5 ms·

that makes sense

diggan 3y ago
Doesn't some states have really arbitrary rules for what constitutes "enough" to be called a sex offender? Things like visiting a prostitute, urinating in public, consensual sex between two teenagers and more requires you to register as a "sex offender" in some states. Should that suddenly mean you shouldn't be able to start anew online?
- philwelch 3y ago
  Yes. If you don’t think some offenses should be punished with sex offender registration, we can discuss changing those particular statutes, but that’s no reason to allow violent rapists and child molesters to evade registration.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Eliminating registration requirements so we don't have to institute a tracking system and prevent anyone else from starting over when >99% of the public is not a sex offender is not "evading registration", it's eliminating it. If someone is still a danger to the public then maybe don't release them from prison.
    - jrockway 3y ago
      I think it's a cost/benefit thing. People react strongly to sex crimes, and many people don't agree with the state the 20 years in prison or whatever was enough, so this allows the state to spend $0 on incarcerating someone and still placate those voters. I don't know why we don't do this for all crimes, though. Why no murderer registration list or bad-check-writer registration list? I guess those we outsource to the private sector.
      - yywwbbn 3y ago
        Because of reoffending risk? I mean if you killed someone specific for specific reasons the likelihood of you murdered a random person for no reason is somewhat low. Not so if you’re a child molester. How do you even ensure that they can never get jobs related to children let alone be near them without a registry..
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        People want rapists and pedophiles to burn in hell. They don't feel the same about bad check writers, and first degree murder already carries the death penalty in the relevant jurisdictions, but sex crimes generally aren't punishable by death. It's probably because sex crimes are extremely hard to prove. If there is a murder, somebody is dead and somebody killed them. It's not that ambiguous. Consent can be extremely ambiguous. It drives people mad because you want every rapist to be six feet underground and every falsely accused innocent person to be free but there are all too may cases, plausibly the majority of cases, where there is no way for the system to conclusively distinguish them. And then we hesitate to kill rapists because we're uncomfortable about that when it's so easy to get it wrong, but if we don't, people feel the guilty ones are being insufficiently punished. This is kind of a recipe for ending up with bad laws.
        lostlogin 3y ago
        > People want rapists and pedophiles to burn in hell. Do they? A quick mental scan of well know paedophiles suggests that famous ones face limited repercussions.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        "Powerful people evade justice" is a different issue. That doesn't really depend on what they did.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        Sex offender registries are not limited to rapists and pedophiles. Jurisdictions without death penalties have sex offender registries. And some other crimes receive longer prison sentences.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      I would gladly support life sentences or even the death penalty for rapists and child molesters, but unfortunately a lot of people like to complain about “mass incarceration” so most states don’t have the ability to fund the necessary prison facilities. If we’re going to let them out of prison, the least we can do is to try and keep these people away from children.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        "Mass incarceration" is from the war on drugs and general over-criminalization of society. Let out the non-violent drug offenders and there will be plenty of cells for the rapists and pedophiles.
        philwelch 3y ago
        That’s not true. Consider the following graph: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff72b8fb3-9ed9-46dc-a939-ec25926b687a_929x981.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... (source: https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/crime-in-the-usa https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/crime-in-the-usa) 62.5% of sentenced prisoners committed violent crimes, which includes 15% for murder and 15.5% rape and sexual assault. All drug offenses put together make up only 12.6%.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        Sounds like your stats support the argument that if we let out the drug offenders there will be plenty of space, since it effectively doubles the amount of room currently taken by those convicted of rape and sexual assault. Also, you haven't considered length of terms. If 62.5% are serving for violent crimes, they are most likely serving longer sentences than those convicted only of drug offenses. This means over the time of one violent criminal's stay in prison, you have maybe 1.5 or 2 or even 3 or more drug offenders being taken in and released. This doesn't affect the amount of people in prison at one time, but it affects the amount of people who end up going to prison.
- javajosh 3y ago
  How is urinating in public a sex offense? I'm releasing urine not having sex with it.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    Because in order to pee you have to expose your genitalia. I suppose the laws were made so that anyone exposing genitalia could be charged for it. That being said, it is completely stupid that people are actually made to register as sex offenders when they really were just peeing. Doubly so when they did so without anyone other than themselves seeing their private parts.
    - yywwbbn 3y ago
      Did this actually ever happen to anyone recently? I assumed it’s just mostly a myth
    - kshacker 3y ago
      > in order to pee you have to expose your genitalia They should visit India once. Of course many people will pee against an object (wall, tree) but at times not so hidden Incidentally saw this funny discussion yesterday (the comments are funny): https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/18ufbue/guys_goes_to_india_for_2_months_just_to_realise/?rdt=50630 https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/18ufbu... I think these United States have gone way above and beyond their duty as far as calling people sex offenders (not saying that Indians are right)
      - popcalc 3y ago
        You just need to go as far as Budapest.
        pavel_lishin 3y ago
        You just need to go as far as Brooklyn on the subway.
  - 3y ago
- pacifika 3y ago
  Source?
  - fantasybroker 3y ago
    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/08/mapped-sex-offender-registry-laws-on-statutory-rape-public-urination-and-prostitution.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/08/mapped-sex-offen...
scotty79 3y ago
It's kind of weird that sex offences are treated specially. I'd like to know if I live around someone who gave in to plain violence as well or if someone stolen something significant enough. Either we are giving people second chance without stigma or we are tracking everyone forever. I'm fine with both.

