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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim S who wrote (62496)	9/17/2007 12:53:51 AM
From: ManyMoose	Respond to of 90947

It would seem that if the law concentrated on removing the "Joseph Duncans" of the world from society and stayed out of thought crimes or false and unproven accusations, it would make more sense. Duncan killed a family, abducted and molested two children, killed one and continued to molest the other before being caught. The taxpayers have to pay for three trials just to get this creep out of circulation. I think it might have been better if he had been shot while resisting arrest.

To: Jim S who wrote (62496)	11/28/2007 3:43:31 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

The "thought crimes", or the teenagers who had consensual sex, or perhaps adults who participated in consensual sex that some politician found abhorrent, are the biggest problem with the way the sex offender registries work (these people should not be on the list), but even for real sex offenders the way the lists are used is often problematic. "...Despite all the talk of protecting children, registered sex offenders are not synonymous with predatory criminals, let alone child molesters. In Georgia they include many people who were guilty of nothing beyond consensual sex as teenagers. Even if they have never demonstrated a propensity to abuse children, the 10,000 or so sex offenders covered by the registration requirement have to regularly report their whereabouts to local law enforcement officials, who in turn make the information publicly available. Failure to report triggers a prison sentence of at least 10 years. Yet until the Georgia Supreme Court intervened, sex offenders also had a strong incentive not to register, since doing so enabled the government to enforce residence restrictions that made nearly all locations in urban areas off limits. The penalty for violating those restrictions was the same as the penalty for failing to register. Georgia's law barred sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, church, day care center, or any other location where children might congregate, including parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, skating rinks, and school bus stops. Even if a sex offender managed to find a legal place to live, he could be ordered to move again and again, depending on how his neighbors decided to use their property. Anthony Mann, the registered sex offender who successfully challenged Georgia's law, bought a house in Clayton County with his wife in 2003. At the time, it was a legal location. But then a day care center opened nearby, rendering it illegal..." reason.com The GA supreme court recently overturned that restriction but other states have similar restrictions. And of course some, perhaps even most, of the people on those registries are either not people we would normally think of as criminals (except in the technical sense that they did violate a law) or are only really minor criminals, not serious sexual predators. But even for the serious predators, thinking that these restrictions make children safe is a rather silly idea. And if the predators are so dangerous that you should basically banish them from whole metro areas, than perhaps they should have long sentences and remain locked up. reason.com