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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My question is this: Why is the child porn not taken off those sites. Law enforcement and the FBI spent hours of manpower on the computer looking at that and finding people who do the same, then arrest them. I know China doesn’t have child porn on their computers, not that I want to live there but come on. Its just sickening. Go to the source, spent your time finding that.
Because there is a lot of money to be made from keeping it out there. It feeds an entire industry; law enforcement, prosecutors, prison systems, probation and parole, electronic monitoring, treatment, polygraphs, etc.
I would like to know the percentage of people on the registry in Florida who were sex sting ,what I call victims. Iys gotta be around 10% by now. They’ve been doing them for over a decade now. So yeah, along with those who are on it for stupid behavior or normal teenage behavior as she called it, there’s also those of us who dont even have a victim to begin with.
An often missed opportunity is challenging the use of the word “pedophile” in any testimony, news articles, and laws. Pedophilia is a clinical diagnosis, and the state isn’t making any attempt to diagnose anyone with this or any other disorder. The sex offender registry is not a tool to protect anyone from pedophiles, nor does it help manage or regulate pedophiles, because it contains next to no actual pedophiles.
A DA, congressman, or even the President cannot diagnose pedophilia any more than they can diagnose autism, irritable bowel syndrome, or diabetes.
The registry is not a list of “…adult[s] or older adolescent[s] experienc[ing] a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children.”
It is a list of people who committed a crime the legislature decided should be administratively unique.
Just because someone touches a child inappropriately does not make that person a pedophile…no more than that person standing in the garage makes that person a car. Constantly focusing on a child would indicate a possible problem, but someone who otherwise exhibits normal sex drive could very well just be drawn into the moment and not a threat at all. My victim was my daughter after my wife’s death. We have resolved it and now have a normal relationship. As part of my parental duties I helped coach a girl’s soccer team and did volunteer help for her girl scout troop. Not one single problem. I got along quite well with the girls and their parents. A true pedophile is a problem…but are few and far between.
How about: Some of them on the sex offender registry were made up by narcissists and sociopaths who work in the system
How about making a registry for people who have used the system to abuse others? (for self serving purposes)
Shouldn’t everybody know about these people, so everybody can protect themselves from them? “The best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.” (Unless something major has happened to disrupt that). They’ll keep doing it, if they’re never held accountable for it.
In at least one example, the sex offender registry has cost lives. In May 2, 2018, the an artificial heart from Medtronics/Heartware was recalled. The design flaw would have been caught in 2016, but the engineer responsible for the project was awaiting trial for possession of child pornography: one nude, but not sexual picture of a twelve year old girl from a Russian website from the 1990s that was never opened and was found by computer forensic expert to have been placed on the used computer 9 months before the used computer was given to the “perpetrator”. https://www.dicardiology.com/article/medtronic-heartware-hvad-system-recalled-due-unintended-disconnection-power-source
Excellent summary of what the FAC is all about.