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Sex offender laws

F

fskimospy

Elite Member
Because I'm tired of reading horrible threads about the debt ceiling, here's something I found interesting:

http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/14/perverted-justice

The sex offender laws in the US as they exist today are absolutely insane. Our strange, puritanical fury at sex offenses has created a situation where people are being punished for their entire lives for things that most people on this board have either done themselves, or have known someone who has done them.

It's not popular in America to be on the side of sex offenders, but something needs to be done.
 
While most of those cases listed I don't have an issue with, requiring a 10 year old to register isn't going a bit far.

I have no sympathy for those that were charged with having sex with a minor, age of consent laws aren't new nor hard to find.
 
boomhower said:
While most of those cases listed I don't have an issue with, requiring a 10 year old to register isn't going a bit far.

I have no sympathy for those that were charged with having sex with a minor, age of consent laws aren't new nor hard to find.
Click to expand...

Age of consent laws are ridiculous and should be done away with.
 
boomhower said:
While most of those cases listed I don't have an issue with, requiring a 10 year old to register isn't going a bit far.

I have no sympathy for those that were charged with having sex with a minor, age of consent laws aren't new nor hard to find.
Click to expand...

That's ridiculous. Some of the people being charged are 16 year olds having sex with their 14 year old girlfriends. No matter what you think of if they should be doing that or not, it is pretty difficult to argue that these people represent such a danger to society that they should be registered, tracked, and ostracized for the rest of their lives for it.
 
I know someone who has a felony on their record for the rest of their lives, for having a picture of his 18 year old girlfriend that she sent him, him being also 18. As it turns out she took the picture when she was 17, and when they broke up, she turned him in and he got a lesser child pornography charge and luckily didn't have to register as a sex offender but that's how stupid the laws get on this in an attempt to protect children.
 
IBMer said:
I know someone who has a felony on their record for the rest of their lives, for having a picture of his 18 year old girlfriend that she sent him, him being also 18. As it turns out she took the picture when she was 17, and when they broke up, she turned him in and he got a lesser child pornography charge and luckily didn't have to register as a sex offender but that's how stupid the laws get on this in an attempt to protect children.
Click to expand...

Looking at that case, should she not have been charged with distribution of child porn since she sent it to him?

(I'm not advocating this, but seeing how the laws work in this country....).
 
A perfect example of what can happen when we ram through legislation due to an emotional overreaction to isolated incidents. While the intent was just, the results too often aren't.
 
boomhower said:
While most of those cases listed I don't have an issue with, requiring a 10 year old to register isn't going a bit far.

I have no sympathy for those that were charged with having sex with a minor, age of consent laws aren't new nor hard to find.
Click to expand...

You're what's wrong with America.
 
boomhower said:
While most of those cases listed I don't have an issue with, requiring a 10 year old to register isn't going a bit far.

I have no sympathy for those that were charged with having sex with a minor, age of consent laws aren't new nor hard to find.
Click to expand...

I bet you were aware of every single letter of the law when your pecker first started pointing at whatever sex it pointed at....

But hey, laws aren't new so lets prosecute children for having sex with their peers..... in order to protect children from having sex with people 30 years older..... Great idea! I bet in a few years this problem won't exist anymore!
 
Article has some good points, but makes a lot of bad ones in its attempt to be the sexual offense article to end all sexual offense articles. See "a substantial share of defendants were themselves victims of sexual abuse as children and look at these images as a way of working through the trauma". LOL, nice excuse.
 
People who abuse children(and I'm not talking about an 18 year old fucking a 17 year old) need to be lined up and shot.
 
nick1985 said:
People who abuse children(and I'm not talking about an 18 year old fucking a 17 year old) need to be lined up and shot.
Click to expand...

full of love and compassion... so that they may get better and then become productive members of society.


and by love and compassion i mean something to chemically castrate them.


unless its for pissing in public... in that case FU, you should be able to fine the government for not having enough rest stops on I 10 between San Antonio and el paso (stupid po-dunk cities where the gas stations close at 10pm!)
 
It really does amount to a lifetime punishment for some people. Someone showed me their nifty sex offender lookup app on their iPhone one day, and marveled at how many there were. But you click on those dots, and you see things like "indecent exposure," "public urination," "statutory rape (20 year old defendant, 17 year old victim" and it just boggles the mind. We've taken the already asinine "zero tolerance, zero thinking" policy and expanded it to this huge system that punishes people their entire lives.

If someone is a bad person, and not safe for society, then they should be in prison. But if not, then they should be just like everyone else, with the privilege to vote, drive, own firearms, etc.
 
