When the 19-year-old son of ____ ____ of Downstate Fairview Heights had sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend, he was forced to register as a sex offender. He was a legal adult and she was a minor.
Police told his employer to fire him, and when he found a job in a new town, the police there ran him off, too. Full Article
Related
IL: Sex offenders sue, saying registry laws keep them from church, living with family
IL: Are Sex Offender Restrictions So Vague They’re Unconstitutional?
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2 efforts in Illinois attempt to change sex offender laws
Sex Offender Registries: Fear without Function? (Amanda Agan)
moderator can you please tell me why my post on facts will not post??? thanks
The only way to get it right is to get rid of the registries and laws altogether. But at least it’s a start.
Can’t go to a Bears game? WTF is that all about?
It’s “Regulatory and Administrative”. Sounds like “Punishment” to me.
Frank
guess I’m being censored now since none of my post with just the data and facts are being allowed to post and I get no response as to why that’s happening.
what I am trying to post is a scaled down version with nothing but the facts and empirical evidence in a compact form so that anyone can use it to educate any and every one with ease..they let me post my long asssss motion again on another post so there must just be something wrong in this draft I’m trying to post..I’ll have to tweak it and figure out what the issue is when I have more time.. Im in my last week of my first year in college and have my last final of the semester tomorrow passing with high grades. not bad for being a 47 year old ex drug addict who’s on the registry…just thought I would mention that and maybe encourage others to never give in and never give up keep moving forward no matter what they try to do to us……
yes I am pretty proud of that even though I will not graduate until something like 2022 and will probably have an incredibly difficult time finding employment..I came out of prison in 2008 destitute because I lost everything when I got locked up and homeless because I was subjected to Jessica laws. but with no real help from anyone, not because my family and friends wouldn’t help there was just nothing they could do,I was able to get a miniel job and was able to save a bunch of money before getting laid off which enabled me to start college..believe me it has been a incredibly difficult journey but with perseverance and good ol America grit I was able to pull myself from the brink of self loathing and self destruction…so anyone that’s feeling they can’t do it i hope you gain the confidence from my story to keep going and fight till to the death..if I can do it anyone can….
All Illinois is doing with this is seeking to make the registration laws stronger and less open to challenge. This is not a positive, it is a negative. The bottom line is what Punished for Life said, that the only way to make them right is to eliminate them, no registration is legitimate, any registration is punishment, yes even simply listing your name and address with the police (they know where you are anyway, if they simply want to check any of a load of records, from DMV to tax to property records, to credit records, to a long list of other public records. The only reason you have to go in is because that alone is harassment).
This Illinois effort is simply tweaking around the edges some, it is NOT giving any consideration at all to whether mere registration of someone not on parole or probation is punishment nor even to whether the Constitution and the ‘American Way” is being violated by this mandate, which even the courts have ruled is “onerous,” although they say onerous not necessarily punishment (Huh?!).
By tweaking, Illinois will split the opposition, many will except as fine and dandy the registration laws as they remain after the tweaking, reducing the opposition numbers. This is a strategy to undermine the opposition, not to undermine the entire idea of registration and all its collateral punishments.
The foundational concept of registration itself is wrong, not simply the collateral punishments. Registration is punishment, once ruled by the California Supreme Court not simply to be punishments but to rise to the level of unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment at least for lesser offenses, simply on the basis of having to go in and do it and for its existence and possibility someone you know might see your mug shot when reviewing the usual-suspects books. If Illinois were really interested in serious consideration of the legitimacy of its registration laws, that basic foundational matter would be on the table. (As for accepting limited period of registration, that itself shows you agree that registration itself is OK. But registration itself is NOT OK, and that issue must be n the table always, or at best you are negotiating from a weak position.)