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New York State Releases Sex Offender Facebook App
Just in time for Halloween, the New York state Division of Criminal Justice Services launched a Facebook application to help families know which houses contain sexual offenders. “Knowledge is power. New Yorkers now have another way to access up-to-date information about sex offenders in their neighborhoods,” DCJS Acting Commissioner Sean M. Byrne said in a release. “With Halloween around the corner, parents now have another tool to learn where offenders live so they can ensure their children stay away from those locations, as well as strangers’ homes. The Facebook app puts that important information at parents’ fingertips, whether they are at home or on the go.”
Might as well have them wear a big ol' S.
There's a lot of other crimes that are dangerous to neighbors, why just this one? And no I'm not advocating for all (or none), just asking why this one is singled out.
Why would you avoid sex offenders on Halloween? They always have the best candy!
On a more serious note, while "knowledge is power"; garbage in still means garbage out. "Level 1", "Level 2" and "Level 3" are practically designed to tell you fuck all of actual use. Is a "level 3" forcible rapist with no interest in children more dangerous than a "level 1" pedophile? Well, that sort of depends on who you are, doesn't it? Are sex offenders(those who actually target strangers, rather than the common-but-less-polite-to-discuss trusted adults known to the victim) actually dumb enough to do their re-offending on their own doorsteps, rather than at less obvious locations?
This application seems like a fantastic tool for people afflicted with nebulous anxiety who feel the need to refine that into focused, concrete fear; but it seems magnificently ill-suited to any actual public safety objective...
Sex sells.
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt sell.
Providing a "solution" to fear, uncertainty, and doubt sells.
Combine all 3 and it's the politician's re-election trifecta.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What it says
What it really means
With Halloween around the corner, parents now have another tool to ...ensure their children stay away from ... strangers’ homes
For real? In NY kids only trick or treat at family and friend-of-families houses? That must be weird. Everywhere I have ever lived, kids visit every house that has a light on, like a candy assembly line or something.
Locally we worked around the whole offender thing by passing one law that forbids offenders from living within Z thousand feet of an elementary school, another law requiring elementary schools in the city limits to be within 2 * Z thousand feet of each other, and finally only permitting new housing developments where the most distant home is less than Z thousand feet of the local elementary school. There are weird corner cases of grandfathered in homes in the old parts of the city and bordering industrial areas where the offenders all live. I have checked the maps and its certainly a growth industry, the offender rate must exceed at least 0.1% of the population. They are forming dense little colonies of perversion within those restricted zones.
I frankly worry a heck of a lot more about my neighbor with eight DUIs running my kids over, or the biker gang down the street getting in a shoot out (note, move in "nearby" a biker gang, because they're smart enough not to soil where they sleep, and other criminals are scared of them, so its actually a very pleasant crime free neighborhood...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Once your registration expires or the conviction or registration requirement is overturned, sites that continue to claim you are a registered sex offender are not immune from libel/slander lawsuits if they keep the info up once they are notified that it is no longer current.
Most states REQUIRE that sites that have the full sex-offender-database online (vs. just a blog that happens to mention that one particular so-and-so is a registered sex offender as of the date of the posting) check it against the official list on a regular basis and remove outdated information.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Now I have yet another source to see where every dude in town who had to take a leak really bad and went in the bushes lives. Newsflash, the vast majority of "sex offenders" haven't violated anyone's rights. They are not child molestors, rapists, or anything like that. Most are just people who took a discrete leak in public and someone happened upon them or other nonsense like that. This "war" on sex offenders is getting to be as ridiculous as the "war" on drugs. The "sex offender" label is just another way to collect taxes and ruin people's lives, which seems to be the goal of the police and courts anymore. There are already laws against assault, abduction, and other truly violent crimes. No need for "sex offender" laws as it's already covered under so many other laws.
Like that woman in whatever state it was who allowed her 15 3/4-year-old daughter to have sex with her 18-year-old boyfriend (which, by the way, would be legal "parental consent" in many states)? The woman who is now labeled for life as a "sex offender" even though the daughter the boyfriend are now married and were never charged with anything?
I know of a case in Idaho, not many years ago, in which a man went to state prison for having oral sex with his WIFE.
I agree: actual, intentional molestation of a child is one thing. Many of our laws, though, have become something else entirely.
This "sex offender" BS is an embarrassment to America. It needs to go away.
I've always hated the "sex offender" label and how they are all lumped together and put on display. I've read articles about guys in some states being labeled "sex offenders" because of indecent exposure charges against them due to peeing outside. I've looked at the sex offender maps around where I live and there are poor guys on there because they were 18 and had sex with a 17 year old, visible right next to the 50 year old man who raped a 1 year old baby. How can we pretend these are equivalent crimes that require public warnings?
NYPD just tagged you in a photo.
my site of misleading and incorrect information!
Are these people safe reformed citizens who should be free intermix with normal people.
Or are the dangerous criminals who should be locked up.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Teach your kids Common Sense when they go Trick or Treating. Don't go into the houses of anyone you don't know. Don't trick or treat alone. I seriously doubt any sex offender is going to snatch children out of a pack of Trick or Treaters and drag them into their house to molest them.
I think most people would agree that homosexuality is not a choice, and most would agree that people do not elect to be sexually attracted to children.
They need counselling and in the extreme cases some form of chemical castration.
Agreed wholeheartedly.
