6-19-2010 Alaska:
In 1996 a Federal law went into effect which required all states to require convicted sex offenders to register, and to make that information available to the public.
Many people carry the new Internet enabled “smart phones“; programs are easily downloaded that tie into the State registry site and show where registered sex offenders are in relation to you and your smart cell phone.
These programs DO NOT tie into State registry sites, they work from OLD copies of information gathered from improperly accessing State registries (See notes in this article). These copies of OLD information are rarely up to date and what folks see is more likely an over-population of red-dots. This is intended to scare the public when -in fact- the information shown is not sufficient to make any proper judgment of who may be a problem and who is not a problem.
It would appear as if the list of people registered as sex offenders has exploded over the past 15 years! This isn’t because the number of high-risk perpetrators is increasing, but that we have lowered the bar of what constitutes a sex offender. A person can wind up on the sex offender registry for urinating in public or, in 32 states, for “streaking” in public. A person who gets caught with a prostitute can be placed on the list.
Probably the most problematic group of “sex offenders” are teens. Teen boys that get caught having sex with younger girlfriends can be classified as a crime, even if it’s consensual. In Texas alone, there are 4,000 registrants who landed on the list as juveniles.
A recent assessment of registered sex offenders in Georgia found that less than 1 percent were “predators,” defined as people who are driven by compulsion to commit sex crimes.
Round-the-clock media coverage of high profile abductions and murders has contributed to the general sense that society has run amok, when in fact violent crimes rates in most areas are generally lower now thane been since the ’70’s.
Sex offender registries are controversial by nature and some say, can generate more confusion than clarity. For example, there are a growing number of cell phone apps that take information from the State registry site and place dots where the registered offenders are around your location. With this widely available technology people can get the idea some neighborhoods are much “scarier” than they might really be.
It’s been said that a better list would be to limit the list to the 1% of truly creepy individuals who really are offenders, rather than the teenager who made some poor choices on the list or the goof-ball who thought it would be cute to streak across the stadium naked.
The dots on your cell phone app might lead you believe the area of town you are in is worse than it may really be. ..Source..
1 comment:
The writer makes a very good and important point. The availability for the public to track even low risk sex offenders is just plain wrong. My crime was a no-contact crime, involving pictures that were taken, for the most part, before I was even born. I collected them. But because I'm on the SO Registry, I am tracked and watched just like the creap that mollested his six-month old daughter and filmed it with his web-cam.
Because of the registry, I've lost jobs and friends, I've been denied housing, and I've been threatened with physical harm if I didn't leave a specific business. Because of the fact that the CP charge was my second offense (I got arrested on my 18th birthday for having a 13 y.o. girlfriend), I have to register for life.
If I could afford it, I would leave this country, and move to some place like Costa Rica. Not because I have a dislike for America, but because I have a love of personal freedom more. All I want is to live my life, without having everyone know who I am, what I did, and where I live.
Is annominity too much to ask?
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