4 ms·

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 enoug

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.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Sex offender registries are for rapists and pedophiles. Putting people on them who were arrested for urinating in public is the sort of negligence that rarely gets addressed because it doesn't affect a powerful lobby. But that kind of intractable bureaucratic scope creep is another argument for not having them. The sentence isn't the longest of any crime for the same reason it isn't death (or, for the jurisdictions without the death penalty, the same as their penalty for murder).
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Sex offender is not a natural category. Registration statutes specify relevant crimes. People who urinated in public were compelled to register because statutes specified genital exposure. Buyers and sellers of consensual sex between adults were compelled to register because statutes specified consensual sex between adults. The difficulty of proving rape is why rape conviction rates are low. Imprisonment for rape is shorter than imprisonment for murder because most people consider murder worse than rape.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        People who urinated in public were compelled to register because statutes specified genital exposure in order to cover flashers but were overly broad and non-discretionary, causing an absurd result. Statutes covered flashers and prostitution because of scope creep; once you create a machine people want to use it for things. It's fairly obvious that there would be no registry to begin with if there were no rapists or pedophiles. > The difficulty of proving rape is why rape conviction rates are low. Even despite the low conviction rate, rape convictions are reversed at a higher rate than other crimes, because it's so difficult in those cases to know the truth. > Imprisonment for rape is shorter than imprisonment for murder because most people consider murder worse than rape. Many countries historically imposed the death penalty for rape and a few still do. Typically the ones less concerned about proof beyond a reasonable doubt in general. People viscerally hate rapists and, even more, pedophiles. Murder is nominally worse but not by much. The penalty for rape and second degree murder are typically about the same. In multiple US states the penalty for rape is higher.
philwelch 3y ago
That’s what criminal background checks are for. Lots of criminal convictions have lifelong consequences, many of which are meant to prevent recidivism. People who are convicted of violent felonies are barred from owning firearms, people who are convicted of securities fraud are barred from working in positions where they are capable of committing securities fraud, and people who are convicted of sexual offenses are kept away from children. All of these restrictions seem reasonable to me.

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.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Sex offender registries are for rapists and pedophiles. Putting people on them who were arrested for urinating in public is the sort of negligence that rarely gets addressed because it doesn't affect a powerful lobby. But that kind of intractable bureaucratic scope creep is another argument for not having them. The sentence isn't the longest of any crime for the same reason it isn't death (or, for the jurisdictions without the death penalty, the same as their penalty for murder).
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Sex offender is not a natural category. Registration statutes specify relevant crimes. People who urinated in public were compelled to register because statutes specified genital exposure. Buyers and sellers of consensual sex between adults were compelled to register because statutes specified consensual sex between adults. The difficulty of proving rape is why rape conviction rates are low. Imprisonment for rape is shorter than imprisonment for murder because most people consider murder worse than rape.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      People who urinated in public were compelled to register because statutes specified genital exposure in order to cover flashers but were overly broad and non-discretionary, causing an absurd result. Statutes covered flashers and prostitution because of scope creep; once you create a machine people want to use it for things. It's fairly obvious that there would be no registry to begin with if there were no rapists or pedophiles. > The difficulty of proving rape is why rape conviction rates are low. Even despite the low conviction rate, rape convictions are reversed at a higher rate than other crimes, because it's so difficult in those cases to know the truth. > Imprisonment for rape is shorter than imprisonment for murder because most people consider murder worse than rape. Many countries historically imposed the death penalty for rape and a few still do. Typically the ones less concerned about proof beyond a reasonable doubt in general. People viscerally hate rapists and, even more, pedophiles. Murder is nominally worse but not by much. The penalty for rape and second degree murder are typically about the same. In multiple US states the penalty for rape is higher.

philwelch 3y ago

That’s what criminal background checks are for. Lots of criminal convictions have lifelong consequences, many of which are meant to prevent recidivism. People who are convicted of violent felonies are barred from owning firearms, people who are convicted of securities fraud are barred from working in positions where they are capable of committing securities fraud, and people who are convicted of sexual offenses are kept away from children. All of these restrictions seem reasonable to me.