Monday, October 15, 2012

Pariahs Among Us: Sex Offender Laws in the 21st Century

Nothing I need to add really, between what I have said previously and the content, it pretty much says it all I guess.

But if the blog had a tag: How many lives can we ruin today, for no good reason, then this story would fit it to a tee.

In actual fact, - lives ruined forever - will get you a result in the search bar.

But I don't think anything is going to prepare you for that part of the article that involves Louisiana. Sick puppies is the term that first springs to mind, and I ain't talking about the offenders, I'm talking about the State.

 Pariahs among us: Sex offender laws in the 21st century

Stringent sex offender laws in the United States destroy lives and do little to mitigate repeat offences.

Charlotte Silver
14 Oct 2012

Maybe it is not so surprising that all we can think to do with a subject we are simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by is to shout our alarm about it at every opportunity.
Sex crimes: The only kind of offence in the United States that compels all convicted perpetrators to register their name, address, date of birth, fingerprints and a photograph on a public website.
And what constitutes a sex crime? The breadth of this damning classification is alarming and includes public urination, consensual teen sex, sale of sex and exposure of genitals (including in the case of children) - as well as violent rape.

One poignant example of the irrationality and senseless devastation of overreaching sex offender laws is the story of Evan B, as told by Lara Geer Farley. When Evan was in high school he was arrested for exposing himself to a group of his female peers. A court sentenced him to four months in prison, but after he was released he was obliged to register as a sex offender. The stigma drove Evan to drop out of school, leave his home in Salina, Oklahoma and move to Tulsa, where the arduous requirements associated with his sex offender status meant that he could not maintain employment. A month before he should have turned 20, Evan shot and killed himself.

And this: A comprehensive Human Rights Watch report, published in 2007, draws attention to the common case of teenage boys aged 15, 16, 17, who have consensual sex with their teenaged girlfriends, finding themselves charged with pedophilia. They will be labelled and publicly registered as "pedophiles" for the rest of their lives.

In some states, boys as young as 10 who expose themselves to their female friends or relatives are forced to register as a "sex offender" before they understand what sex - or exposure - is.

 Outcasts

Additional laws that govern the lives of sex offenders after they are released from prison (if time is served) vary from state to state. But for all, surveillance and stringent notification guidelines are key. In addition to publicising one's status on a website, some states require registrants (the preferred moniker) to inform their neighbours, future employers, landlords, delivery men - or any other solicitor or visitor who knocks on their door - of their status as a "sex offender".

Some states require convicts to wear GPS devices, so that law enforcers can monitor their whereabouts at all time.

Louisiana requires registrants to advertise their status in large red type on their driver's licence.
Other states require periodic plethysmograph tests, in which a pressure sensitive wire is connected to the registrant's penis while being shown various sexual images. The test is designed to detect "sexual deviance".

The registrant is required to attend therapy and "behaviour modification" sessions, check in with probation officers, as well as, of course, engage the services of an attorney, none of which is cheap. Most of these costs are carried by the offender, or as is often the case, his parents.

In addition to adopting legislation that inverts the life of anyone cast as a sex offender - making him quite literally a public spectacle - hundreds of counties have established "exclusion zones". These are areas that surround various public places - parks, schools, libraries, etc - where registrants may not live, work or even walk by.

The proliferation of sex offender registration and residency restriction laws began in 1994 when the US Congress and Senate unanimously passed the Wetterling Act, which required convicted sex offenders to register their information with the state of their residence. Over the past two decades, the federal government has passed law after law that publicised the registry, tightened its stringency and perhaps most crucial, broadened its domain.

In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Act, which aimed to eliminate the inconsistencies among different states' sex offender laws. However, the ugly reality is that it expanded the "sex offences" that demanded registration and thus doomed juvenile, non-violent offenders to, potentially, a lifetime of registration. The law was easily renewed by the US House of Representatives this August - a true indicator of just how politically expedient these laws are.

Even Patty Wetterling, the woman responsible for the enactment of the Wetterling law, in 2006 lamented the direction the country had taken to handle sex offences: "People want a silver bullet that will protect their children, [but] there is no silver bullet. There is no simple cure to the very complex problem of sexual violence."

Advocates of "sex offenders" speak up

Hard evidence and reason suggest that registries and residential requirements do nothing to protect society from sexual assaults. Arguments in support of registration laws rest on a fear-based assumption that notification will protect children, but that assumption is baseless: As many as 90 per cent of sexual assault cases are conducted by family members or acquaintances. Furthermore, recidivism rates among sex offenders are under 25 per cent.

While sex offender laws provide the illusion of "security", the reality remains that rapists continue to walk free. According to statistics compiled by the US Department of Justice, 91 per cent of rapists will never be prosecuted, and only a fraction of those will be convicted or spend time in jail.

Nevertheless, these laws keep coming.

