Florida senators filed a package of bills to crack down on violent sex predators Tuesday, promising to make sex offender reform the centerpiece of the upcoming legislative session. The senators propose longer prison sentences, stricter community monitoring and a wider pool of offenders who can be confined after their criminal sentences end.
Lawmakers began working on the legislation after a Sun Sentinel investigation in August revealed that nearly 600 sex offenders committed new sex crimes after being reviewed under Florida’s predator law and set free. The law allows the state to keep predators locked up after their prison sentences end if prosecutors can prove they are likely to attack again.
Senate President Don Gaetz said lawmakers were “confronted with clear evidence that current laws and administrative systems are not working well enough.” Full Article
And here I thought part of the expected legislation after the Cherish Perriwinkle tragedy would include consequences for parents who let their pre-teen children wander off with complete strangers who just bought them some trinkets and shiny baubles.
Wrong again. Oh well.
First, I am saddened by the suffering that any victim of any sex offense goes through. The Sun Sentinel has found nearly 600 cases since 1999 of RSO who committed new sex offenses. These are not technical violations but violent offenses. The have not mentioned the number of RSOs in Florida (I think it’s around 65,000) or the re-offense rate (I think it’s around 1%).
So from a macro standpoint, Florida has about as low a re-offense rate as you could reasonably hope for in any crime category. They seem to think that adding misery to the 99% who do not re-offend will bring the numbers down closer to zero.
I hope the Sun Sentinel will do another story about armed robbers who re-offend, or drunk drivers or wife beaters or…any criminal. Those stories will be just as compelling.
Just a thought… We are regulated like dangerous commodities, rather than treated like human beings. Alcohol, tobacco and firearms have a know rate of dangerousness. Because they are not human beings with inalienable rights, they really don’t have a right to exist. Some would debate whether dogs fall into this category. Therefore, the right to regulate or even ban such things as cigarettes is uncontested, whether it can be proven that cigarettes kill 1 in 100 or 99 in 100. On the same logic, registrants are now regulated on their statistical dangerousness, by rates of recidivism. Now one can argue that 1% is too low or too high depending on which side you are on and what is acceptablevrisk. This is contrary to the idea that all individuals have a right to innocence until proven guilty, unlike alcohol, whose dangerousness we allow to some extent without inhehent rights. The ? amount who don’t reoffend share the dangerousness with the ? who do. How can that be? It is like an alien intelligence came down and determined that humans as a group were 100% likely to cause war and mayhem, which is true, despite the fact that most are innocent of these acts. Therefore, the alien being could force all to be registered and monitored, simply because they are not smart enough to tell who will cause the war or not, treating all as dangerous commodities needing to be controlled.
We are human because we have rights.
Well…two things from florida…good music and idiots….what..??…too soon..??????………florida make
sure those accused are given a fair open trial…with
audio and video tape….the demand for justice wants to
prove you wrong so bad that it is your name that failed
…that was wrong…that wasted taxpayer funds….No more
removing evidence from court record….No more placing…
planting false evidence in jury instruction …..mandatory re-read of court record in open court….that is a MUST…!