When you have a biological need that can only be satisfied by harming others or, for that matter, doing things that are so strongly counter-cultural that you must not do it in the culture you live in (e.g. polygamy in many countries or cultures, including most devout religious communities in the United States), then society not only MUST make counseling available but do so in a way that doesn't DISCOURAGE people from getting it. If people are afraid to tell their therapist "I'm in love with 2 women but I know God doesn't want me to sleep with both of them" or "I'm in love with my 6 year old cousin who lives next door but I know God and society don't want me to take him to bed" then we have a serious problem, one that will result in higher incidences of child abuse.
As for chemical castration:
Very few people are so controlled by their bodies that they cannot "say no" if they want to badly enough. However, it should be available as a tool to tone down the biological urges for those who would rather have low or no libido than live with a libido which they cannot satisfy without hurting others.
Chemical castration as a way to voluntarily lower libido isn't just for pedophiles and sex addicts. I wouldn't be surprised if more than one devout Roman Catholic man who has a civil divorce would prefer to lower his natural libido than be forced to live with a life of celibacy with his current sex drive. Unfortunately, because of its unpleasant side-effects, these drugs are too dangerous to use as a mere "lifestyle aid" when a libido which cannot be ethically satisfied is a mere annoyance - when it is not driving a person to want to sexually abuse others and it is not driving them to crippling depression or suicide.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I need an app that will help me track abusive policemen.
At this point, it seems like there is a much greater need to track abusive policemen than sex offenders. After all, if a sex offender causes problems, you call the police and they get put away. But if you are abused by a policeman, then calling the police just gets you more abuse.
I have a much greater need to track Tony Boloney http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/19/tony-bologna-with-a-side-of-pepper-spray-docked-10-vacation-days-videos/ than some random kink.
Abusive police we have with us always. We can't get rid of them. Our only defense is to track them and keep our distance.
Miles
Most states have Romeo and Juliet laws and those that don't typically don't AUTOMATICALLY put young offenders with close-in-age partners on the sex-offender registry even if they are convicted of statutory rape or equivalent.
Most states don't put first-time misdemeanor offenders on the registry. This includes the drunk exposing himself when he didn't know there were kids around AND when there weren't likely to be children around.
While some teens have been charged with sexting to age-peers, most states and prosecutors look for other charges or are modifying the laws so these aren't considered registration-required offenses. Even the federal prosecutors are loathe to prosecute things that teenagers commonly do as sex crimes.
it's that their daughter/son is more likely going to get abused by her brother or boyfriend than that creepy looking guy down the street.
Or, possibly even more likely, an older or same-aged family member or neighbor. I wonder how common forced/coerced incest is among 2-child families where the male is 2-10 years older than the female AND where, as the older child, he's routinely been required to babysit the younger one from the time he was 11 or 12 until the time she was the same age?
I wonder how often the parents find out but, because they don't want to ruin their son's life with even a juvenile sex-offense conviction, they handle it "within the family," depriving the younger child of helpful counseling and POSSIBLY (if the local prosecutors have youthful-offender pre-trial diversion programs that the family may not be aware of) necessary counseling for the older one?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So prevent them from having any privacy, and also prevent them from any meaningful employment or source of income. Surely then they will just "disappear" and not bother you anymore instead of oh I don't know, turn to crime to support themselves or I know, re-offend knowing full well they will get both food and shelter (and even privacy) when they are in jail again? Great plan.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Are these people safe reformed citizens who should be free intermix with normal people.
Or are the dangerous criminals who should be locked up
Are you talking about registered sex offenders or people obsessed with finding out where registered sex offenders live?
Just curious.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Wouldn't a punishment that's applied only to one form of crime fall under the Eight Amendment?
and therefore make a great target for any politician/newspaper wanting to drum up some publicity.
Ever noticed anybody willing to put their head above the parapet and defend them?
Attempting to do so is way beyond my personal abilities, but the f'in inconsistencies in the arguments beggar belief.
Just to take an example - is paedophilia a crime or a disease? If it's a disease, something they have no control over, then it should be treated like any other with care and compassion - but it can't be a disease, because then we wouldn't feel comfortable demanding they're strung up from the nearest lamp-post.
So - we're stuck with 'crime', a voluntary act they chose to make because they're 'evil' (we so so so want them just to be evil (like Nazis), rational analysis throws up so many 'hard-thinks'). So. Criminals they are - except they're not allowed to be rehabilitated. Their crime is so great that it must be branded upon them for life. Their houses must be marked. Neighbours must be warned. People must cross the street - I'm pretty sure these are all wonderfully well targeted techniques at integrating people back into society.
There are loads of parallels you could take as examples - how for example the USA gets pulled into politics in certain parts of the world.
The "USA" is a great big complex thing, that's done some good things and some really bad things. It's not an actual thing you can point, shout or reason with - it's an amorphous concept. Yet - in many parts of the world, if things are going a bit badly locally, you can guarantee you can just rip into the USA, blame it for all your ills, chuck up a statue of your crusading-pig-dog image of choice, start making some nukes for them and get the crowd cheering. Sure it might screw things up a bit in the long term, but it gets you through that tricky patch.
And to summarize...(I believe this is what you're supposed to do at the end).
The concept of a state publicly marking its citizens, for any reason at all, is distasteful and dangerous. No special cases, no exceptions. Quite likely not to end well, if history is anything to go by.
Actually - bit presumptuous of me to tell you what you should think. I also know damn well if the list went online near me I'd be on there like a shot.
Outlaw "Trick or Treat". Or "demanding moneys with menaces" as it's known in the rest of the world. Only in the USA is such an odious 'tradition' encouraged and made part of the culture. Unfortunately it's spreading to other countries through the usual cultural imperialism. JUST SAY NO!
Found one in Georgia. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/sex14.htm Guilty of consensual sodomy.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.