The board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota has voted unanimously to challenge a new Taylors Falls, Minn. ordinance restricting where sex offenders can live.
I think questioning these laws and making sure they don’t violate any civil rights is healthy.
If we hope to have an effective system that does its best to protect past, present and future victims without straining the criminal justice system or violating civil rights, we need to begin by accepting that sex offenders are not as different from us as we’d like to believe.
The good news with that concept is it means that at least some potential rapists can change their patterns before they get into a situation where they might rape.
We need a complex and coordinated structure of sex offender prevention, investigation, prosecution, sentencing, treatment and monitoring. And we need to accept that nothing we can do will eliminate all risk.
The best intense supervision programs do a great job of dealing with sex offenders who have set pre-offense triggers (like using alcohol) and who aren’t a physical danger to their victims. These programs work because they send most of those who are on the road to reoffending back to prison before they find their next victim. But even the best programs won’t work if they doesn’t have the funding needed to work as designed.
The worst thing we can do is have a system that does nothing more than catch, hold, tag and then release or kill sexual offenders. Many people crave the idea that the government can have the sex offender problem under complete control without helping these people in any way. However …
Absolute control of sex offenders is an illusion at best.
The most dangerous and least manageable sex offenders, like sadistic rapists who kidnap their victims, cannot be effectively controlled through electronic monitoring or sex offender registration. By the time we do catch them offending again it may be too late for one or many victims.
Many of the laws do a poor job of responding to the most serious crimes where the sex offender failed to complete the mission. If there is overwhelming evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that someone planned to kidnap, rape and kill the intended victim, that criminal should never be paroled — even if the intended victim got away during the kidnap attempt.
If criminals like that are only convicted of non-sex crimes that don’t put them on the sex offender registry but all non- predatory sex offenders are put on the list, something’s seriously wrong.
A key step to stopping the worst sex offenders from feeling what they are doing is acceptable or not that bad is for all of us to have zero tolerance for rape (even if it lasts for mere seconds) and sexual exploitation. If we make excuses for the least dangerous sex offenders, the most dangerous ones will think what they are doing can be excused just as easily.
Future and present sex offenders are listening. Are you sending them mixed messages?
Note: Also posted on my blog, http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com
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tough call… i know the folks at the MCLU, and i’ve talked to them about post-sentence confinement (of which this ordiance is a varient). nobody is opposed to tougher initial sentencing. but the way our justice system is set up, they’re supposed to have one bite per crime, and one sentencing.
in reality, parole hearings allow for a great amount of flexibility in what the sentence actually is, but that’s neither here nor there.
but just hand out tougher sentences in the first place, and playing the “you can’t live here” game would be necessary.
That’s why we life without parole for serial rapists and child sex predaters! As long as the worst of the worst can eventually get out of prison, they will continue to reoffend.
If we hope to have an effective system that does its best to protect past, present and future victims without straining the criminal justice system or violating civil rights, we need to begin by accepting that sex offenders are not as different from us as we’d like to believe.
THANK YOU. This is something people shouldn’t forget, especially feminists because we know that we’re living in a rape culture. If we have a rape culture, that means that the individual rapists aren’t the only ones responsible for rape–it’s also the society’s fault, and social change is necessary.
I am living an absolute nightmare and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can be done. My boyfriend was convicted of rape 20 years ago and is required to register in California, a state that is becoming more and more punitive.
The nightmare part comes in because A) he’s lumped in with all sexual predators and child molesters who have recent offenses B) he was falsely convicted without a trial and without a speck of physical evidence. The state was threatening him with 80 years in prison, which was then knocked down to 60. Then his public defender said if he pled guilty to the rape (a false charge) and kidnapping (he was guilty, because he prevented a woman from leaving her house while he was collecting a drug debt), he would receive 10 years. (He wasn’t an angel; he was involved in drugs 20 years ago, but that is all done with now.) In the mid-1980s, those who pled guilty to sex offenses from the most innocuous to rapes like his weren’t banished, abused and held in contempt like they are now. Most likely anyone faced with 10 years prison (he ended up doing five) and 10 years probation versus 60 to 80 years would take the latter.
What makes it so frustrating is that I have known him for six years, have known about his offender status for three years, and the accusation was 20 years ago – but he’s still paying for it.
I feel bad for your boyfriend, however any parent that is caring about the best interest of there children would want to know if they were living next to a sex offender. I just think they should be a littl more specific on the age of the child in the offense and when the offense was committed. I am sorry, I do not beleive these men or womens rightsd are violated by letting those around them no where they live. Did you ever think that the victims lifes were violated when they were raped. I think sex offenders should have to live with the public scrutany for the rest of there lives… The rape victim has to live with the pain, emotional and sometime pyshical trama. Take that into account.
Most sex offenders have families, friends, relatives, and children. Some are required to register for much lesser crimes of flashing, prostitution, incest, and a host of other offences.
Contrary to the media’s torch, grouping all registered sex offenders as dangerous. Even the DOJ in a report states American politicians have lied.
This you can find on the Department Of Justice website,
November 2003, NCJ 198281. http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/rsorp94.txt
Only 3.5% of new sex offences are committed by offender on the sex offender’s registry. The remaining 96.5% are committed by unregistered citizens.
See how 3 year old children have been placed on the registry and how citizens are held indefinitely after teir sentence has been served.
See it now on You Tube at
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=evil9999999999999999
Best regards,
Keith Richard Radford Jr.
http://www.SOSunite.com
Discrimination allows superiority where truth is hidden and corruption tends to creep in.
This is the human equation.
People change day to day. Things change, steal rusts while conceited blows away, but the energy that makes us who we are moves through us as we experience our lives.
Governments, Advocates, Churches, and Media put pressure on sex offenders who are struggling daily to make a way for their families.
These groups are one in the same who have created the realm of secrecy and oppress for gain.
To be ashamed of being a flawed human who makes mistakes, is the responsibility of the person/group/s allowing laws of decimation which is abuse.
Inflicting pain on any person who has been betrayed by that societies recklessness to hide the truth because of its own shame is the ultimate in irresponsibility.
By continuing to advocate lifetime sentences, separation, eradication, concerning sexual offenses is recognition of the breakdown of group/s and any system/s which supports this human rights abuse .
There can be no justice where the responsible party is the society which refuses acceptance of its error.
Thinking that labeling anyone concerning life and death decisions with regard to sexual offenses has no validity.
The stigma/demonization/and continuance of the myth is perpetrated by the group/s and any system/s that makes people suffer for a belief that has only for centuries hidden its own truth.
Please take time to write those who can change our laws.
What ever we do we do to ourselves as money and power leads us by the ring in our nose rendering us unable to hear or see beyond the sound of our own greed.
Mr. & Mrs. Keith Richard Radford Jr.
http://www.SOSunite.com
http://www.youtube.com/sosunite
digital.media.solutions@gmail.com
The 1,2,3’s of sex offenders.
1. The recidivism rate of sex offenders is under 5%
2. 90% of all sex crimes are committed within the family.
3. 92% of all sex crimes are perpetrated by people not on the sex offender registry.
If the bulls eye is 5% of the target and the bulls eye scores no points, what justifies the billions of tax payer dollars for the project?