New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | June 30, 2006

Kerry Howley runs sex offender registries out of town.

Comments

|6.30.06 @ 11:04AM|#

Guns are a vice?

|6.30.06 @ 11:07AM|#

Of course, other mark, where have you been?

|6.30.06 @ 11:17AM|#

Guns are a vice?

Lots of guns in Miami Vice.

|6.30.06 @ 11:28AM|#

Funny, I thought a gun was a tool with a specific purpose. Or a toy, at least.

|6.30.06 @ 11:30AM|#

I agree wholeheartedly that a lot of victimless actions will get you labeled as a sex offender. In some jurisdictions, certain sex acts between consenting adults will still get you a lifetime scarlet letter.

However, I have an awfully hard time feeling sympathy for those who commit rapes or who victimize young children.

Certainly, it would be better if the justice system were more focused on incarcerating such monsters, in order to keep them from re-offending, but as a half-measure, public registries or exclusion zones don't seem like a half-bad idea to me.

|6.30.06 @ 11:42AM|#

public registries or exclusion zones don't seem like a half-bad idea to me.

I agree. It seems that with most of these cases the real problem is with the definition of 'sexual offense'. There has to be some reasonable way to differentiate between aggressive offenses and consensual ones, and only require registration and zoning of the aggressive offenses.

|6.30.06 @ 12:04PM|#

public registries or exclusion zones don't seem like a half-bad idea to me.

Why? You're not preventing any offenders from working next to the day care, or hanging out in the park. Just from sleeping next to these locations. Doesn't sound like it would do any damn good at all.

|6.30.06 @ 12:15PM|#

You're not preventing any offenders from working next to the day care, or hanging out in the park. Just from sleeping next to these locations.

Exactly. What would you rather have, a sex offender living in your neighborhood where everyone can keep an eye on him/her, or a sex offender who lives in a shack on the outskirts of town, hidden from view (say, in the woods), where the sex acts aren't just unspeakable, but undetectable -- and the screams futile?

Larry A|6.30.06 @ 12:19PM|#

Guns are a vice?

• Google "Branch Davidian."
• In state concealed handgun laws one of the more common locations carrying is prohibited is in a place of religious worship.
• Television networks accept about as much advertising for firearms as they do for tobacco, illegal drugs, and (other than their own offerings) pornography.

In a related note, I think it would be interesting to know what percentage of the nubile young girls chatting up old men over the Internet are actually vice cops. Given the number of busts making the ten PM news, I'd guess somewhere above half.

Garth|6.30.06 @ 12:23PM|#

Our nation�s paranoia over this over-hyped crisis has made it that a large number or citizens are always under suspicion: those with penises.

These days when a child says �hello� I am tempted to run away for fear of being seen speaking to the child in return.

|6.30.06 @ 12:34PM|#

Here in the Police State of New Jersey, we have community notification laws. So a buddy tells me the story that two officers knocked on his door to inform him that a registered offender has moved into the neighborhood. They would not disclose the name, the address, the offense, or any other information that could be deemed useful, merely that one has moved in.

As stated above, sexual predator is not the same as sexual offender, and getting caught getting a BJ from your wife in the restaurant parking lot on your birthday (who me?) gets you the same treatment as though you had blood on your clown suit.

|6.30.06 @ 1:05PM|#

Isn't public urination considered a sexual offense in some areas? Can you imagine having to live like Jean Valjean for whizzing in a goddamn alley?

KipEsquire|6.30.06 @ 1:11PM|#

"public registries or exclusion zones don't seem like a half-bad idea to me"

They are a whole-bad idea if they bear no rational relation to the traditional purposes of criminal law:

--They do not rehabilitate.
--They do not deter.
--They do not protect the law-abiding.

The last purpose of criminal law -- to express society's outrage -- does not apply either, since that was addressed in the original incarceration. Letting people out of jail (e.g., for parole or probation) is supposed to be less onerous than keeping them in jail, not more. So that doesn't work for registries either.

|6.30.06 @ 1:15PM|#

Curious about something: While some of the offenses that can get you on the list do seem rather out of place in comparison with other offenses, I wonder if some of the lesser offenses on the list are used when the prosecutor just knows somebody is guilty of a more serious offense but can't quite prove it.

e.g. A teenage girl claims that a teenage guy raped her. The teenage guy insists it was consensual. The prosecutors think the case will be tough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, but he's a year older than her and she's just under the age of consent. And he has stated to the police that he had sex with her. So he's charged with statutory rape.

Or a guy is found under suspicious circumstances with his pants down near a playground. There are conflicting witness statements, the prosecutor has a hunch he was trying to flash some kids, but they can't prove it. So they get him for public urination.

