America's Unjust Sex Laws

According to this recent article, there are presently 674,000 registered sex offenders in the United States.  There are 250,000,000 adults (people at least 18) in the U.S.  Approximately one-half that number or about 125,000,000 are males.  Given that the vast majority of sex offenders are male, we can calculate that there is about 1 registered sex offender for every 185 males.  When is this madness going to stop?
It is also estimated that two-thirds of those registered offenders are of little or no threat.

Why is this great injustice taking place?:  fanaticism + political cowardice = injustice

Some of the key findings of recent research conducted are: Juvenile sex offenders. An estimated 19,000 people are on US sex offender registries for behavior when they were children or adolescents — some younger than eleven years old — many of them for innocently “playing doctor” or for normal, consensual, teenage love affairs. See Criminalizing Child’s Play.   Innocuous “offenses.” Sex offenders include people whose only crime was breastfeeding their baby or urinating behind a dumpster. See Look Who’s a Sex Offender Now!   Growing underclass. As of 2007, one out of every 220 adult men in the United States was a registered sex offender. See Counting and Over-Counting Sex Offenders.   Sex worse than violence. The federal sentence for photographing a 17-year-old boy with an erection is about twice as severe as for attempting to kill him — and about four times as severe as for beating him up so badly that he accidentally dies. See Throwing Away the Key.

 

America's unjust sex laws

Aug 6th 2009
From The Economist print edition

An ever harsher approach is doing more harm than good, but it is being copied around the world

 
IT IS an oft-told story, but it does not get any less horrific on repetition. Fifteen years ago, a paedophile enticed seven-year-old Megan Kanka into his home in New Jersey by offering to show her a puppy. He then raped her, killed her and dumped her body in a nearby park. The murderer, who had recently moved into the house across the street from his victim, had twice before been convicted of sexually assaulting a child. Yet Megan’s parents had no idea of this. Had they known he was a sex offender, they would have told their daughter to stay away from him.
In their grief, the parents started a petition, demanding that families should be told if a sexual predator moves nearby. Hundreds of thousands signed it. In no time at all, lawmakers in New Jersey granted their wish. And before long, “Megan’s laws” had spread to every American state.
America’s sex-offender laws are the strictest of any rich democracy. Convicted rapists and child-molesters are given long prison sentences. When released, they are put on sex-offender registries. In most states this means that their names, photographs and addresses are published online, so that fearful parents can check whether a child-molester lives nearby. Under the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, another law named after a murdered child, all states will soon be obliged to make their sex-offender registries public. Such rules are extremely popular. Most parents will support any law that promises to keep their children safe. Other countries are following America’s example, either importing Megan’s laws or increasing penalties: after two little girls were murdered by a school caretaker, Britain has imposed multiple conditions on who can visit schools.
Which makes it all the more important to ask whether America’s approach is the right one. In fact its sex-offender laws have grown self-defeatingly harsh (see article). They have been driven by a ratchet effect. Individual American politicians have great latitude to propose new laws. Stricter curbs on paedophiles win votes. And to sound severe, such curbs must be stronger than the laws in place, which in turn were proposed by politicians who wished to appear tough themselves. Few politicians dare to vote against such laws, because if they do, the attack ads practically write themselves.

A whole Wyoming of offenders

In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming. The number keeps growing partly because in several states registration is for life and partly because registries are not confined to the sort of murderer who ensnared Megan Kanka. According to Human Rights Watch, at least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure. Some prosecutors are now stretching the definition of “distributing child pornography” to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends.
How dangerous are the people on the registries? A state review of one sample in Georgia found that two-thirds of them posed little risk. For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being “party to the crime of child molestation” because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender.
Several other countries have sex-offender registries, but these are typically held by the police and are hard to view. In America it takes only seconds to find out about a sex offender: some states have a “click to print” icon on their websites so that concerned citizens can put up posters with the offender’s mugshot on trees near his home. Small wonder most sex offenders report being harassed. A few have been murdered. Many are fired because someone at work has Googled them.
Registration is often just the start. Sometimes sex offenders are barred from living near places where children congregate. In Georgia no sex offender may live or work within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of a school, church, park, skating rink or swimming pool. In Miami an exclusion zone of 2,500 feet has helped create a camp of homeless offenders under a bridge.

