Over the past week or so, we've had to listen to the wailing over how a young man used Maine's "Sex Offender Registry" to track down and murder two registered offenders.
For reasons I will never claim to understand, the twits in Maine's legislature decided that it was a good idea to make the registry publicly accessible on the web. I'm sure that they thought of all the 'good' reasons to do so - such as making it easier for parents to be aware that two blocks away is a known pedophile, etc. But surely it had to have occurred to them that just maybe some halfwit would pick up a gun and a map and decide that they were the angel of justice.
Making this kind of information public gravely endangers the offender after they have served their sentence. I realize that without significant ongoing counselling the risk of a sex offender (especially a pedophile) reoffending is very high. However, for reasons of safety, both public and the offender's, it important to keep the location of individual offenders in the hands of people charged with public safety such as the police. Making it publicly accessible - especially with addresses - on the internet is simply inviting disaster.
Parents need to be aware if there is a risk, and we need to do a better job of ensuring that offenders are placed in locations where the risk they pose can be managed effectively. Simply making the location where an offender lives known publicly does little to manage the risk, and actually endangers both the public and the offender needlessly.
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Consider John Doe. When John was 18 he and a bunch of buddies went joy riding. John was drunk and decided to moon a passing car. Unbeknowst to John the car's occupants included a little girl. Little girl's father has a coniption and takes down the license plate. Soon John is charged as a flasher, is convicted and has to register as a sex offender.
Ten years later, John Doe is 28. He's a mature adult, maybe a family man and pillar of the community. He still has this albatross around his neck though. He's spent years patiently explaining to people who bring it up that while he is, technically, a registered sex offender, he's not a rapist or molester or any sortof perv. He's just someone spectacularly unlucky enough to encounter a father, cop, prosecutor and judge who didn't correctly see him as a dumb kid who made a dumb mistake.
Of course, the people who bother to ask are at least in a position to understand that. Plenty of people will learn that John is a sex offender and never ask. They'll just quietly ostracize him.
And then some retarded vigilante kills him.
1) Some sex offenders aren't dangerous. I'll grant that the majority might be, but "mandatory" laws take the "just" out of "justice", which needs to be applied with wisdom.
2) Sex offender registries should be on a "Need to know" basis.
Quixote
Or, as we've seen in a few cases in Canada, not so quietly run him out of town.
Unfortunately, our society still has some huge hang-ups about sexuality that prevent us from discussing matters civilly and intelligently.
Not to mention if the justice system get's the wrong guy ala Milguaard.
JN
www.nishiyama.tzo.com
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