not only popular, but legal damned near everywhere (or at most studiously ignored by the local constabulary).
* The whole idea of banning fornication and and adultery revolved around the idea of lineage and property rights (your kid inherits the herds, land, or whatever - not some other guy's kid). This stretches back to the very historic concept of inheritance, and why most religions have that prohibition in place - as a concept, it is that damned old. But, you yourself mention the pragmatism as well. :)
As for today, kids are treasured far more highly, even to the point of legal worship over ideals that earlier civilizations really couldn't give a damn about. It is certainly wrong to harm a kid, to exploit one, or to molest one. This is common sense to a civilized modern human being. OTOH, there comes a point where at least biologically, a person is no longer a child, and the law has to allow for the adolescent to start taking steps into the world of adulthood. As long as it doesn't involve an adult taking advantage of that period of growth, the law should just leave the teenager the hell alone in that regard.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You're a moron. Parents who don't empathise with kids, even those not their own, have the genetic problem, not the ones who do think about the children.
Strawman.
The OP was talking about going overboard, where children are overprotected, and emotions become out of control and override thinking. That's what people are talking about when they use the phrase "Think of the children". We've got a whole set of people in this country that'll do that over and over and over again. Letting your emotions run your entire thinking process is a Bad Idea, and that's exactly what's happening with these dumb laws. 17 year olds sending pictures of their tits to other 17 year olds is not a crime. These laws were "supposed" to protect you children from being exploited by adults. Instead they've also been used to project some sort of weird morality where a 17 year old showing her tits live to another 17 year old is legal, but taking a picture of them and sending them over a cell phone is suddenly illegal.
AccountKiller
Presumably this means you have already been in front of a judge *twice* who has told you that this behavior will result in a felony charge. Whether or not you agree with a 17 year old taking nude photos of themselves being a felony-worthy offence, someone who gets caught doing it after being in court for it twice before has only themselves to blame. The law is on the books and actively enforced, so until that law is changed you had better follow the damn thing (and I wouldn't suggest risking sex offender status and a felony in order to try your luck at getting the supreme court to change the law).
Bottles.
I was convinced to plead guilty to a crime I didn't commit by a public defender. Terrible mistake but I was under 18 and my record expunged. He gave me other terrible advice as well for courtroom conduct. Apparently acting pleasant and smiling only pisses off the judge. That's what I get for having been a poor 15 y/o minority kid with no knowledge of the court system and relying on a lawyer for legal advice. He told me it would be much worse if I tried to fight it... turns out my accuser never showed up, nor did the arresting officer. Also evidence against me was stupid because it would have required superhuman strength to bend a parking meter with my bare hands. (There's a lot more to the lame story.) End of the story is, I was screwed for a while but still came out an OK person. But I could see how some people would hate cops, lawyers, judges.. the law after some of this bullshit.
Did you miss the part where the penalties if you don't report it are very very minor?
Does it matter that the penalties are minor? If someone sends you an unsolicited pic, and you delete it right away, why should there be any penalties at all?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
i feel like i am a room full of 45 year old pedophiles
the tenor of concerns here skews far away from actual parental concerns
Really? You think parents want police searching through their kids' phones looking at naked pictures? You think parents want their kids to face a very public trial over simple youthful indiscretions? You think parents want their kids fined and given a record simply because they didn't report to police that someone forwarded them some dirty pictures? If that's what you think parents want, then I thank God I'm not one of your children!
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
But if a 16 year old sends a photo to another 16 year old with the consent of both, what business is that of law enforcement and how in hell should either be guilty of *any* criminal offense, whether it was the first, second, or third time? The new law is still absurd.
I'm pretty sure the way 3 strikes rules work is that the penalty applies the third time you are convicted. Presumably this means you have already been in front of a judge *twice* who has told you that this behavior will result in a felony charge.
You can't get all three in one go, but the strikes are per charge not per case so you can use up the first two. And strikes you got as a juvenile count the rest of your life, so worst case you'd better not steal a pack of gum the rest of your life or face 25 to life. Look at the three strikes law page on wikipedia for some outrageous examples.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Grant was wrong. Nowadays, governments can do whatever they want to lawbreakers and not only will everyone around them be unsympathetic to their plight ("Well, you knew you weren't supposed to walk on the grass...now you're in for a beheading and it's your own fault") but even the lawbreakers will buy into that reasoning.