The Double Standard Is Hard to Ignore
A former Tennessee detective whose job was to oversee sex offender registry compliance has pleaded guilty after investigators discovered he forged registrants’ signatures on official registry documents. He was originally indicted on 10 charges—including eight counts of tampering with government records and two counts of official misconduct. Under his plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to one count of official misconduct. He was sentenced to probation.
In Florida, a registrant who inadvertently forgets to report a vehicle tag or another registration requirement is subject to a mandatory minimum and can never be removed from the registry. Why are unknowing or unintentional technical mistakes by registrants treated more harshly than knowing and intentional misconduct by the officials responsible for enforcing the law?
FAC has long maintained that accountability should apply equally. If the registry is as important as lawmakers claim, then those who administer it should be held to at least the same standard as those required to comply with it.
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Just think of all the jobs that would be lost and budgets shrunk if we didn’t have the registry, not to mention the billions raked in by private prisons. 🙄
This story is odd and poorly written, and missing a lot of information. That being said, I wonder if Tennessee has the same rules for registrants failing to report required info as here in Florida.
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