Any criminal justice system has two purposes: The first is to punish those who have broken the law; the second is to bring about rehabilitation in the lawbreaker, so that he or she will turn his back on a life of crime and embrace a law-abiding life in society.
The first is accomplished largely within the closed ranks of the legal system, through courts, convictions, punishments, and time served, either behind bars or under community supervision.
The second can only take place within the broader system of society and the community.
When it comes to those whose convictions have been for a sexual crime, why are we so good at accomplishing the former and so lacking in bringing about the later?
Our society has been conditioned to regard those who have committed a sexual crime as irredeemable. This is largely, if not totally, due to the proliferation of public sex offender registries. There is something about putting one’s name on such a registry that sets them aside and marks them as belonging outside – outside of redemption, outside of consideration, outside of civilized society.
The sex offender registry should be abolished to teach people a lesson about humanity, because it’s doing nothing but negatively discriminate those with convictions involving sex offense especially when involving minors in comparison to those who are convicted of other crimes. Registrants for many years have been scapegoated by the general public whenever sexual offense is heard in the media and watch too much tv shows like “Law & Order SVU”, or “to catch a predator”. The general public thinks that notifications are an effective tool of safety because they think registrants are out unnoticed and are presumed more dangerous, hard to find than the ones that are on the public notification and are easy to find, which is why the public wants more laws to so that every registrant in the system is exploited.
Usual American hysteria again in TX on the topic as reflected in the newspaper’s comment section.
This is for the people that live in Hamilton,ohio in Butler County this is my. Opinion for people that are on a sex offender list or have that on them it’s like when they are on parole they have all the rules they have to go by but then they also need to have a rule for the people that have kids should get to see there kids if the other parent is okay with it or so you can go around your family that has kids and if you want to be with someone that has kids you should be able to do so it torn apart families because the other person has a sex case on them and you can’t judge someone by there passed and alot of the parole officers or probation officers just don’t know how much stress that can be on people and there families. I think that if they ain’t a repeated offender they shouldn’t have to register and they should be aloud around kids and if you have supervised visitation and then they take that away from you that is wrong and they want you to do good but they set you up for failure and how can you get violated for loving your kids and I think that if the person is willing to sign a waiver to be around kids give them that chance and I think that they should only be aloud to keep you on parole for like a year or 2 after you get out of prison and then let you off and I hope one day they will let people have there families together cause when the HOILDAYS are here the person that has the sex cases can’t be with there families cause they can’t be around kids I think they should let you spend holidays with your families and your kids and your kids birthdays and I hope soon that they fix the issues with the problems cause it is alot of stress and it’s heart breaking too the kids cause they can’t be around there dads and if people would stop judging it would be better I hope soon that if you have been on parole since 2006 that you should be off of parole now.