Canada: Marni Soupcoff: Sex-offender registries may be doing more harm than good

[nationalpost.com – 6/11/18]

To call the state of New Hampshire’s computer sex crime law excessive is an understatement. Just a couple of weeks ago, the New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld the felony conviction of a young man who, at age 18, went online and propositioned a 15-year-old girl (whom he knew) for sex. Because of the conviction, the computer sex crime law dictates that he’ll be on the state’s public sex-offender registry for life. If he’d actually had consensual sex with the underage girl, instead of propositioning her online, he’d have been charged with a misdemeanour and wouldn’t have been placed on the sex-offender registry at all.

It makes little sense. But then, sex-offender registries in general make a lot less sense than we tend to assume they do. The problem isn’t with their goal, which is to prevent future offences by sexual predators (the point of the public registries in the United States), or to make it easier to apprehend sex offenders (the point of the Canadian registries, which are accessible only by police).

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Duh!

Yeah, how they gauge the severity of the crime is somewhat odd at times. I currently have to register for life for taking an upskirt picture of a minor. Two guys in our group didn’t have to register at all for having physical relations with their minor victims. Both of them were in a teacher or teacher-like positions in terms of how they came into initial contact with their victims. I’m always thinking how much easier my life might be post supervision had I “merely” beaten my victim within an inch of her life rather than taking a picture.