I'm not saying that the least serious offenses should indeed get one marked for life. I'm just wondering whether these offenses made it onto the list because prosecutors see them as tools.

|6.30.06 @ 1:18PM|#

Oh, and to be clear, I'm not defending lazy prosecutors who "just know" something but can't prove it. I'm just asking a question about how things work in practice.

|6.30.06 @ 1:37PM|#

LOL, ayatollah! You got nailed for getting a bj from your wife? Are you listed as a sex offender? Oh hell... that's just awful. Still, it's hilarious to read.

Garth|6.30.06 @ 2:01PM|#

I was 18 and getting it on with my girlfriend in the back seat of my car behind a stripmall (romantic no?)

Cop shows up and taps on glass... and asks for ID... When he sees that I am 18 his eyes light up and he asks for hers... 18 too.. He was obviously disappointed that he hadn't nailed me (pun intended)...

All he said was: "This isn't a good place for that"

And left.

|6.30.06 @ 4:58PM|#

@Garth

Our nation's paranoia over this over-hyped crisis has made it that a large number or citizens are always under suspicion: those with penises.

These days when a child says "hello" I am tempted to run away for fear of being seen speaking to the child in return.

Yes, it's also a big disincentive for dating women with minor children. And in my age group, that seriously reduces the size of my dating pool.

@thoreau

I'm not saying that the least serious offenses should indeed get one marked for life. I'm just wondering whether these offenses made it onto the list because prosecutors see them as tools.

Well, you'd also have to consider that that's also true of a number of drug convictions. The prosecuter can't quite nail them for a suspected burglary or assault, but the suspect has been caught in posession of a dime bag. You could even consider that Al Capone was sent up on income tax evasion.

Not sure that these laws utility as tools is a sufficient justification for keeping them on the books.

|6.30.06 @ 5:29PM|#

Sorry, Kip, gonna have to disagree with you here -- public disclosure of the the residence of sexual predators IS useful in denying them access to potential future victims.

Of course, it requires that the predators' targets (or the targets' parents) are, to a certain degree, proactive in seeking out the information... but better to have the information available than not.

|6.30.06 @ 6:15PM|#

Jamie, you asked What would you rather have, a sex offender living in your neighborhood where everyone can keep an eye on him/her, or a sex offender who lives in a shack on the outskirts of town....?

Just out of curiousity, how could everyone keep an eye on a sex offender if he wasn't required to register and the neighbors didn't know? Or are you saying we should treat every neighbor as if they are a possible sex offender?

I'm not trying to be contentious, I'm just trying to clarify.

|6.30.06 @ 6:37PM|#

I have learned to be automatically suspicious of any bill/law that invokes a child's name.

Larry A|7.1.06 @ 12:52PM|#

If we're going to have sex offender registration I have two problems with the current format: It goes too far, It doesn't go far enough.

As stated before, the consensual/inconsequential/juvenile/really old offenses need to be eliminated from the list. Ayatollah isn't the only one here unlisted just because he or she wasn't caught. Including them also overwhelms the system.

OTOH I'd also like to know if the guy who moved in down the street has a serious record for burglary, robbery, assault, or murder. Why the focus on sex crimes?

Larry A|7.1.06 @ 12:52PM|#

If we're going to have sex offender registration I have two problems with the current format: It goes too far, It doesn't go far enough.

As stated before, the consensual/inconsequential/juvenile/really old offenses need to be eliminated from the list. Ayatollah isn't the only one here unlisted just because he or she wasn't caught. Including them also overwhelms the system.

OTOH I'd also like to know if the guy who moved in down the street has a serious record for burglary, robbery, assault, or murder. Why the focus on sex crimes?

Robert|7.1.06 @ 4:41PM|#

Supposedly the focus is on sex crimes because sex offenders are more likely to "have something wrong with them" that's not quite a disease but yet is incurable and so is more likely to cause them to re-offend than are other offenders.

Garth|7.2.06 @ 9:08AM|#

Robert: more than, say, arsonists or brawlers? I seriously doubt that.

Even though I would like to know if the fellow who moved next door had on five or six occasions got drunk enough to beat some fellow up, lists of this nature are a open to abuse, can be imposed in error (and thus deprive an innocent of a certain amount of freedom), and are a form of double jeapardy: if you think a person is a serial child molestor lock him away. If he's served his sentance leave him alone. (admitedly if he does go back to the well, you throw away the key)

Robert|7.3.06 @ 12:07PM|#

more than, say, arsonists or brawlers?>/i>

Yes, because those offenders are each a set which includes those who do so only for some temporary motive, while people can't bear to think of any sex offenders as people just like us who might act rationally on a desire.