Sex Offenders to Register Emails in Virginia 331
Isaac Bowman writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Virgina has a proposed law that would require sex offenders to register their email and IM screen names in an attempt to monitor and control their presence on social networking sites like MySpace."
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
lol (Score:2, Insightful)
so they register... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, that is right (Score:4, Insightful)
I know... (Score:4, Insightful)
God damnit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Either the sex offender has served his time, or he hasn't. If you're worried about their recidivism rate, UP THE TIME SPENT OUT OF SOCIETY, DO NOT SEND THEM BACK OUT THERE IF WE'RE SO SURE THEY'RE JUST GOING TO REPEAT OFFEND.
Seems simple, so why do these guys make it so complex?
Pretty pointless idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Grand standing (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only anyone can get any screen name and email address anyway they want it. Next thing you know, people will be setting up the "virtual neighborhood" off shore.
This is one of those feel good law with some truthiness in mix!
Please add Virginia to my list... (Score:2, Insightful)
myspace innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
They mean new software like:
if (user == sex-offender)
then (drop)
else (proceed)
Won't they just, er, get another account? It's like CAN-SPAM deja vu. Must be election time.
Re:tracking?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
How is a sex offender defined? I'm thinking there could be a whole range of sex offenses, from minor infractions to major ones.
If anything, if someone commits a major sex offense, then the judge in his or her right mind should consider removing Internet privledges. Wouldn't that stop the potential of the sex offender luring any more persons?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:God damnit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tacitus (Score:5, Insightful)
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
I can see it now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Devil's advocate (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a sex offender and don't want to support those in particular, but juridically, I think these questions still need to be asked:
- Why only sex offenders? Are other criminals not as dangerous? Do these not use e-mail?
- What happened to jail penalties clearing them of their crime after it's over? Or do I misunderstand part of their intent?
- How is this legislation going to be enforced? Will a sex offender willing to abuse kids be willing to register the mail address used for this?
Re:Comments (Score:4, Insightful)
The furore over internet child abuse is great for headline writers, the combination of two topics which catch peoples attention and of course legislators do love their headlines. I'm surprised we don't see more of this kind of cross-topic headline grabbing. Legislation to outlaw the use of
- iPods to smuggle polonium
- Segways by terrorists
..
Oh maybe the headline writers didn't take best advantage of the oppertunity presented by the recent "No luxury goods for short fat dictators" legislationRe:Please add Virginia to my list... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just paint the whole world map and wait for a sane law to appear and cross that country out. It's less work that way 'round.
Urban legend (Score:5, Insightful)
Statistically, sex offenders have a very high commit-it-again rate.
Complete BS. http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060516_predat or_panic.html [livescience.com]
For what we know, sex offenders are like other offenders ; many are just your once-in-a-lifetime (because they had oppotunity or whatever) type, a few are true maniacs in the medical meaning of the word. While the first type desserve a sentence, and don't need more attention than anybody else afterward, and probably less than a DIU convict, the latter type are mentaly ill persons, and they need constant medical attention instead of jail ; and they should be held in hospital until proven safe for release. Jail only prevent them from accessing adequate cure for their condition. The social pressure for a trial is in fact at the root of their early release (because neither a judge nor a jury is a qualified MD). This is medieval justice at its near best, if you don't count capital punishment.
Re:Devil's advocate (Score:4, Insightful)
2) No. The legal system takes a sharp turn to revenge, not reintegration. Actually it's been doing that for quite a while now, I'm not even sure if it was even ever any other way.
3) Not at all. But the idea seems to be that, when you have some case and someone is a suspect, you check his email activity and if he dares to have an account that's not registered you can already throw him back into jail and seize his equipment.
Re:waste of time (Score:3, Insightful)
2c
Paid in full? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you are being sarcastic. If our society deemed that serving prison time paid for crimes, then nobody would ever be asked "Have you ever committed a crime?" on job applications and no ex-con would have to register for previous crimes.
Re:Urban legend (Score:4, Insightful)
(no points, sorry)
The amount of BS floating around on this topic is staggering. And the fact that mentally ill people are denied the attention they need is a major shame (this isn't a US only problem btw). Jailing them is simply stupid.
