News or nothing? Sex offenders near schools
Each day I scan news to identify stories that would be of interest to our members. Often I’m baited into clicking on a headline thinking it’s something important, when it winds up being totally benign.
Today, for example, this story from an Alabama station, with the headline, “Sex offender arrested after setting up homeless camp near school grounds in Fort Payne” was about a guy who was living homeless near a school. Admittedly not the best choice of venue, but the guy was homeless and probably didn’t have the best options. Read on and you discover the man was registered for an offense in 1992. That was 33 years ago! Should this be a story? If it is; maybe it’s that three decades later someone is still paying the price for an old crime. Certainly if he’d reoffended it would have been mentioned. How about a story about how even 33 years after a crime, individuals on the registry are still unable to find housing because of the stigma, residency restrictions, chronic unemployment and unavailability of homeless shelters that will take them?
Or here’s another story from Oregon about a registrant who suffered a medical crisis while at a Middle School. The article didn’t mention whether he was a parent or had some other valid reason to be there. Just that he was a sex offender. The “incident” led to a bill that’s making its way through the legislature. At least the author of the story asked the important question, “have there been incidents? Does that matter?” It’s a legitimate question. Aside from assaults perpetrated by fellow students, teachers and coaches, have there been children sexually assaulted on school grounds? If this “gap” in the registration law has apparently existed since the inception of the registry decades ago, has this been a problem that needs to be addressed with yet another law?
Seems to me there’s nothing here
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Well known attorney John Morgan has put his potential hat in the race for Florida Governor.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/john-morgan-details-new-political-strategy-may-run-for-governor/ar-AA1CLUkC?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=LCTS&cvid=ffdda2f4e72144c0871168843e453c6f&ei=65
Meanwhile in Polk County where Grady Judd is the high sheriff,
https://www.wesh.com/article/florida-assistant-principal-arrested-asking-student-rub-her-feet/64446041
I’ve heard it before where concerns are raised for the safety of one falsely accused of a sex offence and then completely dismissed for those of us who were correctly accused.
The sex offence registry is either inherently dangerous or it is not. The consortium of they shouldn’t be allowed to report a thing as dangerous only when it affects those falsely accused unless we as a society agree that the inherent dangerousness of the registry is acceptable. And if we do, shouldn’t we then agree that an inherently dangerous policy should then be considered a punishment as punishments often harbor acceptably dangerous consequences to an offender?
It’s all about being defendable.
Ones ethnic background is defendable.
Ones gender is defendable.
Ones Religion is defendable.
But then we get into another area. Ones activities. Can ones activities be defendable? Sure. Being an employee or enjoying a hobby. These are activities that can be defendable.
But, can car jacking be defendable as an activity? How about thievery or robbery or sexual offending or murder?
We are not saying ‘ I cook hamburgers for a living so therefore I shouldn’t be discriminated against.’
We’re saying we did horrible things to people and we were punished.
If the carjacker can move forward after punishment and we were both released from our obligations to our government then why must society keep adding these arbitrary and capricious restrictions and irrational carve-outs?
But wait there’s more; “Least Restrictive Means test. When the Supreme court, in reviewing the constitutionality of legislation, uses the permissive rational basis standard, it demands only that a law be a rational means for achieving a legitimate governmental purpose.”
So if this logic is good enough for the rest of society then why not society’s pariahs?
From a song I wrote; “If I shoulda got life then I woulda got life.”
End this nonsensical madness.
The only good the sex offence registry ever did was to give politicians votes so they can restrict the lives of even more citizens.
I try and keep track of what goes on in the area I live in and I recall 1 story in the last 15 years where a “sex crime” occured and the perpetrator and victim were unknown to each other. In every other instance, and there have been many, the victim knew the offender, just like the studies and the data have shown. Everyone from preachers to guidance counselers, music teachers, friends of the family, boyfriends and girlfriends of the parent, step parents to the victims, etc. And just like the data shows, none of them were on the registry prior to the offense. Why this is so hard for politicians and people to understand boggles my mind but they sure seem to like to have a boogie man to focus on instead of educating people where the true threat lies.
Great article! I cover these a lot on our YT channel – ICAC – UNPACKED!
The perpetual punishment the public allows and the vigilantes and trolls exploit, is despicable. We need to keep calling it out.
Two years, a knuckleheaded Republican here in VA tried to expand the registration to encompass years before the registry was born (1993) — so, basically the dawn of time. We mobilized and soundly defeated it.