Sex Offender Registry

[Giant Communist Robot]

On the posted advice of our Homeowners' Association, I checked the Hawaii Sex Offender Registry. We have one offender living in our association. The registry make some distinctions regarding the nature of the crime, and I see this guy is not a pedo. Kind of a relief. Pedos don't rehabilitate, and after conviction they only have sharpened predatory skills.

What's interesting about this registry is that when you mouse over their name a window with their picture pops up. So I know what he looks like and which unit he lives in.

[dai bread]

That sort of thing is dangerous. I don't suppose you'll be burning fiery crosses on his lawn, GCR, but there are people who will. They're sure they've got the right person, but there have been cases in Britain where they didn't. Around about the time the murderers of the little Bulger boy were on trial, if memory serves.

[Giant Communist Robot]

People tend to have strong feelings about pedophiles.

[dai bread]

They do indeed.

A 16-y-o boy damaged a 5-y-o girl in the course of a sexual assault a week ago in Turangi, on the shores of Lake Taupo. Turangi is the sort of place where you would not expect the community to support the police to any great degree. This time they did, whole-heartedly. The perpetrator has been caught, and the family have expressed their appreciation of the support they received from the community and the police.

I still don't like registers.

[Giant Communist Robot]

What do you mean? The chance that someone might attack an innocent person outweighs parents' right to know their neighbor is a sexual predator with a lust for children?

[jamiebk]

too many cases of the 17 year old boy friend with a 15 year old girlfriend...I totally agree that pedo's belong on a list...many others do not.

[dai bread]

What do you mean? The chance that someone might attack an innocent person outweighs parents' right to know their neighbor is a sexual predator with a lust for children?

Frankly, yes. I have no faith in the justice of mobs, and mob or vigilante attacks tend to be brutal. Fine if the attackee really is a paedo, but not so brilliant if he's innocent. Maybe he just has the same name. Many people do.

[Giant Communist Robot]

A mob may not exist, but a pedophile is a tangible danger.

[Haggis@wk]

Dai, if you had such a list available would you look at it? As for mobs I suspect they seldom need a government list in order to get incensed.

If anything will create a mob it will be when a repeat offender is quietly released back into a community and offends again. When the community learns the police, judges, prosecutors, jailers, mayors, counselors, in short the "Authorities" were aware of the nature of the offender and remained silent to protect "his rights", then, then you'll get a riot.

Besides, if your citizens didn’t get angry enough about this guy (chosen at random from your offenders list) I suspect you are safe from “burning fiery crosses. “

Lor’ mate, 2 years and 3 months for drugging and repeatedly raping a 14 y.o. girl? In the U.S. that sick b*****d would be a septuagenarian before he got another chance to ply his sickness, and trust me, even at that age he will try.

The laws creating those lists were not born in a vacuum, just as your Turangi assaulter was, probably, not a beginner. Sexual predator lists in the U.S. exist simply because time and time again sexual predators, living in anonymity, worked their way into the trust of a community to identify victims. They offered (offer!!) to babysit, provide after school and preschool care. Volunteer for church youth groups and generally behaved as the instinctual predators they are and always will be.

Can they abstain? Sure, but I don’t believe they will. Can they abjure their predatory nature? Never, ever, full stop.

There is no “cure” chemical, or even physical, castration is no cure. There is no “cure” because most of them don’t believe they are sick. They are aware that society, the rest of us, disapprove of them and what they do and they will do everything to avoid our attentions, but nothing will prevent them if they think they can get away with it. Haven’t you wondered when a pedophile is caught a second or third time, “what’s wrong with that guy? Why’s he so stupid?” but he isn’t, in his mind, being stupid. He might think he’s clever, even when he isn’t. Unfortunately, too many really clever ones do exist.

If there is a cure it is death.

My most memorial investigation was of a full colonel who married and had children in order to have victims readily available. His wife was appalled at his premeditation but never made the connection that she could only be physically described as petite and “childlike” when he married her.

Not to draw any inference but in the early 60's police departments in the U.S. taught classes to their officers on how to get suspect to confess their sins even though they had rights to legal counsel. That's why today law enforcement is required to formally advised criminals of their rights and the offense they are suspected of committing (you never hear that in TV police shows) because the courts recognized that citizens did not have enough information to know how to protect themselves.

The Sexual predator lists serve much the same function: to alert and provide citizens with enough information in order to protect their families.

While some sexual predators are generally solitary, rapists for example, others, especially child sexual predators, are very communal and get together and compare notes (and share victims) whenever they can. The internet has been more of a blessing than a curse to them. They literally “train” each other in avoidance and how to survive in a society that no longer permits them to practice unnoticed and unpunished.

If your sense of “fairness” is outraged by the public lists, consider that pedophiles and child sexual predators (not always the same) have operated for millennia, millennia when their victims were unheard, unprotected, un-avenged. Just consider the balance is swinging towards the protection of the innocent.

No longer can “Uncle George” or the next door neighbor or the family friends or the clergyman rely on shock, shame and embarrassment to hide them.

I don’t believe in vampires but I believe in monsters and I know, factually, those monsters have preyed upon society’s weakest, most innocent, and most vulnerable for longer than any of us have been alive.

Since they are never going to stop in a “civilized” society we can watch them. In an uncivilized society we could have destroyed them.

Being on a "list" doesn’t seem that tough.