that makes sense

Doesn't some states have really arbitrary rules for what constitutes "enough" to be called a sex offender? Things like visiting a prostitute, urinating in public, consensual sex between two teenagers and more requires you to register as a "sex offender" in some states. Should that suddenly mean you shouldn't be able to start anew online?

philwelch 3y ago
Yes. If you don’t think some offenses should be punished with sex offender registration, we can discuss changing those particular statutes, but that’s no reason to allow violent rapists and child molesters to evade registration.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Eliminating registration requirements so we don't have to institute a tracking system and prevent anyone else from starting over when >99% of the public is not a sex offender is not "evading registration", it's eliminating it. If someone is still a danger to the public then maybe don't release them from prison.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    I think it's a cost/benefit thing. People react strongly to sex crimes, and many people don't agree with the state the 20 years in prison or whatever was enough, so this allows the state to spend $0 on incarcerating someone and still placate those voters. I don't know why we don't do this for all crimes, though. Why no murderer registration list or bad-check-writer registration list? I guess those we outsource to the private sector.
    - yywwbbn 3y ago
      Because of reoffending risk? I mean if you killed someone specific for specific reasons the likelihood of you murdered a random person for no reason is somewhat low. Not so if you’re a child molester. How do you even ensure that they can never get jobs related to children let alone be near them without a registry..
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      People want rapists and pedophiles to burn in hell. They don't feel the same about bad check writers, and first degree murder already carries the death penalty in the relevant jurisdictions, but sex crimes generally aren't punishable by death. It's probably because sex crimes are extremely hard to prove. If there is a murder, somebody is dead and somebody killed them. It's not that ambiguous. Consent can be extremely ambiguous. It drives people mad because you want every rapist to be six feet underground and every falsely accused innocent person to be free but there are all too may cases, plausibly the majority of cases, where there is no way for the system to conclusively distinguish them. And then we hesitate to kill rapists because we're uncomfortable about that when it's so easy to get it wrong, but if we don't, people feel the guilty ones are being insufficiently punished. This is kind of a recipe for ending up with bad laws.
      - lostlogin 3y ago
        > People want rapists and pedophiles to burn in hell. Do they? A quick mental scan of well know paedophiles suggests that famous ones face limited repercussions.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        "Powerful people evade justice" is a different issue. That doesn't really depend on what they did.
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        Sex offender registries are not limited to rapists and pedophiles. Jurisdictions without death penalties have sex offender registries. And some other crimes receive longer prison sentences.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    I would gladly support life sentences or even the death penalty for rapists and child molesters, but unfortunately a lot of people like to complain about “mass incarceration” so most states don’t have the ability to fund the necessary prison facilities. If we’re going to let them out of prison, the least we can do is to try and keep these people away from children.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      "Mass incarceration" is from the war on drugs and general over-criminalization of society. Let out the non-violent drug offenders and there will be plenty of cells for the rapists and pedophiles.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        That’s not true. Consider the following graph: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff72b8fb3-9ed9-46dc-a939-ec25926b687a_929x981.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... (source: https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/crime-in-the-usa https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/crime-in-the-usa) 62.5% of sentenced prisoners committed violent crimes, which includes 15% for murder and 15.5% rape and sexual assault. All drug offenses put together make up only 12.6%.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        Sounds like your stats support the argument that if we let out the drug offenders there will be plenty of space, since it effectively doubles the amount of room currently taken by those convicted of rape and sexual assault. Also, you haven't considered length of terms. If 62.5% are serving for violent crimes, they are most likely serving longer sentences than those convicted only of drug offenses. This means over the time of one violent criminal's stay in prison, you have maybe 1.5 or 2 or even 3 or more drug offenders being taken in and released. This doesn't affect the amount of people in prison at one time, but it affects the amount of people who end up going to prison.
javajosh 3y ago
How is urinating in public a sex offense? I'm releasing urine not having sex with it.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  Because in order to pee you have to expose your genitalia. I suppose the laws were made so that anyone exposing genitalia could be charged for it. That being said, it is completely stupid that people are actually made to register as sex offenders when they really were just peeing. Doubly so when they did so without anyone other than themselves seeing their private parts.
  - yywwbbn 3y ago
    Did this actually ever happen to anyone recently? I assumed it’s just mostly a myth
  - kshacker 3y ago
    > in order to pee you have to expose your genitalia They should visit India once. Of course many people will pee against an object (wall, tree) but at times not so hidden Incidentally saw this funny discussion yesterday (the comments are funny): https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/18ufbue/guys_goes_to_india_for_2_months_just_to_realise/?rdt=50630 https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/18ufbu... I think these United States have gone way above and beyond their duty as far as calling people sex offenders (not saying that Indians are right)
    - popcalc 3y ago
      You just need to go as far as Budapest.
      - pavel_lishin 3y ago
        You just need to go as far as Brooklyn on the subway.
- 3y ago
pacifika 3y ago
Source?
- fantasybroker 3y ago
  https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/08/mapped-sex-offender-registry-laws-on-statutory-rape-public-urination-and-prostitution.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/08/mapped-sex-offen...

scotty79 3y ago

It's kind of weird that sex offences are treated specially. I'd like to know if I live around someone who gave in to plain violence as well or if someone stolen something significant enough. Either we are giving people second chance without stigma or we are tracking everyone forever. I'm fine with both.