Opinion: Abolish the Registry
This is an article from The Northern Light Newspaper, in Alaska, that examines the issues that the registry creates.
It’s not easy to come to the defense of nonviolent sex offenders. Any lawmaker that considers reforming the excessively-punitive registry will start out on the losing side of the public’s perception. For starters, there is an erroneous assumption that the registry entirely comprises of rapists and pedophiles. On top of that, sex offender registration has become somewhat of a throwaway issue. Who cares about anyone on the registry? They did something, and that’s their punishment.
However, our inability to think critically about sex offender registration is causing undue legal and moral repercussions upon convicted people. We should care because many offenders were convicted under consensual circumstances that any reasonable society wouldn’t penalize in this way. All states have sex offender registries, as mandated by a series of federal laws in the 1990s, but each state has different opinions on what situations amount to a sex offense. Many situations do not at all fit the pathological predator theme that the public associates with the entire registry.
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This excerpt from the article tells you why signing petitions, going to meetings, or posting comments here, or even voting will not change the abuse of so-called sex offenders:
“It’s not easy to come to the defense of nonviolent sex offenders. Any lawmaker that considers reforming the excessively-punitive registry will start out on the losing side of the public’s perception. For starters, there is an erroneous assumption….”
This is why we do not leave it up to these so-called lawmakers. We must do it ourselves. We do not ask others, we create our own political power. These these lawmakers will make miraculous U-turns when they see their careers can be ruined by not taking us into consideration.
How can this political power be created?
Educate, legislate, litigate. We need to be working on all three fronts. Educate public opinion so that they’re more aware of what registries are and what they aren’t and can vote in a more informed way. Legislate by working in Tallahassee to help legislators understand that it’s worth their while to sponsor good bills and jettison bad ones. And, even where both of those fail, go to the courts and file constitutional challenges such as FAC’s well-argues Ex Post Facto Plus lawsuit.
Gauloise
You got it right , the public perception right now is that everyone on the registry deserves to be tortured and burned with all the evil in the universe no exceptions. All because of a very few atrocious crimes ,the perpetrators of which will never be on the registry because they will never be out of prison alive. Anyone doing anything adverse to anyone on the registry is looked at as a hero. You will never change the public’s perception of that it’s already gone to far. The only possible thing left is to try to find reason in a few judges. Which does happen once in a while. When we do we have to sue with large enough law suits that they will remember it and put fear into the others that are on the wrong side of law and justice.