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
Discover more from Florida Action Committee
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The public views us with un-controllable urges to constantly offend and obsess over thoughts of wanting to re-offend. If we were all that sick and deranged, there would be a lot more instances. They label some predators but all of us are pretty much treated like we are all predators and just waiting for the right victim to fall into our trap.
Some of these people who talk about us should get a job in Hollywood because they are very good at making up stories and scenarios that do not exist or are so un-common, it is like looking for bigfoot and claiming you found them up to no good.
As they slap new laws, rules and regulations on us every single year, at some point we will be on house arrest for fear of leaving our homes.
U all are sick..period
@Lucy
Glad you took valuable time out of your busy day to come and share your thoughts with us. I will notate your concerns. You were probably not even alive when I was arrested, that’s how long ago those accusations were made.
Come back anytime to share your frustrations about people on here you have never met and probably never will. If it makes you feel better, come back and tell me what you really think.
I don’t cconverse with sick people
Poster now you know how black people have been feeling forevermore in these United States of America. It has often put people at a disadvantage based on their criminal records, which I feel should drop off every 10 years for everyone. What is the sense of having a lifelong criminal record at all. Understand Overstand and Innerstand that all laws on the books today were established to keep black slaves from ever being FREE after the Emancipation Proclamation Act. As far as Sexual Predators, it would depend on the severity of the sexual act, why one should be on the registry for life.
The idea is to foster the bandwagon paranoia that has become a huge part of the societal zeitgeist. The shock jock media was the main driver of this paranoia a couple of decades ago, making people think that there were unrealistic threats to children all over the place and that non-parental adults have no place in a minor’s life at all which is going to warp their social development. This cause de jure is hopefully a temporary thing and people will return to rationality at some point.
I thought residency restrictions were unconstitutional in Alabama https://all4consolaws.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/McGuire-v.-Marshall-Alabama-federal-residency-restrictions-May-2024.pdf
And last I heard the state was appealing to the 11th Circuit
Does anyone have any more information on this case.
Anything to keep squeezing the proverbial juice out of the quintessential boogeyman.
Politicians will never cower from sensationalizing mundane situations in order to make a name for themselves, especially if it means putting the name of some poor, defenseless child as the name of the bill.