Tory Jacobson was a detective sergeant with the Moorhead Police Department in 2003 when he came up with an idea about how to keep better track of registered sex offenders.
The law at the time required people convicted of certain crimes to keep law enforcement agencies informed of their whereabouts. The burden was and still remains on the offender to remain compliant, or face possible incarceration.
The problem: Noncompliance wasn’t always immediately apparent, leading in some cases to a lag time between when an offender stopped following the rules and when law enforcement became aware of it.
Jacobson’s idea was to have officers make random checks to make sure offenders complied with registration requirements. Full Article
And so a great way to waste limited law enforcement resources was put into practice. Random checks are not at all random especially in that city where specific officers keep track of specific people. Also checking in with neighbors and employers is even more intrusive. In fact the entire article appears to be one justification after another for constant or near constant surveillance on certain individuals just because they previously engaged in one activity (sometimes more) that is socially and legally unacceptable. Compliance with registration requirements should be the absolute last concern of any government agency. The first concern ought to be reducing the number of people who get caught up in the legal system as a result of conduct categorized as sexual. Wether anyone chooses to believe it or not sexual misconduct is overwhelmingly preventable to the degree that, years and decades prior to a disagreeable occurrence has been considered by a potential perpetrator or before a potential victim has been classified as a potential victim, people can be directed down alternative paths without ever knowing they were at risk. To be clear this redirection would need to begin as early as possible in life and continue at a societal level for each individual in a given society throughout life in the most subtle ways.
Effective for whom? Definitely not the taxpayers.
The only thing that “s*x offender” “monitoring” is effective at is keeping government big and giving people menial jobs. I say “monitoring” because they aren’t really monitoring anyone at all, they are merely occasionally checking some meaningless facts (for example, does a person actually live where he or she has told someone).
The research is clear – recidivism rates for people who have committed a s*x crime is very low, whether the S*x Offender Registries (SORs) exist or not. In fact, if the SORs did not exist, the recidivism rate would be even lower. Experts always predicted that the SORs would be counterproductive and they are. They cause increased s*x crimes, among a huge number of other damaging, anti-social behaviors.
The SORs are thoroughly idiotic social policy. If they weren’t, I’m not sure how it could be possible that there are not a hundred other types of Registries. Would we really not Register people who shoot people with guns?!!
As they say in the military, this was a bullet point to help them with the next promotion even though it was a cost spending measure though supposedly effective in its ways.
I still want to know if a) it is considered harassment for them to do a compliance check with employers and neighbors; b) and with the RC themselves; and c) under what law is this authorized to do such actions? I can see the neighbor and employer portion being challenged in court.
what gestopo type tactics…the following sounds like something straight out of nazi Germany…
He said monitoring involves not only knocking on the doors of registered offenders, but also visiting with neighbors and others to get an indication of whether trouble is brewing.
“We’ll track the vehicles they’re driving; we check in with employers to make sure they’re working, things like that,” Nelson said, adding that officers are assigned specific individuals to keep tabs on.
all these wasted resources and unnecessary harrasment and counterproductive policies to address a problem that even these idiots state doesn’t exist and for what then if not public safety than guess what it must be retribution for people who have already paid for their crime.it’s so blatent it seems unreal..at least to those making the laws or those not on the registry…
If they EVER come to where I am (I am NOT on prob/parole) I am NOT Answering and NOT Talking to them… I DO NOT TALK TO COPS PERIOD, plus IF I happen to goto door etc I will be filming them. And if they happen to catch me on the way in/out Ill point out my various cameras and tell them your being recorded audio and video…
(as janice told me turn your music up and dont listen to them knock lol)
You DO NOT HAVE TO COMPLY to cops with even ANSWERING your door or talking to them PERIOD, and you SURELY DO NOT LET THEM IN YOUR HOUSE EVER without a search warrant. Soon Ill be reg’ing on my bday (few mos) and I will NOT BE PROVIDING them with a phone # (it is NOT CALIF LAW/290 code), these …..as someone said above, BIG BROTHER and they are all about DATA COLLECTION so the US GOVT can control you more.
I love the way how he crows about doing all the intrusive checks on the RC’s, then the last few paragraphs putting out the statistics that blow the reasoning for those intrusive checks clear out of the water. At least give him credit for stating the obvious at the end, but his doublespeak speaks volumes that needs to be addressed.