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Sex-offender laws need sensible rewrite

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Web posted Sunday, November 30, 2008

http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/113008/opi_502099.shtml

Sex-offender laws need sensible rewrite
Our opinion

Though temporarily stalled, the legal system continues to harass
Wendy Whitaker. She's a happily married Harlem woman threatened
with a trip to jail or being kicked out of her home because, 12
years ago, she had consensual sexual contact with a fellow teenager.

Want to know why she's being harassed? Take a look in the mirror.

No, this isn't some it's-society's-fault treatise. This is a call
for examining the cost of our communal bloodlust, eagerly abetted
by pandering politicians seeking votes by appearing to act "tough
on crime."

We've allowed those politicians to flex their muscles to the point
that the effort has become wrongheaded and counter-productive.
Whitaker is the poster-woman for that nonsensical approach to
governing.

Should the law be tough on sex offenders? Absolutely. Citizens
demand, expect and deserve protection from sexual predators. But
true sexual predators - criminals who prey on children with whom
they are not already acquainted - are the reason we warn our
children about strangers during the day and lock our doors at
night.

But they also are exceptionally rare. The overwhelming majority of
sex crimes against children are committed by friends or family
members of the victim.

Rather than closely examining ways to make citizens safer,
acknowledging the relative scarcity of sexual predators and making
punishment on those individuals far tougher, lawmakers instead have
taken a one-size-fits-all approach to lump every offender into the
same basket.

Thus, the sex offender registry and laws restricting those listed
on it treat a paroled child rapist exactly the same as a probated
teen offender like Whitaker. Both are subjected to harsh requirements
for registration and limits on movement long after their actual
punishments end.

None of that makes citizens any safer, but that's not the real point:
It's all about making politicians look tough by forcing registered
offenders back to jail or out of the state altogether. After all,
who's going to speak up on behalf of sex offenders to argue against
such restrictions?

How do we know harassment and exile are the intent of the law? The
lawmakers who wrote them, including Harlem's own state Rep. Barry
Fleming, admitted as much after the law passed.

Sure, these measures allow lawmakers to act like crime-fighters.
But the cost is that minor offenders who are absolutely no further
threat to society are treated the same as frightening predators.
That undermines support of the law while overburdening law
enforcement's ability to police it.

Fortunately, in Whitaker's case, she is being allowed to stay in
her Harlem home while some of the new restrictions on registered
sex offenders are challenged in court.

But the real fix shouldn't be in the hands of the courts. It should
be in our hands as we demand lawmakers quit treating citizens like
a bloodthirsty mob, and instead write commonsense law that keeps us
all safer.

*  *  *


Two common-sense articles in one month!  Who'da thunk it possible?

Baal <Baal@Usenet.org>
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PGP Key Fingerprint: 40E4 E9BB D084 22D5 3DE9  66B8 08E3 638C 1E92 C0E8
Retired Lecturer, Encryption and Data Security, Pedo U, Usenet Campus
- --

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?"  --  "Who will watch the
Watchmen?"
-- Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347. circa 128 AD

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the
people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit
of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of
liberty and almost any deprivation.           -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

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