• Kissimmee Man Accused of Trying To Set Sex Offenders on Fire
    32 replies, posted
A funny little side effect of the registry is that we're now seeing sex offenders grouping together into communities to avoid having to tell everyone around them that they're sex offenders. It's a lot easier if the answer to that is always "no shit, welcome to the club" So now in some cities there are large pockets of sex offenders basically forming their own neighborhoods and communities. Feel free to take from that whatever you want, I don't have any insight as to whether it's harmful or not beyond causing possibly misguided outrage. I don't think we'll ever find a middle ground on this issue. I just cannot see a public registry for such poorly written laws having a place in this society, and I don't find them comparable to the notion of prison, simply knowing that one or more of your neighbors is vaguely identified as a sex offender, which could mean anything from child rapist to public urinator, does not really do the public any good, where as locking away serial killers kind of does. However, I would also say that protecting offenders of non-violent or victimless crimes from the penal system is more important than criminal justice in general. I'm just never going to agree that innocent people getting caught up in the system is ever a price worth paying. So if they want a registry, feel free to shut it down, rewrite the laws so it only applies to rapists, child molesters, etc, and then you can know whatever you want about that guy down the road with the weird mustache. It's not asking that much that these laws be written with care. I still don't agree completely with the public registry, I would like to see some studies done on it to see its impact, though, but I would not argue against it so adamently if all the people on it actually deserved it.
And I don't agree that letting violent people blend into society potentially endangering those around them is even remotely acceptable, I guess we just have fundamentally different values on this. Even if they form communities, at least we know where they are and who they are than having lots of invisible predators in various neighbourhoods. Honestly I think comparing it to prison is perfectly fair, there's lots of people in prison for crimes that shouldn't really exist, but that isn't an issue with the notion of prison, that's an issue with the laws that put them there in the first place. Same goes for this.
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