Re:tracking?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:God damnit. (Score:4, Insightful)
The simple fact is that if locking people into a cage for a specified term were actually a deterrent then the US would have the lowest crime of any country anywhere (it is my understanding that the US has more %age of pop'n locked up than anyone else). Since crime in the US continues to be a terrible problem, perhaps it's time we began to look at alternates, like real rehabilitaion, meeting the victims, performing real restitution etc.
Now before everyone freaks out, yes, there are still some that will need to be locked-up, but I'd suggest that in a healthy society that they are the exception. Let's face it: we're social creatures, and anyone of us that is anti-social is 'abnormal' and needs help and needs to be brought back into society to allow them to contribute.
Locking criminals all together is just a way to ensure that they learn from one-another and socialise with other criminals making them even more anti-social relative to the rest of us...
Re:Urban legend (Score:1, Insightful)
However, there are definitely repeat offenders that are not really mentally ill. Simply not agreeing to the rules of society doesn't make somebody a nut case. Sentencing should be broken into at least three cases:
- Mentally ill: Treatment, perhaps some minimum time depending on the crime
- First time / seldom: Short sentences, career counseling, community work
- Repeat offenders / career criminals / serious crimes: Longer sentences, focus on rehabilitation possibilities. Keep them until they show a real interest in changing.
The justice system (both in the US and increasingly in Europe) seems focused on punishing criminals just to satisfy society's need for revenge. Simply holding criminals in huge facilities with nothing to do other than socialize with other criminals is hardly helping them choose a different path. Often it shows that small-time criminals do much worse crime after having served time with hardened criminals.
So please, start focusing on helping criminals get out of crime. Not just for their sake, but to society's benefit. Otherwise we might as well lock most criminals up for their entire life which seems to be the direction we're heading in. Sure, it's a solution, but a pretty sad one.
Bad, bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever received junk mail addressed to a former occupant of your home?
Have you ever been refused credit because of a bad debt run up by a former occupant of your home?
I can answer yes to both questions. I've even received late-night faxes from abroad on my voice line, because my phone number used to be a fax number (the telco had run out of never-before-used numbers and so had to give me a recycled one; it had been out of service for over a year, but that didn't help against some overseas scumsucker with an out-of-date phone book).
Now think of the way that information tends to hang around on the internet: somebody sees an interesting story, makes a copy of it on their website, the original goes away but the copy persists. Also, "sexual offences" cover a broad gamut. Legally there is no distinction between someone who has non-penetrative sex with a 15 year, 364 day old girl who managed to get into an over-18s bar; and someone who participated in gang-rape of a pre-school child. Being caught taking a leak in the street (in times when councils are closing public toilets, and bars and restaurants are erecting bogus "toilets are for customers' use only" signs [they're bogus because entering the premises for the purpose of using the toilet makes you automatically a customer]) is also deemed a sexual offence.
Still think all this tracking of sexual offenders is a good idea? I know exactly why this man [google.co.uk] did what he did.
Re:Right (Score:3, Insightful)
When they find their registered address is blocked from MySpace, how long will it take even a not-very-smart pervert to work out he should get another one? All it's done is forced all the perverts to cover their tracks BEFORE they've done anything. About as useful as the No-Fly list. As if Osama bin Laden would book a ticket under his own name. But every poor guy called Mohammed is put through the wringer.
The problem with life forms... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so they register... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and so was whatever crime they commited that made them a sex offender. Those that will try to do it again are the ones least likely to comply with the law in full. All this will do is help ostracize the ones trying to do things right from now on.
Ars Technica had an article [arstechnica.com] about this also, here's a quote from it:
That brings up two of the major problems with all this. 1. Many states have gone nuts with what they consider a sex offender, pretty minor things can land you on one, so the lists aren't useful any longer. Do you really worry that the guy living down the street was a year too old to have sex with his girlfriend and got hit with a statutory rape charge? 2. People who feel completely rejected by society often end up feeling they have nothing to lose. People who feel they have nothing to lose are more likely to commit a crime.
