The following bills MUST BE opposed during this legislative season.
SB195
By Senators Ward and Shelnutt
RFD Judiciary
Rd 1 18-JAN-18
Under existing law, community notification of sex offenders requires a flyer be mailed or hand delivered to required residences. The existing law also provides any other method reasonably expected to provide notification may be utilized. This bill would further authorize local law enforcement to post public notices on the property where adult sex offenders who are subject to community notification reside.
Reason this is bad: This means the state will allow local sheriffs to place signs in the yards of registered citizens. This would further ostracize registered citizens and make them targets of vigilantes.
Now this is what’s called, punishing the punished. This guy is a closet pedophile or something else deranged)!!!
Signs on yards is akin to public shaming along with proactive distribution of information. These are far cries from 2003 Smith v Doe standards.
Castration is retributive and a deterrent. For a non-punitive scheme, it sure has punitive actions.
Does this not go back to the guy last year who suffered the similar sign fate at the hands of his neighbor who painted a sign pointing to his neighbor as a RC? That is what this sounds like as the genesis is of this bill.
Another reason why Alabama is the joke of the south, well them and Floriduh.
So Shelnutt kills a bill that would require church daycare to be licensed and regulated like all other daycares. (which seems like a good bill aimed at protecting kids) yet he purports to be protecting kids by proposing a bill that would require sex offenders to post signs in their yards. Seems like it would be easier to prevent the crime from ever happening by having properly regulated daycare centers than trying to protect kids after the fact when a crime has already been committed. Insane….
Another email sent.
To:cam@camward.com,shay.sd17@gmail.com,steve.hurst@alhouse.gov
Feb 6 at 6:00 PM
Dear Senator Ward, Senator Shelnutt, and Representative Hurst,
Do you realize that 95% of convicted sex offenders will never commit another sex offense? These bills are targeting the wrong people; the overwhelming percentage of new sex crimes are committed by offenders who have never offended and who are close to their victims, namely family, friends, and people in authority like teachers, coaches, and law enforcement.
Placing signs in the front yards of sex offenders only serves one evil purpose: so they can be targeted by vigilantes, it DOES NOT make the community safer. By the way, what are you congressmen doing about the ongoing killings of sex offenders happening in prisons and in communities? By pointing out where sex offenders live, you are promoting murder!
Also, originally the registry was for law enforcement personnel ONLY. Public notification is based on emotional responses by the community and are not supported by any statistics whatsoever. The public registry and community notification by way of flyers and mailings DOES NOT make anyone safer. If fact, it makes the communities LESS safer as sex offenders are forced into homelessness making it harder for law enforcement keep track of them.
As far as castration (chemical or physical) goes, I’ll repeat the above statement, 95% of convicted sex offenders will never commit another sex offense.
You guys are way off direction. Instead of unconstitutionally punishing offenders further with each passage of these ridiculous bills, you should be focusing on reducing sex crimes through education and mental health treatment. How about a high school class titled “How to stay off the sex offender registry and screw up your entire life” and mental health solutions for solving anger, jealousy, and control issues; those are why most sex offenses occur, not for the sake of having sex.
There’s a great well thought out and research supported article titled “Recidivism: The Great Lie of “Frightening and High”” at http://www.oncefallen.com/Recidivism101.html if you’re interested in learning the TRUTH.
Sincerely,
(me)
there ya go another LOSER State trying to COMPEL SPEECH !!
I honestly don’t know how any registered (and supposedly free) citizen in AL, or in any other “Bible Belt” state, for that matter, can handle living like that. To any of my fellow Price Club members who are unfortunate enough to be living in that lovely region of the so-called “land of the free,” how do you manage? How do you find work and keep a roof over your head? How the F do you keep your sanity?
Just being publicly listed online in my home state was bad enough for me that I ended up moving to a tiered state where I’m considered Tier I and not listed publicly…but having to live with the kind of inhuman public disclosure laws as in AL and elsewhere in the south, especially if it included an actual sign (or target, if you prefer) in front of my residence, would absolutely break me.
Take the signs and shove them right up all Senators that vote for this bill, Fight back any way you can, enough is enough.