Sex Offender Lists Need to be For Sex Offenders, Not Pranksters

9-1-2009 National:

The recent case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted at age 11 and held hostage for 18 years by a listed sex offender, underscores the need to continue to stop heinous sexual crimes in any way possible.

It also reminded me of some ridiculous behavior surrounding the sex offender lists here in Boulder, so I'll renew my point: let's limit the sex offender list to actual sex offenders, making the lists useful for all.

I first became aware of just how trivial some of the offenses that can land one on such a list can be a few years ago. I learned that the older brother of one of the youth hockey players on the team I coached was a registered sex offender. His crime? He swatted a female student at his high school on the rear end during his junior year.

Inappropriate? Yes. Did he need to be counseled about that behavior? Absolutely. But does this behavior alone make him a threat to the degree of someone who is a known child molester, or a monster like Phillip Garrido, who abducted, raped and held Jaycee Lee Dugard hostage? Hardly.

In Boulder last year, a highly publicized "streaking" incident has threatened to land the streakers on sex offender lists. On Halloween night 2009, the 10th Annual "Naked Pumpkin Run," a Boulder tradition where Halloween revelers run through Boulder's Pearl Street pedestrian mall wearing nothing but pumpkins on their heads, resulted in the citation and/or arrest of 12 people (it was estimated there were nearly 200 participants) on charges that could alter their lives forever.

Public nudity, in most cases, is against the law. These people knew that when they embarked on their pranks and perhaps deserve to be cited. However, this isn't even in the same category as a twisted individual exposing himself to women for shock value -- this a silly Halloween prank, and since the event is 10 years old, most people on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall that night knew of the "coming attractions." Many are there just to see the run.

I'm OK living next door to someone who streaked at 10 p.m. on Halloween. I might not be OK living next door to Phillip Garrido or someone like him. These lists need to warn us about dangerous people, not naked pranksters. Putting such people on these lists not only hurts those placed there, it severely diminishes the possible value of these lists. By making these lists over-encompassing or punitive for offenses that are clearly not sexual offenses, it diminishes, if not eliminates, any possible value.

Let's continue to do everything in our collective power to stop true sexual crimes, including ensuring the names on this list -- or any other -- deserve to be there. Let's not over-react to silly pranks. ..Source.. by Doyle Albee