What would be the recidivism rate among those who actually BELONG on the sex-offender registries? Obviously if the state prosecutes as “sex offenders” ten people who really aren’t for each person who really is, recidivism rates will be quite low, but that doesn’t mean that the state should ignore those people who really are sex offenders.

If the government didn’t seek to undermine the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments by preventing juries from determining whether the facts of a case support the punishment (if a jury would find a punishment cruel and unusual for a particular crime, given the particular facts of the case, the punishment IS cruel and unusual and thus unconstitutional) sex-offender registries might serve a useful purpose. Unfortunately, some people want to undermine such registries by flooding them with people who don’t deserve to be on them, and are at best indifferent to the people whose lives their antics destroy.

However, over the years I have documented enough cases where no crime (in a libertarian sense) was committed to know that such cases are not uncommon. The kids are terrified. Most won’t speak out. One case near me got a lot of publicity when the prosecutor tried to jail the kid for life. It turned out the kid had not actually done anything. But they tried to convict him as a sex offender because he showed a school mate a copy of Playboy. The judge, thankfully, threw that out. That kid and his family is reluctant to talk even today fearing the prosecutor will come back at them.

The boy that Janet Reno went after in Miami, before becoming AG, left the US with his family after being found innocent. They feared if they stayed in the country that Reno would try again. Kids who are on the lists don’t want to be noticed, they don’t want to talk about what happened out fear of vigilantes and harassment. I don’t blame them. I wish that they would come out of the closet. I’ve got people willing to put together a documentary on this horror looking for kids who will talk.

Teenagers are stupid. They’re morons. They do stupid shit. Hopefully a lot of it won’t haunt them later in life, but that’s no reason to brand them with it like they’re a damned axe murderer.

I am sure we will see comments from hysterical, uninformed individual(s) who will suggest that all those on the registry should be locked up for life or worse and say there is no rehabilitation for these people. And for a few they are right, we need to focus on those! Once a person has done their time that should be it. That is the foundation of this great country and its legal system. Don’t like it, move to China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, or wherever individual rights are ignored. If a person is a pedophile, lock them up for a long time and provide treatment. Treatment not working, keep them locked up. Many families are being destroyed for political expediency; children of those on the registry are being abused and ostracized at school. Whole families are forced into isolation and restricted from the work place. If the registry is to truly protect the children, then let’s focus on the pedophiles and child molesters’. Get rid of the residency/work place restrictions, focus on the loitering laws. Let the rest on the registry re-assimilate into society after they have done their time, become solid, productive citizens; part of the solution not the problem. The facts, (and the Garrido case) as well as virtually all of the research, and study after study have proven what we are doing now, mostly for political expediency and to appease hysterical uninformed parents is not working and is in fact making matters worse!

The problem with your graph is that it doesn’t really help us. Sure we could read it your way and we could read it Radley’s way. What we need is data on how often 7 – 11 year olds are assualted. For example how many 7 year olds are assaulted and the age of the assailant? That would help. Your graph manages to strip it out. Why? Why not provide complete information?

Seriously, answer that fucking question. You see, my background is in economics, and one of the ways to screw up things like markets (which are ubiquitous in life) is to hide information. Moral hazard, adverse selection, hidden information, all distort the markets outcome for the worse. So, again why not publishing the fucking numbers.

We put the names and faces of these children on the internet. So why not provide age of the victim and assailant? It can be done to protect the victimized, I know it. I work with data all the time and provide lots of confidential data to people outside the company I work for. I can remove all identifying information from the data and the people wanting the data still find it useful, so don’t hide behind the privacy bullshit.

Here is my guess as to the answer: fear. Your graph scares parents of young children. My god….teenagers are child rapists. Everytime a teen walks by, hold your pre-teen a bit closer!

That entire post is one long-winded fact-free narrative-form assertion that all juvenile sex crimes are the result of innocent and harmless experimentation blown out of proportion by your favorite boogieman, the nanny-state.