Nebor said:
It really does amount to a lifetime punishment for some people. Someone showed me their nifty sex offender lookup app on their iPhone one day, and marveled at how many there were. But you click on those dots, and you see things like "indecent exposure," "public urination," "statutory rape (20 year old defendant, 17 year old victim" and it just boggles the mind. We've taken the already asinine "zero tolerance, zero thinking" policy and expanded it to this huge system that punishes people their entire lives.

If someone is a bad person, and not safe for society, then they should be in prison. But if not, then they should be just like everyone else, with the privilege to vote, drive, own firearms, etc.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: F' the police state, a lot of this crap has to go.
 
Bowfinger said:
A perfect example of what can happen when we ram through legislation due to an emotional overreaction to isolated incidents. While the intent was just, the results too often aren't.
Click to expand...

Especially when you take into account prosecutors who are more interested in conviction numbers than they are in actual justice.
 
I can understand a registry for adults who committed offenses against minors if it was a) non-consensual, or b) consensual but with a sizeable age difference, i.e. at least 5 years. Sex offender registry laws were billed as a tool for keeping children safe. That and only that is what they should accomplish.

This business of including teenage statutory rapists, flashers and peeping toms is ludicrous. It's a double standard we have regarding anything pertaining to sex. Tear someone limb from limb and be incarcerated for aggravated assault, then get out and resume your life. Flash a woman on a subway, and you're a target of vigalantes for the rest of your life. That IMO is the worst part of it. It undermines the rule of law by encouraging vigalantism.

There's another angle here that is foreboding. Once a law like this is passed, it becomes impossible to advocate repealing it or narrowing its reach because it will be perceived as advocacy for heinous criminals. Suppose more laws like this get passed covering whatever offense is outraging people at the time. Suddenly everyone with a criminal record is in a public database somewhere. It's a civil libertarian's nightmare.

- wolf
 
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woolfe9999 said:
There's another angle here that is foreboding. Once a law like this is passed, it becomes impossible to advocate repealing it or narrowing its reach because it will be perceived as advocacy for heinous criminals.
Click to expand...

I think laws should have to be renewed every 10 years or so. They're too easy to pass and too hard to repeal at the moment.
 
schneiderguy said:
Age of consent laws are ridiculous and should be done away with.
Click to expand...

Really? Got a thing for 8 year olds?

You have to draw the line somewhere.

While I agree the laws aren't perfect (a 17yo shouldn't be penalized for having sex with a 15yo nor should an underaged person be criminaly liable for texting pics of their own titties among other things) society has to set the limits somewhere. You can't have 40 year olds trolling the high schools with impunity.
 
You should all band together and protest in public; hey, maybe pick the funeral of a child that was kidnapped, molested and murdered?

Some of you make no fucking sense - you want the death penalty (for jaywalkers) but scream bloodly murder when you might get in trouble for banging a 16 year old. So, you want the gubnament to execute the criminals YOU think should be executed. But, when you have sex with an under age girl,... the gubnament is all stupid and need to stay out of your personal life.

"Oh, oh, wait, wait - you don't know the whole story!!" - you mean, like we don't know the whole story with the same criminals you are all salivating over seeing executed??

Honestly, go fuck yourselves. And, I hope we get to the point where they execute sex offenders; hey, whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
 
Macamus Prime said:
You should all band together and protest in public; hey, maybe pick the funeral of a child that was kidnapped, molested and murdered?

Some of you make no fucking sense - you want the death penalty (for jaywalkers) but scream bloodly murder when you might get in trouble for banging a 16 year old. So, you want the gubnament to execute the criminals YOU think should be executed. But, when you have sex with an under age girl,... the gubnament is all stupid and need to stay out of your personal life.

"Oh, oh, wait, wait - you don't know the whole story!!" - you mean, like we don't know the whole story with the same criminals you are all salivating over seeing executed??

Honestly, go fuck yourselves. And, I hope we get to the point where they execute sex offenders; hey, whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
Click to expand...

The argument is that the punishments for sex offenders are vastly disproportionate in some cases, and they don't do any good for the person being punished or for society as a whole.

I believe in drastically reduced punishments across the board. (almost) Executing sex offenders would just make an already dumb set of laws even worse.
 
For once, I actually agree with the OP. I hate the Roberts court because it's so damn politically correct and as such, has ruled federal sex offender laws constitutional. This should be a state level issue and the free market takes care of it best (homeowners associations), not the Federal government.

Also, once someone has served their time, they shouldn't be punished further no matter how potentially harmful they are to the majority.
 
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