New York to bar sex offenders on parole from playing Pokemon Go | Hacker News Reader

New York to bar sex offenders on parole from playing Pokemon Go

reuters.com

58 pointsjastr91 comments

You need to think about differing motivations.

Right now politicians are thinking, "Hey there's this new thing that's popular. How do we cash in on that?"

Pedophiles and child molesters are easy targets. In the sense that all you need to do is say those scary words and you get more votes.

They're pandering to the population.

We already have loads of regulations on where people who have paid their debts to society can be. I think you're right about this. Straight-up pandering.

People on parole are still paying their debts to society.

Increasing someone's burden after sentencing is incredibly sketchy behavior and detrimental to the rule of law. Parole is not a punishment it's monitoring for legal behavior.

These people could be locked up in a cage instead. Putting them on parole at all is decreasing their burden compared to their original sentence, and adding a restriction to that is still way better than what they were sentenced to.

This is retroactive to people already on parole.

Some of these people where caught urinating in public or other non issues. There are also very sick people, but remember your applying this to a huge range of innocent people not just the kind of demons you see on TV.

PS: I have seen estimates as low as 50:50 for actually committing every crime they where convicted of.

The issue where people can be convicted for these crimes for public urination and similar is extremely important, but also completely separate. People like that shouldn't be on parole in the first place. Considering that they're probably being jailed, complaining about a Pokemon Go restriction because some of the targeted people may have committed a minor crime doesn't make any sense to me.

It's like saying that we shouldn't restrict prisoners' phone calls, because that's unfair to the wrongly convicted. It's technically true, but being wrongly convicted in the first place is far more important.

Parole is actually a safety valve in such cases, you might serve a few days in prison and then have X months / years of monitoring. Prison is a rather separate situation, but they still let most prisoners read for example.

> People like that shouldn't be on parole in the first place.

But they are, so we have to consider them when writing new laws that will impact them.

I agree that them being jailed/on parole at all is the greater injustice here, but that doesn't mean we can just wave this off.

Just to add, the innocent people in prison is an important factor. For example it's a bad idea to simply execute people on death row right now. We have already released 20 people on death row we realized where innocent, how many more are wrongfully convicted?

That's because execution is irreversible. Are there any examples of taking innocence into account when it comes to reversible punishments?

> execution is irreversible

So is prison. Lock someone up for 20 years and they never get that time back.

Parole is actually used as reversible punishment in the other direction. Stay clean and your free to go, do even minor things and your instantly in prison. First offence leniency has a similar rational.

I tend to agree with you, but that's not how the system works. Whether or not prison is actually reversible, it's treated as though it were, by releasing and possibly compensating innocents.

> That's because execution is irreversible.

Not only irreversible, but not even partially compensable. Prison is arguably irreversible (you can't rewind and make it so people didn't spend time in prison), but you can at least let people out without finishing the complete sentence when you discover a problem with it, and you can give them some form of compensation.

You can't stop someone from being dead after executing them, or compensate them (even imperfectly) for it.

I have a dear friend who is a 'sex offender' because she and a boy her age were arrested for having sex in a stall in their college dorm bathroom, which was legally a 'public place.' Is there any point that she deserved to be locked up in a cage for that?

Situations like that were the first thing that I thought about when reading this news. The New Yorker had an excellent piece on juvenile sex offenders and the horror that that status inflicts on their lives.[1]

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-a...

Not to mention that it's counter-productive, assuming that the correctional system's goal is to successfully integrate offenders into society, which some people dispute.

The thing that makes this sad, not funny, is the rate that children are still being sexualy abused today. Instead of doing things to actually help children they are busy passing completely pointless laws to make it look like they are doing something.

Many of them are already banned from using smartphones or computers.

It is really really sad. When we don't stand up for the legitimate rights of the people we despise eventually politicians are going to come for your and mine rights too. This sex offender registry appears more and more like "outcast" registry. The people who can be vilified or treated like shit without feeling of any guilt.

It is mind-boggling what all sort of things can get you on that list. People getting drunk and peeing on a side walk, 17 year old having sex with 16 year old, person who had a family shoot while his grand kids played in the pool naked etc. etc.

My worry is that as soon as the drug war ends, out politicians are going to up the ante on sex war.

> The game may also pose special risks to children as it encourages players to explore physical locations to win points.

Oh the horror of children exploring the physical world. They're not safe unless kept inside!