No. There is no doubt that teenagers engage in sex crimes. But at the same time we hear about teenagers who are being tried as sex offenders because of a birthday, a stupid prank with pictures and texting, and so forth. These children and later adults should not be branded for life as monsters when they were just being young and foolish.

As best I can tell, the author doesn’t have the vaguest idea what any of the pictured offenders actually did; he just assumes it was consensual and something best handled in private.

And you assume it is not. Given the number of abuses that Radley has documented here on this website I would think it would give one pause to reflect on whether or not these really are sexual offenses or just young and foolish teenagers.

And yes, the author readily admits he can’t find information on the specific crimes…BECAUSE THE STATE DOESN’T PUT IT UP. Seriously are you just this stupid or what? Its right there in the article. Did you read the whole thing, or get part way through, make up your mind and come back here and comment? I’ll go with this last explanation as it reflects better on you.

You see, people are generally horrible when it comes to evaluating uncertain events. They tend to overestimate low probability events and underestimate high probability events, they discount historical data too much, focus too much on recent data, and generally make a hash of it all. For example, I know one person who was worried that the people operating the rides at the state fair were child molesters…well until I told her that the most likely scenario would be that if her kids were going to be molested, and unlikely event, it would likely involve someone they knew. A friend of the family, family member, someone at the kids school, etc. “Stranger danger” while real is vastly over-stated.

Here is a hypothetical. Matt D has just come out of a bad relationship. He’s lonely and in need of some companionship, so he finds the local “City Paper” and calls an escort. Someone to talk to and maybe a bit more. Consenting adults and all that right. Turns out its a sting. Matt D is arrested, booked, charged, and cops a plea for a lighter sentence. But wait! Matt D is now a sex offender. He’s committed a sex crime. Onto the list he goes. Ooops, too close to a school, so he moves. Ooops too close to a park with a play ground for kids, time to move. Dammit too close to a church with day care, to close to a pre-school, to close to a Chucky-Cheese….ahhh under the Julia Tuttle Causeway he goes.

Judi,

What I see here is just more bureacratic bullshit. When they have stupid assed laws like this it minimizes the crime(s) against true victims.

Well said.

I bet we could add a fair number of the sponsors of these bills to the list of “sex offenders.”

Only if they are Tier 2 and Tier 3 offenders. If they were 16 or 17 and their partner was below age of legal consent…that is quite possible. Heh, could be a good article if a journalist really wanted to dig. I’d also add John Walsh to the list.

I think that you already know the answer to that question. Boiling water is too complex for the average voter.

#34 billy-jay — The false dilemma is the primary weapon in the statist logician’s arsenal.

#36
3.5% of all people 14-20 years of age

Oops, read the graph wrong, and I’d rather not try and google the correct number at work.

But wait. Sexual offenders are sexual offenders for life. Think about what that graph will look like in ten years. That 3.5% will be 24-30, and the new batch of teenagers will almost certainly be subjected to an even more dire situation, because everybody has to be tougher on crime than the last guy.

Can we fire up the ovens yet?

#8
Solutions?

Only the obvious one.

Is that too complex for the average voter?

Good luck with it.

Spot on

The first visceral reaction to hearing ‘sex offender’ is that wash of negative reaction to whoever is wearing the label.

Then it’s suspicion. “Wait, is he/she *really* a sex offender, or is this some stupid bullshit like he was 15 years old and he had sex with his 15 year old girlfriend? Or did he take a leak on the side of a building at 3am and get caught and strung up by the local ADA?”

So basically, instead of instilling this sense of righteous outrage at the label-wearing sex offender, they’ve instilled this righteous outrage at the government (school administrations, prosecutors) for being so fucking inept.

Good job.

#27 | Steamed McQueen | September 21st, 2009 at 12:12 am
Boogie men aren’t real.

It would appear that sex offenders, and to a greater extent pedophiles are in fact the new boogie men.

Oh, how I long for the old days when all we had to worry about was Russia nuking us, or that there were communists under every rock.

No, No, No. You’ve got it wrong. The communists were under the bed, the Boogieman was in the closet, and the drug dealers were under the rock.