We need some sanity in all this, this proposal simply isn't going to work, it's way too easy to get new E-mail accounts and IM accounts. We also should be worried about the unintended consequences the law may cause. Iowa passed a law not too long ago (I can't find the exact date, but the news articles are from March 2006, article at FindArticles [findarticles.com], same article at the NYT [nytimes.com]) that restricted sex offenders who had committed crimes with children from living within 2000 feet of a school or day-care center. This sounds somewhat reasonable at first doesn't it, they even restricted the class of sex offenders it applied to. Well it backfired, let me just quote this bit from the article:
So now they've lost track of many sex offenders they had track of prior to the law going into affect. Even if you think the sex offender registries actually help prevent sex crimes this is bad news.
You have to ask yourself, what unforeseen side-effects will this Virgina law have? Might it make registered sex offenders purposely use multiple accounts and only report one? Might it make them more cautious about what they do and say online, making it harder to catch them before they commit another crime? We don't know, but I don't see how there's any benefits to this law, at best only the ones who are trying to not commit another crime will fully comply.
Re:You miss the pointlessness (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason this law will be useful is it can't be effectively enforced. Are you going to require that convicted sexual predators are monitored 24/7?
No, of course not.
If thats the case why have this silly rule? It would take me, as others have said, 30 seconds to create a new anonymous email account.
You're still missing it. There's nothing that will guarantee that you catch all pedophiles. It's a way of lowering the standard of evidence against a known pedophile. Let's say you get a transcript of a guy in a chat room talking to a kid, and he's careful enough not to say anything blatantly incriminating. But let's say it's a chat room the FBI does happen to be monitoring. If it's enough to raise their suspicion, but not enough to actually bring a case, they can trace the IP and see who the owner of the account is. If it's a pedophile using an unregistered email account, they can now press charges where they couldn't before.
This also does nothing to protect against those who have not yet been convicted of sexual abuse. If the illusion of security is all you want, enjoy your dream world, but that will just make you less safe.
Using that tired logic, we shouldn't have police either, because they won't catch every crime. Wouldn't want you to live in a dream world, right? This isn't meant to completely solve the problem. I'd say no law has completely solved any problem. It's really just another tool for law enforement to be able to more easily bring charges against recidivist but clever pedophiles. Just like tax evasion did with Capone.
Re:Right (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you cannot realistically ensure that all registered sex offenders have a single email address/IM address/etc and that they register them. What you do do, however, is make it a legal requirement to register all your electronic contact details if you're a registered sex offender, then if you catch someone violating the law, you've something else to charge them with.
This sort of thing is done all the time; to drag out an old example, it's legal to own a crowbar, it's legal to transport that crowbar from one place to another, but if you're caught in the act of burglary with a crowbar on you you'll most likely be charged with going equipped (or equivalent) because of it, as well as with burglary and anything else they can make stick.
By your logic, registering your vehicle is stupid, as you can just change the plates. Do that though and get pulled over for something else, and you're in a whole heap more trouble. Same thing here - if a registered sex offender is found to have an address that they've not registered, they're for it.
Now I don't happen to think that it's a good idea, but not because you can easily sign up for another account.
Re:You miss the pointlessness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You miss the pointlessness (Score:2, Insightful)
This law, at least as it is being marketed, is just being put in place to prevent sexual predators from getting accounts on myspace. In this respect it is useless.
As to your second point, its not that the law won't protect against any sexual predators, its the fact that it is easy enough to get around that it will only restrict the rights of the "minor" offenders who are reformed, or who were wrongly convicted, or that sort of thing, but does absolutely nothing to restrict the ability for those that are dangerous to strike again, or to strike in the first place. In fact, if it gives a false sense of complacency, it makes it easier for them.
Re:You miss the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing everyone on the sex offender list participates in kidfuckery, and not getting drunk and pissing in a bush or mooning your principal, or various other "sexual" offenses.
