Sex offender registries are failing


It was bound to happen
When government tells you that it can solve your problems, remember what's happened with the sex crimes registries. Emphasis added.

A December study of roughly 20,000 registered sex offenders on parole in California found 9% posed a "high risk" of reoffending, and 29% posed a "moderate-high" to "high" risk, said Ms. Neeley. But law-enforcement officials and academics say vast resources are spent monitoring nonviolent offenders rather than keeping closer tabs on more-dangerous ones.

<snip>

The growing sex-offender list can dilute the amount of attention on the most dangerous offenders, said Nora Demleitner, the dean of Hofstra University Law School who studies sentencing. Some sex offenders "tend to be not dangerous at all," she said. "You have them register as sex offenders, so when you're law enforcement, all these people look the same. If you had much more focused sex-offender laws, maybe they would have been bothered to go into the shack" in Mr. Garrido's back yard.

That's one of the key problems, and one I have pointed out before. Hang on, I'm going to put it in red.

Not all "sex offenders" are the same!

You've got rapists on the lists with people who snapped pictures of their kids getting on the bus. The law doesn't distinguish, and it is impossible to make it do so.

Government has no business judging morality. Period. Every time it does, innocent lives get destroyed.

Remember what law really is. Back in Roots of Government Power I told you the difference between mala in se laws and mala prohibita laws. Here's what you should remember. Mala in se laws are meant to prevent measurable damage, while mala prohibita laws are meant to prevent something because the government has prohibited it.

Small "L" libertarians like me will tell you that mala prohibita laws invite abuse because those laws let government impose morality and ethics by force.

Government has lousy ethics and worse morals. Hmmm, I think I told you that before.

If you put a nude sunbather or a proud grandmother with pictures on the same level with a child molester, then what does that say about the rule of law?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - September 16, 2009 at 02:26 PM  Tag


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