And we wonder why they keep gaining weight...

Not only that but getting sick from preventable diseases like diabetes. Of course it doesn't help that the media makes kidnappings (or even zika) seem way more dangerous than our obesity epidemic.

Careful!

You joke, but parents that do let their kids walk down to the park[0] or play outside[1] get a social services investigation.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-family-again...

[1] http://www.freerangekids.com/kids-play-in-backyard-while-mom...

Wow, even in the early 00's I walked to and from school myself. Summers were about exploration. I was just taught strong "stranger danger" skills because it was preferable to my playing video games. I guess the Nintendo lobby got to the CPS.

> A Winnipeg mom was doing the dishes while her three kids, 10, 5 and 2 , played in their fenced-in backyard. A neighbor called to report “unattended” kids frolicking and Jacqui Kendrick was visited by a child protective services rep. The rep asked questions about what Jacqui’s own childhood was like, how she punished her kids, and where they slept. She even looked in Jacqui’s fridge.

Oh crap, I thought Canada was better.

I wonder if reporting something like that is more of a spite thing than actual concern. Could the neighbor be annoyed with the children's volume? Did she do some unrelated thing that bothered them and this is revenge?

Who in their right mind thinks that kids playing in a fenced backyard are in danger?

Haven't you followed the discussions on Facebook about the kid that jumped into Gorilla enclosure ? Did you read the horrible things that people said to the mother for not holding the kid's hand all the time ?

I know from first hand experiences that in certain cities people and cops think of this as a concern.

I wonder whether she actually used the word "frolicking" when reporting. I mean, imagine calling the police b/c someone is frolicking.

"Yes officer, I'd like to report a suspicious frolic! It's like they're in some sort of jamboree."

Maybe it's just someone who's aware that homicide is a leading cause of death of children, and that neglect at an abusive level is very common in childhood?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-34491753

> A mother has been jailed for five years after her toddler son drowned in a pond while she chatted on Facebook.

> Claire Barnett pleaded guilty at Hull Crown Court to four charges of neglect.

> The court heard the 31-year-old was on Facebook instead of supervising Joshua, two, while he was in the back garden.

> Prosecutors said Barnett was told to cover the pond by relatives and had been warned by social services after two of her children were nearly run over while playing unsupervised.

Or maybe this one?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/17/binge-mother-drug...

> Stark photographs have emerged of the home in which a 22-year-old woman abandoned her four children for 24 hours while she went on a drink and drugs binge. The pictures show their pitiable attempts to find some food in the family kitchen.

There are countless others.

If social services are only having a chat it doesn't seem too onerous. Obviously how they have that chat makes a difference, and it's a bad thing if they leap in with over restrictive "protective measures" in families that don't need it.

Generally when a story is reported like that there is almost always 'more to it', e.g. the press have probably twisted it and it wasn't actually a case where 3 kids were playing in a fenced-in backyard, totally safely and there were no prior incidents.

The police and social services aren't usually keen to waste their time investigating clearly well-tended-to kids. They get so many bullshit callouts, they really don't want to take on more than they need to.

Be cynical of the press for political-correctness-gone-mad/nanny-state stories as it's generally nonsense, especially when it relates to 'family matters' (we have a whole newspaper in the UK that specialises in this - Daily Mail).

From a sibling:

>> Who in their right mind thinks that kids playing in a fenced backyard are in danger?

No one. Which is why it probably did not happen like that, and has been misreported.

By what I remember, that actually happened but it was quickly determined that there was nothing to the report and it was dropped. There was a disgruntled neighbour involved.

Added: Here is the story from just after the incident:

* http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-mom-cfs-back...

> The police and social services aren't usually keen to waste their time investigating clearly well-tended-to kids. They get so many bullshit callouts, they really don't want to take on more than they need to.

But they have to investigate all of them, except for the clearly unhinged ones.

> Oh the horror of children exploring the physical world. They're not safe unless kept inside!

That's actually a major factor of our current social and political context of the last several decades, driven by a media-fueled public misperception of a rising tide of stranger-perpetrated crimes against children (even though the actual rates of such crimes have been decreasing, not increasing, for decades -- even during much of the period where the general crime rate actually increasing.)

Could be hard to implement this, checking the density of offenders in the area.

http://www.familywatchdog.us/showmap.asp

Search Criteria: New York, United States

If I could link it directly I would.

