Miami Sex offenders forced to live under a bridge
No doubt about it, sex offender laws are popular. It’s hard to find a citizen or politician who wants to relax laws that keep sex offenders away from schools, parks, and daycare centers. Drafting and selling these laws to the public is easy because, as a society, when we hear “sex offender” we immediately think of socially awkward, overweight, men with thick glasses, who slobber over child pornography in cave-like basement apartments and wait in the shadows around elementary schools. But the truth of the matter is much more complex.
Due to a myriad of varying state and regional crime classifications, there are many sex offenses that technically designate an individual as a sex offender who poses virtually no risk to society. A drunk college student who makes the mistake of urinating in public can be arrested for public lewdlness and labeled as a sex offender for the rest of his life. An 18-year-old girl can have sex with her 17-year-old boyfriend, be arrested for statutory rape and labeled a sex offender for the rest of her life.
This is not to say that these offenses are okay. Clearly committing these offenses is against the law, but does the 18-year-old girl deserve to show up on a sex offender map 15 years later, when she is a happily-married housewife? Should the college kid be arrested for living too close to a public park (violating a sex offender residency restriction law) for a dumb, youthful indiscretion?
The problem is that current laws do not differentiate between violent sex offenders and people who made stupid mistakes, and there is a growing backlash against such laws. Recently, Miami-Dade County’s sex offender residency restriction laws forced 100 sex offenders to live in a homeless shantytown under a bridge, creating a public health and safety hazard that ignited a media firestorm, garnering national attention. As well, Andrea Cassanova, mother of a woman killed by a sex offender in 2002, founded a non-profit organization to research and combat useless and harmful “headline legislation” surrounding sex offenders restriction laws. Even Lenore Skenazy, “free-range kids” advocate, recently told parents to “burn your sex offender map,” arguing that sex offender maps are useless.
In addition, today there is a story about North Carolina man who was arrested for going to church. The man is a sex offender because of an offense against a teenage girl, six years ago. Since the church runs a daycare center during the week, county deputies arrested the man for violating sex offender restriction laws for going to church. Also in North Carolina, another church graciously moved its daycare center off premises so that a single sex offender could attend services on Sundays.
Forcing sex offenders to live under a bridge or keeping them from seeking rehabilitation through faith-based worship and counseling are not solving any problems. In fact, the further restrictions imposed on sex offenders, the greater the possibility the offender will break parole, abscond, and create a new life in a new neighborhood without anyone knowing who they are or what they have done—which isn’t good for anyone. Sex offenders who have absconded are less likely to seek treatment, and community members will be completely unaware of their past crimes, opening themselves up to future attacks if the offender has a violent past.
Fortunately, Miami-Dade County has found a temporary solution to the homeless sex offender colony and is finding affordable housing in the county for these individuals. But legislators and citizens need more information on recidivism rates and sex offender classifications. As well, law makers need to approach these problems in a less reactionary way, looking for solutions that keep tabs on violent, dangerous sex offenders, and stop punishing individuals that pose no threat to society. At the same time, there needs to be more emphasis on rehabilitation and counseling, and less emphasis on pushing sex offenders to the fringes—increasing the chances that they will go underground, reoffend, and hurt more innocent people and children.
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September 1, 2009 at 8:09 am
Isolating Sex Offenders is Not the Answer « The Crime Map
[…] law enforcement, police, sex offender registry | by crblogger A few weeks ago, I posted an argument for sex offender laws that make sense. Last week we saw a disturbing result of current sex offender laws that ostracize and isolate sex […]
September 19, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Keith Richard Radford Jr
Getting to maters that mater is something we seem to be able to get down to humbly; I would like to share this with you. This from my life experience is a true connection to the ties of races through our own sex laws which have been built on misconceptions and myth.
The Supreme Court just ruled on sex offender laws where some factions of our government think by some inert reasoning that sex offender should be quarantined like some virus steaming from draconian/Islamic law sex offenders should be executed. I have seen for myself, video taken in another country where a sex offender is placed on a pole much like the Catholics use to use a pyramid shaped object and have them sit on it and spin, the pole travels through the body looking for the throat but if not found its ok cause the sharpened end of the pole will come out somewhere. The heritage of the act is in its self a throwback to troglodyte’s who are so obsessed with sex they can find that the way to deal with the issue is as revolutionary, as war, and two wrongs don’t make a right but has in fact called up deep rooted issues of people who have had to put up with this kind of “hierarchy” of historic hysteria far to long. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration used to make animals less threatening right? Good old Monty Hall. Well no wonder it’s wrong, right?
Anyway we are supposed to be the most advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for nations we are still warring with, {think!} While other nations went home our weapons dealers and torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money with out taking it from someone by force, is that supposed to includes mutilations? In my humble opinion that alone are terrorist activities as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by lies.
The truth about the sex offender registry will come out soon enough. When it does, People will see how the use of the registry was created, and by exactly who and why and the devastation it has created and the worthlessness of the use of it. It’s origin in the Crow laws that brought disgrace to our nation allowing thieves and murderous societal bigots who have trashed any shot at making good of a program in its design to make money destroying our nation and its people. We can not play god and we can not survive using this behavior model because you are compounding the problem.
It’s a ruse designed by people who are getting rich off the castration/hysterectomy/health care/physic care of people thrusex laws that have gone bonkers. What about the people who are being used by the Medicare programs that requires these mutilations for both men and woman after they take their means of support? Can’t you see? You have created the model and it is worthless! Why don’t you just indiscriminately kill people you don’t know that’s statically the next sex offender because over 90% of all new offences are people not on the sex offender registry and the numbers are increasing not decreasing so as a behavior model the chumps put together is really screwed up and they were told before they tried it. So what is the use of such laws as the sex offender registry other than to terrorize people? With the murder of so many sex offenders and the continued disregard for life by the use of the registry it’s just a mater of time before the federal government will be held liable for the deaths through federal court.
In a nation where a statement may have a double or triple meaning and our entire linage can be traced through mud, guts, and beer it’s nice once in a while to get the picture of what is meant instead of what some thinks someone may have implied. So it is from the trenches to the hill. Remember the game where someone says something in someone’s ear then passes it the same way to the next; I stopped dancing before I started this hitch. Glad to see you have that kind of drive. Best regards