Security Theater. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep
It's just that its job isn't what you think it is. The No-Fly List doesn't really have anything to do with keeping terrorists off of planes, because as you pointed out, even the most retarded Al Qaeda operative is probably going to think of using a false name. What it does do, is create a (arguably false) sense of security in the general populace, and make them think that their government is "doing something." This is its function, its raison d'être, just like most of the other post-9/11 government "security" measures.
This registry is exactly the same thing. Nobody in their right mind can possibly believe that it's actually going to do anything to save children; it's a trivial requirement, one that if you're already OK with doing something illegal (like propositioning children), you're not going to have any trouble avoiding. But it's going to make a nice talking point for a few politicos, and help to create that 'warm, fuzzy feeling' in the hearts of the voters who are too stupid to see through it -- which is basically most of them, I've come to believe.
When you see a government program that's failing horribly but yet still allowed to continue year after year, chances are it's not really failing; it's doing exactly what somebody wants it to do.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You miss the pointlessness (Score:2, Insightful)
This would just be a "scarlet letter" like program online for people convicted of sexual crimes (remember that these lists don't just include pedophiles, or even violent crimes). Removing a person's ability to live because they were formerly convicted of a crime and have served their sentence is unconstitutional.
It does keep pedos from striking again, in that it lowers the burden of evidence for law enforcement. But it doesn't do it in an effective way. It would take a pedophile that intends to strike again less than an hour to find out enough information about someone through a myspace account to cause harm. On the other hand, all those people blacklisted in the previous section would be unable to do things most people normally can (send email, use IM, share information with their friends on social sites like myspace, etc.) Setting up laws like this only serve to punish the "innocent" while allowing the guilty free reign.
Yes, it is an extra conviction law enforcement can use, but the costs, both in liberties and actual money, are too great.
What needs to happen are intelligent laws and accurate punishments for these convicts, not weak, easily circumvented laws like this. If the courts were better able to determine and punish convicts that are likely to strike again, that would do a much better job of protecting people than this stopgap.
Re:Urban legend (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, politicians heard the first part of the argument ("Great! We can stop paying for those state hospitals!"), but not the second part, or the part about "most patients". The result is a complete mess, with short-term inpatient facilities in medical hospitals serving as a revolving door for severely mentally ill individuals with no followup, treatment beyond crisis intervention, or continuity of care; and absolutely no options besides jail in most states for non-rich individuals who would be best served by long-term inpatient treatment.
Underlying Purpose (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Urban legend (Score:5, Insightful)
Or judges and juries showing some common sense. A felony requires "mens rea" - essentially foreknowledge that you're going to do something wrong. If the girl *looked* over 18 (or whatever the age of consent was in the state since they vary from 15 or so to 18), then the jury should show common sense and acquit the defendant, especially if no harm is evident to the girl. Besides, the whole "marked for life" thing should be restricted (if it's used at all!) to serious sex offenses like forcible rape, sex with a small child (say, under 12) - things like that.
-b.
Re:Security Theater. (Score:3, Insightful)
The registry allows sex offenders to be treated as outcasts for the rest of their lives. You see, people on the registry have to notify people--mostly local schools and other organizations that deal with children heavily--that they are moving in. Those organizations alert the neighborhoods, and everyone knows there's a sex offender nearby. Even if some people manage to miss the notifications, they can use free and easy online lookup services to find sex offenders in their neighborhood and shun them, even people who have completely paid their debt to society and are trying to build a new life for themselves.
The registry is there so that rapists can be punished for the rest of their lives without having the state pay for them in prison.
I think it's pretty awful. But then, we've got to think of the children.
Re:Urban legend (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You miss the pointlessness (Score:2, Insightful)
True, but this information is not allowed to be used to keep an offender from using public facilities.
Your argument seems to be that if we can't completely solve a problem, don't do anything about it at all!
No, if you read my arguement, you will see that it is that this solution doesn't fix the problem any better than adding duct tape to a leaking dam will fix the dam. My arguement is that it will restrict the rights of too many people and do too little to actually solve the problem for a total net loss in effectiveness.
Not the case. They would probably be prevented from using sites that are extremely kid-friendly.