I am all for keeping kids safe; but this seems to have unintended knockoff effects, such as forcing children who want to play Pokemon Go to venture multiple blocks from their homes in order to play.

> Could be hard to implement this

That hasn't stopped anyone from implementing laws before. These kinds of laws are favorites for those in power. Now they have another tool for keeping them in power. Someone challenges a politician and they get upset? That's okay, just spy on them more. You'll be sure to find some kind of law they are breaking.

Just check out Florida, which basically has a city for convicted sex offenders, because it's the only place they can legally live.

http://time.com/3705637/life-inside-a-community-of-sex-offen...

http://www.gq.com/story/sex-offender-community

So if I buy (or farm) a lure module and place it on a Pokestop, this is the same thing as if I spray painted "Free Puppies" on the side of a panel van and drove it in front of a school? Because I think that's the bottom line from the DA's office.

Apparently many hospitals have also requested Pokestops in them to be removed, making the game unplayable for sick kids in their beds.

https://redd.it/4vykt7

Don't you anyway have to walk to play it? And walk rather long distances.

So if you are in the same place as a Pokestop you can drop an item called a "lure module" that attracts Pokemon to it for 30 mins—if you're a sick kid in a hospital with a lure in it, you get Pokemon to catch every few minutes. Better than nothing and there's some heartwarming stories about it.

Some sick children are better off if they're walking about during the day. Anecdotal, to be sure, but from what I've heard, Pokémon Go has been largely positive for sick children. Hospital administrations seem concerned with people effectively trespassing in non-public parts of hospitals.

In my home town people have put out lures on pokestops around the local hospital for the hospitalised kids.

While I think sick kids should be allowed entertainment (I know how much it helped me, books, games, etc), the nature of Pokemon Go is sort of like bemoaning that a kid's wing doesn't have a basketball court either. Basically while I'm kidding I don't think it's a good thing to get their hopes up about playing when they're undergoing treatment. If it gets worked so they can, all the better (like a small outing for those able?), just kind of spit balling.

My girlfriend has been mostly stuck in bed as she waits for a broken leg to heal. Hasn't stopped her from playing the hell out of Pokemon Go. Granted some of it is me driving her around town, but she still plays it a lot in bed with incense items to draw Pokemon in.

Also when we went on vacation two weeks ago she had a great time at night since there was two pokestops within range from our bed. We just added lures and it was quite fun. A gym was just a little ways down the hall, too, so I walked her phone down the hall to get her into the gym (my Pokemon were too low-powered still).

This article about people wanting and doing their best to play the game while having physical disabilities seems pertinent: http://kotaku.com/pokemon-go-is-depressing-for-fans-with-phy...

I say let hospitalized kids have as much fun with it as they can. If it's not good enough from their bed, then let them decide to play something else, but don't decide for them.

Fair points and all, but my experiences are a lot different than a broken leg - usually involving IVs, lots of pain, and needing to get rest to recover from / for PT. In honesty I don't know how the game mechanics work because I'm completely disinterested in joining in, preferring to spend my time in creative endeavors and/or getting into/out of trouble. Different strokes 'n all, hope your girlfriend's recovery goes well and good on you for chipping in on the entertainment & emotional support front for real!

How is allowing free entertainment to exist in the building "getting their hopes up"?

They've been doing the same thing around here with churches that happen to have daycares running out of them. Too many complaints of strange people showing up in the parking lot or wandering over from nearby parks...

This is why it is bad to rely on a private corporation to define where you can play a game.

Checkers does not rely on OTA DLC to activate my house as location where I can make a capture.

Every once and awhile you see something to remind you that this country was founded by puritans, not all that long ago.

And Quakers, and Cavaliers, and Borderers, and a bunch of other diverse groups that had little to nothing to do with the Puritans and their ideology. Not to mention all the groups that came before and after.

What? This has to be redundant as most existing laws prevent a convicted individual of being within certain distances of children, school zones, etc.

Or from even being on the Internet. While I'm no rape apologist, even someone who committed a sex crime against an adult in this case would be banned. Sure punish people up to the max book provides. But once you've done your time, you should be able to reenter society (perhaps excluding the place(s) you committed your specific crimes).

Someone on parole would be receiving a punishment less than the max the book provides.

Managed release is a lot less problematic than lifetime registries.

I find the logic of this perspective difficult to understand.

