Shouldn't We Register Every Felon?
Sex Offender Enrolls at SUNY Geneseo; Students Notified
The better 'safe than sorry' approach to registered individuals as to protect society and for us to know who is 'living next door' is okay I suppose if you are going to register every convicted felon in the same manner.
The students here seem to be unsure about privacy issues, but feel overall that it was a good idea to know who was attending their school. As this article states, Wood was convicted of armed robbery and statutory rape, then sent to prison for those crimes for 7 years. I'm sure the armed robbery was a cut and dry case; but the rape? He was 18 and all his alleged victim had to be was 16, and he says it was consensual, the law defines it as rape. Nonetheless, he messed up and he did his time.
My question to you is, if he wasn't convicted of statutory rape, you know, typical boyfriend/girlfriend consensual sex; wouldn't he be as great a danger to society as a convicted "armed" robber? I mean, wouldn't you want to know if an armed robber was living next door? How about a murderer? Or a drug trafficker, a felony level drunk or even a felon wife beater? How about adultery? Thats a sexual and moral crime too isn't it? Wouldn't this also be important too? But because he had consensual sex, he has to register; at a level 3 no less.
You see, no other crimes require registry; only sex offenders. And you can become a dangerous sex offender from crimes involving 'actual forensically proven rape', lewd behavior (mooning), being falsely accused, viewing child porn, even if by accident (spam and pop-ups) and the latest craze, sexting; putting teens everywhere at risk! But if we mandated 'every felon' to become registered, well quite frankly, it might become easier to track to non-registered folks! Not to mention the possible exposure of bad folks sitting in power, teaching our children or writing our laws, that sit safely behind their right of privacy. Would you want every skeleton in your closet exposed to the world? After all, to err is human, right?
The problem is that the laws and the system in general, lumps all sex crimes into one basket. Although registry has 3 levels, there are no professional and qualified evaluation process to accurate asses actual risk. The recidivism rate among registered sex offenders is lowest, less than 2%, next to murder. In fact most registered sex offenders re-enter prison from failure to register; not from the commission of a new sex crime. Apparently rounding up non-registered sex offenders is keeping the US Marshall service busy and feeding the correctional systems' justification needs!
Listen, nobody wants a violent murdering rapist on the streets! And we should know where they are for our safety. But too many people are being classified as sex offenders; and many are teens doing what teens do and what many of us had done in our informative years. The law doesn't care and society is being bombarded by terms like pedophile, child molesters and rapos on TV and on the Internet. They're everywhere, they're everywhere! There are over 750,000 registered sex offenders in this country and the list grows every single day! And these registered felons start at the tender age of 13 years old; labeled for life! And we as a society seem to be okay with this. After all, it's about our safety and our right and our need to know everything about everybody.
The bottom line here is that registry laws need to be reformed and require true assessments of danger. People who sit on juries need to be educated in the fact that many falsely accused persons are being sent to prison and forced to register when absolutely no forensic evidence exists against them other than the word of their accuser. I'd have to say that you are completely and absolutely STUPID if you can't see the reasonable doubt when no physical evidence exists! But again, that my word against yours and I don't really need to prove it, now do I?
The better 'safe than sorry' approach to registered individuals as to protect society and for us to know who is 'living next door' is okay I suppose if you are going to register every convicted felon in the same manner.
The students here seem to be unsure about privacy issues, but feel overall that it was a good idea to know who was attending their school. As this article states, Wood was convicted of armed robbery and statutory rape, then sent to prison for those crimes for 7 years. I'm sure the armed robbery was a cut and dry case; but the rape? He was 18 and all his alleged victim had to be was 16, and he says it was consensual, the law defines it as rape. Nonetheless, he messed up and he did his time.
My question to you is, if he wasn't convicted of statutory rape, you know, typical boyfriend/girlfriend consensual sex; wouldn't he be as great a danger to society as a convicted "armed" robber? I mean, wouldn't you want to know if an armed robber was living next door? How about a murderer? Or a drug trafficker, a felony level drunk or even a felon wife beater? How about adultery? Thats a sexual and moral crime too isn't it? Wouldn't this also be important too? But because he had consensual sex, he has to register; at a level 3 no less.
You see, no other crimes require registry; only sex offenders. And you can become a dangerous sex offender from crimes involving 'actual forensically proven rape', lewd behavior (mooning), being falsely accused, viewing child porn, even if by accident (spam and pop-ups) and the latest craze, sexting; putting teens everywhere at risk! But if we mandated 'every felon' to become registered, well quite frankly, it might become easier to track to non-registered folks! Not to mention the possible exposure of bad folks sitting in power, teaching our children or writing our laws, that sit safely behind their right of privacy. Would you want every skeleton in your closet exposed to the world? After all, to err is human, right?
The problem is that the laws and the system in general, lumps all sex crimes into one basket. Although registry has 3 levels, there are no professional and qualified evaluation process to accurate asses actual risk. The recidivism rate among registered sex offenders is lowest, less than 2%, next to murder. In fact most registered sex offenders re-enter prison from failure to register; not from the commission of a new sex crime. Apparently rounding up non-registered sex offenders is keeping the US Marshall service busy and feeding the correctional systems' justification needs!
Listen, nobody wants a violent murdering rapist on the streets! And we should know where they are for our safety. But too many people are being classified as sex offenders; and many are teens doing what teens do and what many of us had done in our informative years. The law doesn't care and society is being bombarded by terms like pedophile, child molesters and rapos on TV and on the Internet. They're everywhere, they're everywhere! There are over 750,000 registered sex offenders in this country and the list grows every single day! And these registered felons start at the tender age of 13 years old; labeled for life! And we as a society seem to be okay with this. After all, it's about our safety and our right and our need to know everything about everybody.
The bottom line here is that registry laws need to be reformed and require true assessments of danger. People who sit on juries need to be educated in the fact that many falsely accused persons are being sent to prison and forced to register when absolutely no forensic evidence exists against them other than the word of their accuser. I'd have to say that you are completely and absolutely STUPID if you can't see the reasonable doubt when no physical evidence exists! But again, that my word against yours and I don't really need to prove it, now do I?
Comments
Post a Comment