Should society discriminate against criminals?
 

So i was having this discusion w/ my wife about the legitamacay of sex-offender lists and web-sights.
Is it a good idea?
Is it a form of social sanction, and therfore double jepordy?
What about a business refusing to hire a felon?

Thoughts/Opinions?

SO labels are given out too freely. People can be made sex offenders because of acts like public urination. Just last week there were some protestors that staged a nude protest. I think it was in CA, and some govt official said that if they did, the cops would arrest them and charge them as sex offenders. I'm not sure how things turned out.

I'm a diehard liberal, but I do believe that by choosing to commit a crime, a person gives up certain rights- including freedom and even privacy, depending on the crime.

I agree that some of these sex offender charges can be ridiculous- and a lot of statutory rape cases seem iffy to me. However, the sex offender databases can be useful and important tools for preventing further crimes, if people use them correctly.

Cthulhu,
The protesters are indeed from right here in CA. They were arrested, and have been charged as sex-offenders. They intend to fight it all the way, though.
I do agree that there should be more standardized guidlines for what is or isn't a sex offense.

Mordoc,
By making all of this info available and convenient to the public, a felon cannot get any job that is going to pay them enough to stay off of welfare. So, while on the one hand i think that violent sex offenders MIGHT need a higher level of monitoring, i also think that is what we pay the state to do.

Why would you think a social stigma or monitoring following a criminal offence is a double jeopardy? They committed one crime, and suffer the consequences. Note, I did not say consequence, in the singular.
In the “real world” (apart from any laws) there are consequences in the plural to almost any significant action.
?

All crimes that are non-violent, non-alchohol related with damages under $10,000 (or that are marijuana possession) should allow the first offense to have little to no stigma. Crimes outside of those, or second offenses, should carry all stigma currently attached (and probably more).

I'm opposed to registration for two reasons:

1) most sex offenses are committed against people who know each other; that is, in the same family.
Registration doesn't make one's niece or nephew or grandchild or child any more safe from the non-anonymous molester, but it sure makes it tough for the family to move on and try and heal or avoid consequences from the general public.

2) if you lump all of the rapists, pedophiles, and acquantance rapists (stat, date rape, etc) together, that doesn't allow those of us who want to use the database to do so effectively. How do we know who is dangerous or not? You can have not enough information or too much information that it makes it impossible to find pertinent data--both are effectively useless.

This is a simple one.....YES. Lets analyze this one. Lets say, for a minute, You have children and there is a child molestor getting realeased into you neck of the woods. Would you be labeling that man if somebody poste signs around the neighborhood to inform people of the new resident. or a child care facility refused to hire him becuase of past crimes. I wouldn't. WOuld you let a known bank robber work as a teller in a bank. but anyway my simple opinion. i think this also applies to so called "minor" Crimes. In my opinion there is no Minor crime that involves hurting anybody else in any way, whether it be body or mind. If you commit a crime you should be prepared to pay the penalty for your crime. One of those penalties is carrying around the burden of being labeled a "criminal"
I don't believe this is discrimination. You have made a conscious decision to break the law and if you get caught you have to pay the penalty. make ammends the best way the State or the Country feels you can. I guess you can say that they feel you deserve it. Maybe you do. That does not give any offender to claim discrimination ever. In My Opinion

Yes, we should.

There are certainly flaws with sex offender databases, and things like streaking and public urination shouldn't qualify. That's a flaw in the system that should be fixed.

Sex offendors are generally classified into one of three categories based on the severity of their crime. Public nudity, urination, and so forth are level one offenses. Forcible rape is a level three. We have in place tools to help discriminate the more dangerous from the less dangerous. Inadequate, perhaps, and in need of refinement, but they exist.

However, this doesn't mean the whole idea should be scratched. Identifying and monitoring child molestors and rapists as a means of protecting the public against them is something that has excellent potential benefits.

Gilda

I think that restrictions and monitoring of sex offenders is something that should be settled at sentencing. We don't allow ex post facto laws in this country, this seems very close. Let a judge & jury decide that you've earned a sentence that includes lifetime monitoring & registration.

In california, we register sex offenders and drug dealers.
What I really want to know are where the damn murderers, robbers, and burglers are located.

The framers original intent in protecting against double jeopardy dealt with this very issue exclusively. (Not the internet, though. stay with me here!)
In France it was common practice for a criminal to have to register himself with the local cops as soon as he got into town. The french were of the opinion that crimes are ALWAYS commited by career criminals, and once a crook, always a crook, so everytime ANYTHING got stolen, (or w/e) they would gather up all the usual suspects, and ransack their homes and harass them alll until a lead developed.
The double jeopardy clause protects a criminal once he gets out and his punishment has been completed. This way he has the chance to turn over a new leaf and REJOIN society. (Under the old french method, recidivism was 100%. Read the first third of the novel Les Miserable for why this should be.)
So my question centers on how do we protect ourselves from a criminal that has the HIGHEST recidivism rate, and still give them a chance to be something other than a criminal?

Indeed. It is at that time that the "wheat" can more easily be seperated from the "Chaff" (ie, child molestors and rapists VS public urinators and streakers) At present, it is clear, that too broad a defenition of "sex offendor" is being employed. Frankly, I could not care less, if my neighbor, two doors down, was involved in a nude protest, four years ago. I most certainly care if that same neighbor is a convicted molestor, or rapist. I feel that I have a right to know that. So, in that respect, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter lives. So be it.

Then, it's what we do with that information, when we have it, that becomes issue. I have no desire to live in a society of vigilantes. The State of Iowa has recently begun enforcing law that prohibits any convicted sex offendor from living within 2000 feet of any school, or day care facility. Sounds pretty good, on the surface, doesn't it? The problem is, when you start drawing up the boundaries, and the radius' start to intersect, and overlap, you're left with very small pockets, or ghettos, in which these people can live. To me, this creates numerous problems. Suppose, you happen to live within the boundaries of a sex offendor "safe" area. What does that do to your property values? One "offendor" was recently arrested because there simply was no housing available anymore, within a "safe" zone. He couldn't move, and was, by default, in violation of Iowa state law. Some smaller communities are completely off limits, sometimes by strategic placement of child care facilities. Several communities along the eastern edge of Nebraska are scrambling to enact laws similar to, and in many cases, more draconian than, those in Iowa, The reasoning is because these communities fear a mass exodus of Iowan sex offendor "refugees" into Nebraska. And, it appears, their fears were not unfounded. Sex offendors are crossing the river, for friendlier areas.