All Things
Punishment without end.
-
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family:...
-
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "SimSun"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Mangal";...
-
"Sex Offenders" The diligent reporter of a local weekly publication discovered that sex offenders live in some of the larger apartment buildings in the city. He went and interviewed a few residents, building owners and managers, as well as local...
- How Useful Are Sex Offender Registries?
The California case of Philip Garrido has once again aroused great anxiety about child sexual abuse. He is accused of having kidnapped an 11 year old girl 18 years ago, keeping her a virtual prisoner and fathering two children with her. How can we protect...
- Even Pedophiles Are Human
One of the movies currently playing, “Doubt” takes on contemporary opinion and attitudes about homosexuality, especially about sexual relations between adults and children. Most states have very stringent laws about sex offenders. In many states they...
All Things
Punishment without end.A homeless man recently froze to death in Grand Rapids, MI. He was a sex offender who had served his time in prison. Grand Rapids had passed an ordinance forbidding sex offenders to sleep within 1000 feet of a school. The city fathers and mothers who passed that ordinance apparently did not notice (or did not care) that both homeless shelters in their town were very close to the Catholic High School. When this homeless man came to the shelter on a bitter cold night, he was refused entry because he was a registered sex offender. He was found frozen to death the next morning.
In most states sex offenders have to register. In many places, the police are obligated to inform the neighbors of such registered ex-felons. In other places, such as Grand Rapids, sex offenders are prohibited from living in many areas. In some localities the effect of these ordinances is to make it impossible for sex offenders to live in the town.
For a sex offenders, it is not possible to ever end their punishment. Long after they leave prison – usually having served for many years – they find it difficult to secure a job, to find housing, to the integrate into society. Their pictures and addresses appears on a government website. They have no privacy; they are not allowed quietly to rebuild their lives. A sex offender in our society serves a life sentence. They can never come to the end of paying their debt to society.
This draconian treatment is often justified by claiming that all sex offenders will reoffend. But that assertion, often advanced by politicians pandering to popular fears, is clearly false. Yes, some sex offenders reoffend. But their rate of reoffense is lower than that in other categories of crimes. Rates of reoffense among drug users or burglars are higher. Even murderers are more likely to commit another murder.
Hysteria about sex offenders has deprived them of the right to become productive citizens once more. It ignores a large body of scientific information about the different kinds of sex offenses, the likelihood that different offenders commit another crime, the possibilities and success of treatments of sex offenders.
This refusal to consider the information we have commits terrible injustices.
The death of Thomas Pauli in Grand Rapids Michigan is simply an especially deplorable example of that.
-
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family:...
-
p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 120%; }p.western { font-family: "Liberation Serif","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }p.cjk { font-family: "SimSun"; font-size: 12pt; }p.ctl { font-family: "Mangal";...
-
"Sex Offenders" The diligent reporter of a local weekly publication discovered that sex offenders live in some of the larger apartment buildings in the city. He went and interviewed a few residents, building owners and managers, as well as local...
- How Useful Are Sex Offender Registries?
The California case of Philip Garrido has once again aroused great anxiety about child sexual abuse. He is accused of having kidnapped an 11 year old girl 18 years ago, keeping her a virtual prisoner and fathering two children with her. How can we protect...
- Even Pedophiles Are Human
One of the movies currently playing, “Doubt” takes on contemporary opinion and attitudes about homosexuality, especially about sexual relations between adults and children. Most states have very stringent laws about sex offenders. In many states they...