This year in Southern California, as Halloween approaches, some counties have passed ordinances banning registrants from decorating their houses with cobwebs and pumpkins, instead requiring they post a placard that notifies all passersby that there are "No candy or treats at this residence". Furthermore, registrants may have no outside lighting on October 31.

California's branch of the national coalition, Reform Sex Offender Laws, has filed a lawsuit against the ordinance on behalf of five unnamed sex offenders, as well as three of their spouses and two of their children. The suit claims the ordinance violates the plaintiffs' first amendment rights - by both forcing speech and denying their right to celebrate the holiday.

In the meantime, a San Francisco law firm has filed a case against the stringent residency restrictions placed on registrants in four counties in Southern California.

These lawsuits in California are some of the first legal challenges to the mounting set of restrictions placed on a broad class of "criminals" throughout the country.

News of lawsuits challenging punitive legislation is appearing next to headlines reporting that some states may well reject the Adam Walsh Act because they simply don't have the funds to implement its burdensome requirements (Texas estimated it would cost $38m) or are ethically opposed to legislation that would place juvenile offenders on a registry for life.

The hypocrisy of sex offender laws that allege to combat sexual crime by pouring millions into surveillance and registry programmes is reflected in the difficulty experienced by rape support centres that are struggling to merely survive.

The National Alliance to End Sexual Violence (NAESV) reported in a 2012 Rape Crisis Center Survey that 67 per cent of rape crisis centres were forced to reduce the amount of hours they spend dedicated to prevention and awareness programmes; 50 per cent of programmes have eliminated staff in the past year; and 65 per cent of programmes have a waiting list for counseling services.

Sex offender laws have enabled the creation of a being - the pariah - the very notion of which is rooted in an unenlightened (and assumed by most of us to be discarded) view of humanity. A society must surely protect its vulnerable members from violence and assault. Draconian sex offender laws do not further that aim. They have simply accorded the state the power to brand an individual as undeserving of the most basic human and civil rights.


Sex laws 
Unjust and ineffective 
America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offenders. Does it work?

Footnote: for what it's worth, Blogger has a complete bollocks made of the HTML on this new mandatory interface. It used to be so very simple, now it's like mad woman's shit, it's all over the place.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sex laws
Unjust and ineffective

http://www.economist.com/node/14164614

ratchet effect

Sex-offender registries are popular. Rape and child molestation are terrible crimes that can traumatise their victims for life. All parents want to protect their children from sexual predators, so politicians can nearly always win votes by promising curbs on them. Those who object can be called soft on child-molesters, a label most politicians would rather avoid. This creates a ratchet effect. Every lawmaker who wants to sound tough on sex offenders has to propose a law tougher than the one enacted by the last politician who wanted to sound tough on sex offenders.

After the disappearance in Portugal in 2007 of Madeleine McCann, a British toddler, some European politicians have called for a pan-European registry.


Dark dealings.

Anonymous said...

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/predator_panic_a_closer_look/

Predator Panic: A Closer Look

Special Report
Ben Radford
Volume 30.5, September / October 2006

To many people, sex offenders pose a serious and growing threat—especially on the Internet. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has made them a top priority this year, launching raids and arrest sweeps. According to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, “the danger to teens is high.” On the April 18, 2005, CBS Evening News broadcast, correspondent Jim Acosta reported that “when a child is missing, chances are good it was a convicted sex offender.” (Acosta is incorrect: If a child goes missing, a convicted sex offender is among the least likely explanations, far behind runaways, family abductions, and the child being lost or injured.) On his NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” Dateline reporter Chris Hansen claimed that “the scope of the problem is immense,” and “seems to be getting worse.” Hansen claimed that Web predators are “a national epidemic,” while Alberto Gonzales stated that there are 50,000 potential child predators online.

The tragic irony is that the panic over sex offenders distracts the public from the real danger, a far greater threat to children than sexual predators: parental abuse and neglect. The vast majority of crimes against children are committed not by released sex offenders but instead by the victim’s own family, church clergy, and family friends.

Himself said...

My email is playing up. I can't receive, so be aware if I don't respond.

I thought I had finished with such problems, evidently not.

Anonymous said...

The McCanns and a safer Europe. You couldn't make it up.

23 August 2007

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2007/08/23/mps-back-europe-wide-sex-offenders-register

We [Kate and Gerry McCann] want to work with law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organisations to try to make Europe safer for all children.

Kate and I would like to encourage further debate on how Europe can best manage serious crimes such as child abduction.

Anonymous said...

http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2009/09/within-bounds-of-responsible-parenting.html

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/09/crying-shame.html

Anonymous said...

http://209.81.92.75/news/california-law-not-considered-rape-if-youre-not-married-details

Himself said...

Don't miss this one Maren, even if it does make you shiver.

Small town America at its shitty worst. Everything ugly you loathe in life is here in #Steubenville Ohio http://localleaks.blogs.ru/