Letter: Sex offenders are redeemable

[inforum.com – 3/4/21]

The idea that sex offenders are irredeemable is a myth. Reason (magazine) reports that a repeat offense within a period of five years occurs only 7% of the time.

About 100 U.S. teachers, mostly women, are charged with sex crimes each year, although many others go unreported. Affairs between teachers and students are becoming more common in both the U.S. and Europe, probably because the rise of social media has made communication easier and more private. In most of Europe, the age of consent is 14, while in American states it’s 16, 17 or 18. But regardless of students’ ages, teachers may be considered predators simply because their authority implies a potential for duress. No coercion may have been used and the student may even have bragged about the experience to his friends. Yet punishments for sex offenders are draconian, commonly far out of proportion to the crime.
Recently, a 23-year-old Minnesota teacher had an affair with a 15-year-old boy and now faces seven charges, including sexual assault of a child and “brutality,” although the boy had a second encounter with her and even denied the affair in order to protect her. Fired from her job, the woman is now subject to a sentence of 40 years in prison and a $100,000 fine if convicted of all charges. She could also be branded a sex offender for many years, if not for life. Her teaching career is certainly ruined.

An article in Reason magazine says that “when people hear the term ‘sex offender’ they just panic.” The result is that laws governing such affairs are commonly chaotic, cruel and even unconstitutional. Some states impose severe penalties for non-threatening behavior, such as flashing, to be kept on a sex registry for life. Some registrants are as young as nine.

The federal government requires all 50 states keep registries on sex offenders, which currently list nearly a million people. Originally available only to law enforcement agencies, these registries are now accessible to everyone. There is no forgiveness, no second chance, regardless of how successfully the offender may have turned his life around. At one time sex offenses would appear in newspapers and then be forgotten. Today, they are preserved on the internet forever, like flies in amber, long after punishment has been served.

The idea that sex offenders are irredeemable is a myth. Reason reports that a repeat offense within a period of five years occurs only 7% of the time. “People who commit sex offenses have the lowest recidivism rate of almost any crime besides murder.” Only 5% of those on the registry had committed previous offenses. Yet in their neighborhoods they may forever be treated like lepers.

Read the full opinion (requires free registration)

 

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“The idea that sex offenders are irredeemable is a myth.”

Redeemable? That’s insulting because it implies that ALL forced to registered are/were considered sexually dangerous are required to adhere to this SORNA imposition to begin with. Redeemable? I was never a legitimate public safety concern/threat in the first place! I’m not pandering to feel wanted, welcome or accepted. I’m just sick and tired of being forced to interact with law enforcement. I’m sick of them hopping up on my porch, banding on my door with a false sense of urgency. I’m tired of seeing badges and guns all the damn time.

I want SOME ONE in power to go on record admitting that ALL these laws do is promote a false narrative of safety. But no, they will never admit wrongdoing..They will never admit it’s about protecting jobs while promoting the “it gives mothers one less thing to worry about” public safety fantasy.

I just don’t want to be generalized, stereotyped, hated and mischaracterized for what happened to Adam Walsh and Megan Kanka in the same fashion that law enforcement feels they are being wrongly generalized, stereotyped, hated and witch hunted for what happened to George Floyd Breonna Taylor and countless others.

I personally feel this is an unassailable argument with zero false equivalence.

Teacher Abuse of students?
In the 1970s Illinois public schools & parents permitted the use of corporal punishment.
Obviously it was dished out regularly. I got it more than others. High energy and disruptive!
Authority hates that! The worst teacher was Ms. Sweeney who’d drag a 5th grader by the ear to the principal’s office. I with deft quickness avoided that abuse every time! She’d chase but with little effect!

“Redeemable” is an irrelevant term to the public and does not sway law that is in place. What makes the database IMO unconstitutional is that the people have chosen to make the people substantively subservient to them. Slavery reconstituted. Free men are paid to maintain machine property or the opt to by volition- like FB, TW, YT etc. These firms entire business model is based on user input (free labor) & information data that leads to profit.

State’s insist a commodity of safety is derived from the environment is result of the regime’s
implementation. Yet, this described safety is more like a (wool) sweater knitted from the commodity and not really the commodity itself. The commoditization of personal information and world wide access to it for storage & other manipulation.

The almighty database will be used and abused by the enemies of those in power. Right now it’s the alt right and Trump supporters. Databases have thrown out people’s privacy all in the name of data for politicians to abuse. As Tim in Wi and others have said, registrants were the trial run.

If you let the Static 99 tell the narrative though, it will skew all the data using “risk factors” that cannot and do not change