[Shapley]

One of the reported results of the lists is that pedophiles, or those convicted of being such, have been ostracized and forced out of many communities, as well as being unable to find jobs, etc. In some areas, they have gathered in 'enclaves' with others on the list, in places where they apparently find safety in numbers. They have become a sort of modern-day leper colony, if you will.

If our justice system actually was judicious, there would be no need for such lists, as they would be punished to the full extent of the law, and not released from captivity until the full term was served, after which time, putting them on such lists would be wrong because they entirity of their sentenced punishment would be complete (no probation or parole for such crimes). As it is, the list creates a sort of open-air prison within society, that seeks to have society itself, rather than the penal system, impose punishment as it sees fit. It is a sort of sanction for mob action, IMHO.

I see the lists as being duplicitous. We are, in essence, acknowledging that these perpetrators have no place in society, while admitting that our system is inadequate to remove them from it. Thus, we are left to force them to electronically shout "unclean!" as they move about among us.

[dai bread]

Good comment, Shap.

Haggis, there are many points in your post that I can agree with, and I realise you've been at the sharp end (the Colonel) and I haven't.

If there was a register of paedophiles, I would use it, but I wouldn't believe it until I had confirmation, either from a child or a parent. It would serve as a warning, and I'd be looking for inappropriate behaviour. All the children I know would tell someone who tried to touch them inappropriately to get lost, so if anyone tried it I'm sure I'd find out. Certainly their parents would.

Our judges are well aware of who keeps them in their jobs, enabling them to retire with the second-best superannuation scheme in the country (the best is the Parliamentary one) and pick up sinecures on Commissions of Inquiry from time to time. It's also well known that prison doesn't work for anyone who's likely to be released, which is, even in the U.S., almost everybody. Provision of an alternative exercises many minds, here and elsewhere.

The Turangi boy almost certainly started on his sister. He's probably got one, although I don't know his family details. They may come out in due course.

[Giant Communist Robot]

If our justice system actually was judicious, there would be no need for such lists, as they would be punished to the full extent of the law, and not released from captivity until the full term was served, after which time, putting them on such lists would be wrong because they entirity of their sentenced punishment would be complete (no probation or parole for such crimes).

The law doesn't recognize that these people represent an ongoing danger. They are released into the public with the assumption that they will behave after serving their term. Does anyone seriously think that prison rehabilitates pedophiles? Just how is this supposed to happen? The list, which is a collation of public information, is a kind of weak acknowledgement that danger still exists and a warning to parents that they must be extra vigilant. The burden falls on the parents so that we may give pedophiles the benefit of the doubt.

[dai bread]

You might find this information useful. It's a research paper, so takes a bit of reading, but it will introduce some facts into this debate, which has largely been a matter of opinion so far. The information is from NZ, but I am sure similar research has been done in the US.

http://www.corrections.govt.nz/research ... nders.html

[Shapley]

It occurs to me that our penal system was never set up to deal with such things, which were more of a social issue at our founding than a legal one. Society has known about molestors for as long as we have been civilized, and established social codes regarding it, whereas it was generally dealt with in a legal manner only when it involved violence or became outrageous to the society as a whole.

Preventing the victim from being 'shamed in public' by a trial prevented many from ever pursuing legal charges. Statutory rape was often followed by a marriage between the underage girl and her molester, rather than charges against the perpetrator. At other times, underage girls whose virginity had been violated were sent to live with 'Aunt Sally', to avoid scandal. Serial molesters, whether of boys or girls, were driven from town, to become someone else's problem.

Much emphasis was placed on the Catholic Church's unwillingness to deal with the problem in a legal sense. Yet, the sanctity of the confessional and a similar tradition of shielding the victim from shame played a role in their actions. Also, it is assumed that approaching the Church about the problem means you are seeking a Church solution - one that protects the victim's identity. If you want a legal solution, you go the law. That would be my understanding, in any case.

We're currently seeing sports programmes undergoing similar scrutiny to that the Church underwent over the past couple of decades. We also see a similar pattern - the victims or their advocates approach the programmes directors - no the law - and the onus begins to fall on the programme directors to deal with it legally. I've yet to understand this concept of creating a middleman between the victim and the law. It strikes me that the onus falls on the victim, the witnesses, or anyone else with firsthand knowledge to approach the law for a legal solution - passing the buck to a third party strikes me as a desire, again, to seek something other than a legal solution to the situation.

[Haggis@wk]

It's also well known that prison doesn't work for anyone who's likely to be released, which is, even in the U.S., almost everybody. Provision

You've highlighted an odd situation discussed by Liberals here in the U.S. The U.S. has the highest per capita prison population in the free world and we routinely lock up people far, far longer than anyone else while at the same time our crime rates have dropped precipitiously since the 70's.

Odd that.

[dai bread]

You were locking people up long before the '70s, Haggis. Something else is at work on your crime rate, and many people would like to know what it is.

What's happened to your crime rate since 2008? One school of thought holds that crime is linked to economic deprivation. Another says it's not.

[Giant Communist Robot]

I looked at dai's link. It shows the younger offenders have a 70% re-incarceration rate, and it drops off with age. It eyeballs as a good negative correlation. This could mean:

1. Offenders are rehabilitating while in prison

2. Offenders are learning from other's experiences and become harder to catch


...and the oldest offenders might just die off before getting caught again.

[jamiebk]

Or it could mean that as they age, they simply begin to lose their devient sexual cravings and are less of a threat. It's really hard to know

[Shapley]

Or, it could mean that creepy old men are more easily recognized and avoided than creepy young ones...

[dai bread]

Or it could mean that crime, any crime, is a young man's field.