2-20-2010 National:
CORRECTION: Clarifying the original post as to the Ethicist's commenter.
Over at the Ethicist, the Ethicist responds to a reader's 2-4-10 question.
First the 2-4-10 question:
Should the Sex Offender Be Invited?
I am thinking about organizing a 30th reunion for my elementary-school “graduating” class. One classmate is a registered sex offender whose presence may discourage other people from attending, especially with their kids. Should I invite him? Make the event adults only? Inform others of his offense? Public records show that his misdeed was committed 13 years ago. He received probation, and there’s no indication of any subsequent crime. I would regret excluding him or violating his privacy, but I’d feel bad withholding information that other classmates might want. What to do? NAME WITHHELD, TEXASThe Ethicist's response to above: Do nothing. It’s often the best thing. Some parents might be uneasy about this fellow, but to respond to that anxiety would be catering to prejudice, not forestalling danger. There’s information about my former classmates I want — their infidelities, their plastic surgeries, their P.I.N.’s — but it doesn’t follow that I’m ethically entitled to it.
If the classmate constituted a threat to anyone, you might have to act. But data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that the recidivism rate for sex offenders, contrary to widespread misconceptions, is far lower than for many other criminals. Nor need you fear that having committed one sort of crime, he is apt to commit another. The bureau reports, “Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense.”
Given these facts, your vague knowledge of his long-ago crime, the light sentence he received and the many years he has gone apparently without being rearrested, you should leave him in peace rather than subject him to the scrutiny and scorn of his classmates. He has paid his debt to society; you ought not extract a further toll by exiling him from ordinary social interactions. (Nor should you hang him, even in Texas.)
Now the Ethicist's 2-18-10 post:
The Ethicist: Should the Sex Offender Be Invited?
The Ethicist's "Commenter" said the following:
In response to a reader who asked whether to invite to a reunion a classmate who is a registered sex offender, Randy Cohen (the Ethicist) said to “do nothing” in order to not be “catering to prejudice.” Is the dissemination of public-record information about a person who has proved to be a danger, perhaps to children, now deemed equivalent to denying a woman equal pay based on her gender or denying an African-American a loan based on the color of his skin?
Cohen also says, “Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that the recidivist rate for sex offenders, contrary to widespread misconceptions, is far lower than that for many other criminals.” I assume this fact comes from the November 2003 Department of Justice study “Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994.” The study, a good one, looked at 9,691 released sex offenders in 15 states. Nearly half of those released were imprisoned for child molestation — and 60 percent of those for molesting a child younger than 13.
Cohen does accurately cite the study, presumably to demonstrate that advocating for the monitoring of sex offenders is wrong, if not hysterically wrong. Sorry, Mr. Cohen, a poor analogy: a murderer or a sex offender with half the recidivism rate of, say, a car thief is a bit more dangerous to society.
More important, the same study also confirmed that compared with non-sex offenders released from state prisons, released sex offenders were four times as likely to be rearrested for a sex crime.
So sex offenders may not do enough shoplifting to keep up with the general prison population, but when it comes to doing what they do, they are many times as likely to do it again. Attorney, Board Member, Holly’s House Inc., a Child and Adult Advocacy Center. COMMENTER
eAdvocate Suggests: What else should the Commenter have included?
First notice that the Commenter fails to show the crimes committed by non sex offenders released from prison, a significant number. In addition, while the study does say -four times more likely- the study also says, that non sex offenders commit six(6) new sex crimes to every one(1) committed by a released sex offender. See Chart-1 below. Where there any persons invited that were once in prison, no matter what their crime?
Secondly, most folks accept that Dep't of Justice study, its hard to refute. So what else does that study tell us? That the majority of sex crimes -over that 3 year period- were committed by released non sex offenders (someone who has never before been convicted of a sex crime). So, which group of persons is more likely to commit a sex crime, if one is committed at the party? Did it even occur to the woman that there might be someone else dangerous on her list, other than the former sex offender?
Thirdly, that same study (citing 73,116 cases as proof) showed us that, the most likely person (96.5% of the time) to commit a sex crime against a child under 18 is, a person who is in the daily life of the child. see Chart-3. Were any of these persons at the party?
Finally, the Commenter quotes 60% of those sex offenders released were convicted of a crime against a child. However, he doesn't suggest that the woman find out if the person she wants to invite is in that group.. And, this is critical, of the non sex offenders released who went on to commit a new sex crime, 40% of them were crimes against a child. see chart-2 below. Again, are there any persons on her guest list who have ever been in prison before?
It is a shame that, with respect to that Dep't of Justice study, folks only look at what points to "sex offenders" and ignore what other evidence that study revealed. Advocates need to cite more than the recidivism rate.
eAdvocate
No comments:
Post a Comment