Make the punishment fit the crime

There are three main arguments for reform. First, it is unfair to impose harsh penalties for small offences. Perhaps a third of American teenagers have sex before they are legally allowed to, and a staggering number have shared revealing photographs with each other. This is unwise, but hardly a reason for the law to ruin their lives. Second, America’s sex laws often punish not only the offender, but also his family. If a man who once slept with his 15-year-old girlfriend is barred for ever from taking his own children to a playground, those children suffer.
Third, harsh laws often do little to protect the innocent. The police complain that having so many petty sex offenders on registries makes it hard to keep track of the truly dangerous ones. Cash that might be spent on treating sex offenders—which sometimes works—is spent on huge indiscriminate registries. Public registers drive serious offenders underground, which makes them harder to track and more likely to reoffend. And registers give parents a false sense of security: most sex offenders are never even reported, let alone convicted.
It would not be hard to redesign America’s sex laws. Instead of lumping all sex offenders together on the same list for life, states should assess each person individually and include only real threats. Instead of posting everything on the internet, names could be held by the police, who would share them only with those, such as a school, who need to know. Laws that bar sex offenders from living in so many places should be repealed, because there is no evidence that they protect anyone: a predator can always travel. The money that a repeal saves could help pay for monitoring compulsive molesters more intrusively—through ankle bracelets and the like.
In America it may take years to unpick this. However practical and just the case for reform, it must overcome political cowardice, the tabloid media and parents’ understandable fears. Other countries, though, have no excuse for committing the same error. Sensible sex laws are better than vengeful ones.
A Reply:

Slaute wrote:

August 16, 2009 14:13

Again, to other commenters/readers, no offense to victims and families of violent sexual crimes, but the “statutory laws” of our nation must be changed before an entire generation of boys/teens/young men end up on the sex offender registry for life. You may find this difficult to believe, I did at first, but there are kids as young as 10 on the sex offender registry for “playing doctor” no violence involved. Kids as young as 12 for pinching another kid on the butt just joking around, and a long list of teens and young men for “consensual sexual activity” as a result of girls who lied about their age and sought out sexual activity. And men for public urination on the golf course; how many men would this one put on the list. THIS IS INSANITY!!
Worse yet, state sanctioned Sex Offender "Treatment Programs” even for juveniles as young as 12, are barbaric and abusive! These programs use the following under the name of treatment:
Plethysmographs - a metalized ring is strapped around a “male” juvenile’s genitals (there is no such devise for females) and they are forced to listen to/watch pornography including deviant sexual activity such as violent rape! This barbaric and abusive device and recordings are designed to measure any signs of arousal and the juvenile is then forced to try and masturbate afterwards.
Masturbatory Satiation – juvenile males as young as 12 are forced to masturbate over and over and over while listening to/viewing pornographic images/recordings, including deviant sexual activity such as violent rape.
Arousal Reconditioning – Originally developed in the early to mid-1900s to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals. Attempts to eliminate sexual feelings by pairing them with boredom, pain, or unpleasantness. In effect, assumes that sexuality can be changed through “punishment” such as electric shock therapy.
Parents, warn your sons!! What you may think is normal underage sexual activity historically left to parents to correct and teach is currently grounds for very serious felony sex offender convictions, registration as a sex offender for life as young as 14, and forced sex offender "treatment"!! And DA’s are increasingly prosecuting these cases despite insane judicial outcomes, ruined lives of innocent boys, teens and young men, and ruined families of these innocent boys/teens/men.
The current and potential legislation regarding this entire subject is seriously lacking any real protection of our children from violent predatory sex offenders. In fact more and more underage children, teens and young men are the ones who are being prosecuted and convicted at an alarming rate under the very laws enacted to “protect them.”

 

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