Last month, a new chapter was written in one of America’s oldest real-life murder mysteries. The body of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was finally found, 27 years after his abduction. Jacob’s gun-point abduction shocked the nation and spawned a network of state sex-offender registries, South Carolina’s among them. But extensive research since then has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of such measures. Full Opinion Piece
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“…the sad irony is that if all of today’s laws had been in existence in 1989, they would have done nothing whatsoever to protect Jacob Wetterling. Jacob’s killer had no previous sex crime convictions. He did not choose a victim from his neighborhood; Jacob was kidnapped some 30 miles from the perpetrator’s home.”
MY. GOD. FINALLY!!!! Someone stepped up and said it! FINALLY!!!! Just another law named after a victim that would have done nothing to protect said victim had it been in effect prior to the crime that triggered the creation of the law. Total crock of crud!!!
Truth is we have limited moral authority to tell Duterte of the Philippines a damn thing as the Philippines does not cruelly and unusually punish their sex deviants by making them register as the Nazi’s did and then applying Nazi laws out of nowhere, rubberstamped by Clinton appointed Judge’s after being signed by a Democrat who started off IML, although Judge Hamilton claims the limited version that only came out of LAX was technically started under Bush in 2007. Duterte of the Philippines does not register his sex offense convicts whereby Obama is currently putting forward a program where US citizen registrants will have a terrible stigmatizing mark on their passprts whereby countries like Iran kill sex offenders and in the IML lawsuit, plaintiff 7 will have to go to Iran when his fathers imminent death will occur in order to get his inheritance his father willed to him. Right there, the US is doing to US citizens just what Duterte is supposedly doing to his own citizens. The US has no moral authority to tell Duterte anything about crime and punishment. I also wonder if the only rason the US has picked up on Dutertes supposed killing of drug cartel dealers is that powerful operatives in the US media industry are mad at Duterte for not starting a sex registry and are unduly highlighting Dutertes backlash against the drug scourge in his country. Each leader can point to the other’s lack of moral authority in unfair punishment but a key differernce also is that Duterte is persecuting and killing current cartel people and current drug dealers/users currently dealing with cartels. The US is persecuting long ago so-called sex offenders who may have not even offended in over 30+ years, whereas Duterte is persecuting those currently involved with the drug cartels. Duterte is more in tune with the US constitution’s ex post facto clause than Obama. Shame, shame on Obama’s handlers for having him do this. It’s my guess Obama made some funding threat to Duterte to start a sex registry or else. Duterte told Obama to shove it. Obama got his operatives in the US media to spotlight on Dutertes treatment of drug cartel people in the Philippines.
Even Patty Wetterling has come out against the SOR laws that have been passed since the Jacob Wetterling Act. In a 2007 op/ed piece for the Sacramento Bee, she said:
“I’m worried that we’re focusing so much energy on naming and shaming convicted sex offenders that we’re not doing as much as we should to protect our children from other real threats.
Many states make former offenders register for life, restrict where they can live, and make their details known to the public. And yet the evidence suggests these laws may do more harm than good.”
“The assumption that sex offenders are at high risk of recidivism has always been false and continues to be false. It’s a myth.” Melissa Hamilton, an expert at the University of Houston Law Center
Not only is this a waste of money; hobbling former sex offenders from getting work or a place to live is contrary to rehabilitation and preventing recidivism. It is diluted with people that had misdemeanors decades old now. It was never designed to stop crime anyway, it was a surefire way to justify hiring millions of law enforcement cementing their job security. People are naive. Imagine if everybody who had sex before the age of 18 (the majority) were on the registry, it would show millions registered, instead of almost 800,000 now.