Southwestern Law School Professor Catherine L.Carpenter puts it bluntly in her new research paper, Throwaway Children: The Tragic Consequences of a False Narrative. “Truth be told,” she writes, “we are afraid for our children and we are afraid of our children.”
Being afraid for our kids has lead us to create ever harsher sex offender registration laws. We want to protect our kids from creeps.
But this protection plan of ours has backfired. And now, Carpenter writes, whenever we arrest a minor for a sex crime, our fear “of our children ensnares and punishes them under the very same laws that were designed to protect them.” In other words: We treat minors like monsters, because we vastly overestimate the chances of them committing another sex crime. This fear, “is premised on a false narrative that includes flawed studies on recidivism rates and misguided case decisions that embraced these findings.” Full Article
The camel’s back is broken and very few cares.
Just an idea:
How about starting with the kids and making sure none of them commit a sex offense as kids, as adolescents, or as adults? Unless there is some ridiculous other phenomenon that brought a person into the world, everyone starts off as a baby. So logically wouldn’t it be best to adopt an approach where as people grow up they are not ever confronted with the choices that would lead them to eventually commit a sex offense or any crime? Such an effort would be a lot of work, but the best causes are worth the struggle of bringing them to fruition and insuring they exist in a stable condition for maximum long term benefit.
With kids being on the SOR places a question/situation on the table. Supposedly when a child is involved with a adult sexually, it is the adult’s fault because the child is incapable or not mature enough to know better. However, if the same kid has a sexual relation with another kid, it is now that child’s fault, because he/she is now mature enough to know better?
Well, here goes; as a child if I got caught doing something “bad”, then I got my ass beat! As an adolescent, if I got caught doing something “bad”. I got my ass beat. Parents can no longer discipline their children in a stern but loving way so schools and the state have either assumed the parental role or the parents have relinquished that role. Whatever the case is, it’s now a freakin out of control mess!