5 ms·

It's honestly bizarre that there is such a thing as a "sex offender" register. It seems it comes much more from a desire to further punish people than to actual

It's honestly bizarre that there is such a thing as a "sex offender" register. It seems it comes much more from a desire to further punish people than to actually protect the population. I would be much more afraid of an ex-felon convicted of murder than of an ex-felon convicted of having sex with a 15 year old. Yet it's the latter that gets put into a register. There have been men that were added to the register for urinating in public, and now their lives are ruined because of some stupid laws and politicians praying on people's paranoia against "sexual predators".

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Murderers don't tend to be uh, murder aficionados, as it were. They usually want to kill a specific person for a specific reason and once that is done they are done. It may indicate a certain lack of self-control that could be dangerous to be around, but there is a lot of study of this. People convicted of murder and later released have relatively low recidivism rates (eg committing any crime), and very very rarely ever commit another murder. People who commit sex crimes, more than most other categories of transgression, tend to do it multiple or many times, and they follow certain patterns of escalation. Someone who has committed a sex crime is fairly likely to do it again, or do similar or worse things. I'm not arguing in favor of life-long registries or retributive justice at all. But the practical experience with different categories of crimes don't always match our intuition about what sorts of people are dangerous, and that may warrant treating different crimes differently after the fact as well. And then mostly unrelatedly, the "sex offender registry for urinating" thing is largely a myth you hear on the internet. The registry is public so you can and should go check it for your area just to get an idea. You may need to look up some unfamiliar legal terms, for example in my state there is no charge of "rape" only "aggravated sexual battery." Around me and in most places I've lived, the vast majority are for unambiguous violent sexual crimes, or crimes against minors under age 13. Simple exposure and "it was a month before her 18th birthday" are what you hear about on the internet but are actually quite rare.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
  I actually did a tour of a now closed gaol and our tour guide talked about how back when it was running the inmates working in the kitchen that were given the knives tended to all be murderers because typically murderers aren't especially violent in a general sense. Compared with people who are locked up for assaulting strangers they were way less of a risk

giraffe_lady 4y ago

Murderers don't tend to be uh, murder aficionados, as it were. They usually want to kill a specific person for a specific reason and once that is done they are done. It may indicate a certain lack of self-control that could be dangerous to be around, but there is a lot of study of this. People convicted of murder and later released have relatively low recidivism rates (eg committing any crime), and very very rarely ever commit another murder. People who commit sex crimes, more than most other categories of transgression, tend to do it multiple or many times, and they follow certain patterns of escalation. Someone who has committed a sex crime is fairly likely to do it again, or do similar or worse things. I'm not arguing in favor of life-long registries or retributive justice at all. But the practical experience with different categories of crimes don't always match our intuition about what sorts of people are dangerous, and that may warrant treating different crimes differently after the fact as well. And then mostly unrelatedly, the "sex offender registry for urinating" thing is largely a myth you hear on the internet. The registry is public so you can and should go check it for your area just to get an idea. You may need to look up some unfamiliar legal terms, for example in my state there is no charge of "rape" only "aggravated sexual battery." Around me and in most places I've lived, the vast majority are for unambiguous violent sexual crimes, or crimes against minors under age 13. Simple exposure and "it was a month before her 18th birthday" are what you hear about on the internet but are actually quite rare.

mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
I actually did a tour of a now closed gaol and our tour guide talked about how back when it was running the inmates working in the kitchen that were given the knives tended to all be murderers because typically murderers aren't especially violent in a general sense. Compared with people who are locked up for assaulting strangers they were way less of a risk