You mean kid friendly sites like Yahoo? Or kid friendly messaging systems like AOL? And where do you draw the line of kid friendliness? Most of the sites pedophiles seem to be cruising are used by anyone (claiming to be) 13 to who knows how old.
I'm not seeing much monetary costs, since we're not talking about a monitoring system, just a database.
Here is a link to the current budget for MS's current sex offender registry maintenance budget [mass.gov]. It costs them nearly 4 million dollars a year to make sure it is up to date. And that is for one maybe two addresses per offender. Imagine if they also had to maintain an untold number of emails as well. A database does no good if it is not maintained. It will quickly become just a random bunch of data that is unreliable. At the very least you will have to pay for the servers to maintain it, technicians to keep it running, developers to create interfaces for it, and bandwidth so it is accessible. Not to mention security measures to keep the wrong people from accessing the data and all sorts of other things.
As for liberties, the right to live without big brother watching you evaporated when they molested a kid. Same for the ability to interact with kids in the future.
Since when do sex offender registries only hold lists of pedophiles, any sex offender gets added to it. This would include pedophiles, yes, but also statitory rape convicts (22 yo has sex with a consenting 17 yo without his knowledge, wrong but not pedophelia, at least not intentionally) and other rape convictions (guy gets a girl drunk and takes advantage of her, still wrong, but still not pedophelia). These people don't have the same rate of repeat that pedophiles do, but they lose all the same rights.
Like I said in a previous post, there needs to be legal reforms, but this is the wrong way to do it. There needs to be better ways to try and sentence these people before you try and remove all their rights. This is the very reason there is an amendment protecting people from cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, in these cases, it is more often ignored.
Re:Why is it the loser states that do these things (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a child and family who have been victims of violent sex crimes. I also believe the AC above in that some of the predators committed crimes that could be thought of as worse than murder. Has everyone convicted of a "sex crime" committed worse than murder? Of course not. Those convicted of heinous crimes should be punished accordingly. The rest should be treated as the rest of America's criminals and not with some special distinction because the crime involved genitalia. Too many stupid laws are being written by pandering politicians because it's easy to claim they are "protecting our children". Violent crime is violent crime regardless of the motivation.
If you believe that sexual predators are more dangerous than other criminals, the length of imprisonment should reflect that. Permanent tracking and ridicule seems to be counter-productive to rehabilitation but if that is what the community wants to do, include it in the sentences at conviction. Below is an excerpt from the NY Times in 2001:
The RIAA and the honorable senator from Utah predict that everyone on
Re:Urban legend (Score:3, Insightful)
Haha, yes (and I mean that in the most respectful way). I, too, have an adult child and have been through this.
The problem with your argument is that many areas of the country, and many countries around the world, recognize the age of consent at 17 or even lower. Just because a teen's thinking isn't fully mature (and that process continues for a long, long time) doesn't mean that he/she isn't capable of understanding the consequences of sexual consent. Perhaps laws could take into account the age of the partner, and they do sometimes, but I suspect the result would be too complicated to make good law.
I think there's a clear difference between adolescents and children from a sexual standpoint and I think we are doing ourselves a great disservice in lumping sexual acts with near-adults into the same category with child sex offenses. Any 30 year old that has sex with a 17 year old may be offensive to you and to others, but it's clearly not the same as a 21 year old having sex with an 8 year old.
No 17, will get you in trouble if you are 18 (Score:3, Insightful)
I know a guy that's on the sex offender list for having sex with a 17 year-old. He was an 18 year-old at the time. I don't know who complained to the cops, but once the complaint was filed, he was duly busted and it went to court. They was no "she looked over 18" defense. That would have been laughed out of court. I don't remeber his sentence, but I know he landed on the sex offender list.
They got married when it all blew over. They are living quietly and have two kids. But their neighbors would love to get them out of the neighborhood because he is still on the sex offender list. I know of one house sale that fell through because the prospective buyer didn't want his daughter living near a registered sex offender.
Also, the sex offender list is polluted with domestic violence cases. Those guys don't belong on the list.