You've got a group of people, and an activity that you think it is potentially dangerous for these people to participate in. So you want to make sure they don't participate while you're supervising them, but that they're free to once you've stopped?

If you're going to allow them to participate once they're off parole, there is no case for prohibiting it while they're on parole. If they're going to be a problem, it's better to catch them at it.

That's a big part of what incarceration does, it removes freedom for a period of time. It's kind of a waste if that's all a society manages to accomplish with it, but there you go.

I can sort of believe that someone who is required to maintain a steady job for 2 years is more likely to continue participating in society than someone who has just been released from an institution.

I was also replying rather narrowly to the other post; parole is pretty clearly a lesser punishment than incarceration, not an addition to it like a registry. I wasn't endorsing this idea.

> While I'm no rape apologist, even someone who committed a sex crime against an adult in this case would be banned.

Or someone who hasn't actually done anything wrong at all. You can get on the permanent sex offender registry for peeing outside, or for taking naked pictures of yourself while underage.

Notice the "on parole" part. I doubt it would pass legal must ordinarily, but for parole the state can ask for anything it wants.

So this is pretty much pointless "let's look like we are doing something".

> The game may also pose special risks to children as it encourages players to explore

This is really dumb. The thing they should be trying to eliminate with this would be Pokestops at a sex offender's home, but that's on Niantic's end not the person on the list and requires an up to date registry. Additionally, though I have not looked at the demographics, I imagine a large part of this games base is users >18. The name 'lure' sounds like it could be scary to a politician that doesn't know how this game works yet is legislating it anyway, but in fact is not a random map placement, so I'm not even sure what this is accomplishing.

In the end it might end up where sex offenders will need to move because there's a pokestop nearby.

If you think about this from a rhetorical perspective, it's incredibly effective.

My previous comment on this post remarked on the political motivations for this, I'm expounding a bit.

Basically you're saying "Let's restrict rights for sex offender (an incredibly loose term but with huge emotional connotations" and no matter what your political opponent says, you can tar him with being "soft on sex offenders".

If I were a politician, this would be a no-brainer masterstroke. I would do it in a minute to ensure my re-elections.

I just find it incredibly sleazy.

Can we get a list of swimming pools and lakes and ensure there are no pokestops near them as well?

I'm pretty sure far more children drown in bodies of water than are harmed by sex offenders on parole.

There could be some truth to this. In 2003, the sexual recidivism rate for sex offenders was only 5.3% over the 3 years following their release.[1]

[1] http://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec1/ch5_recidivism.html

I read a lot of comments and think, knee-jerk reaction. Some comments I see seem to me to be born from ignorance. I really was torn whether I wanted to speak out regarding this topic, but I decided that maybe the good would outweigh the bad.

I have been on federal probation and my experience with it is at that level and not with the state of New York. So, I can only give you my perspective and opinions regarding the topic.

During my time on supervision, I was initially not allowed to have a smart phone, nor was I allowed to use the Internet. Over time, as I earned the trust of my PO, these things were allowed, however with the caveat that my use of them would be monitored with software running that logged everything. This was because my crime involved a "misuse" of the Internet. It also was because I had been locked away from the internet for over 8 years, and that my re-introduction to it needed to be gradual. The intention was for me to learn to manage myself for when I would not have someone telling me what I should and shouldn't do.

I have been off probation for 2-1/2 years now. I just recently tried Pokemon Go, mainly because I was interested in the business advertising aspect of it, and didn't find it very engaging for me. I did learn about Ingress, though, and that game was like crack for me and I finally had to uninstall it.

So, here's my take regarding the game and sex offenders:

Sex offenders tend to not see things or think about things the way normal people do. They have a 'tilt' or a dis-conjunction to their thinking processes, that tend to make them susceptible to fantasy thinking. They see make-believe as reality, and that is partly why they think themselves into committing their crime(s).

Pokemon Go (and Ingress) represent a form of make-believe that can allow a sex offender to disconnect from the importance that they have to be very careful once back in society. Running up to a location while staring at your phone can put a sex offender into a bad "relapse danger" situation, such as wandering into a group of children. While the offender may not have any intention of reoffending, it could be similar to a recovering coke addict walking into a party where there are lines cut up on the coffee table.

For myself, I think that New York is wise to do this.

I'm interested but not particularly surprised to see everyone here against this move.

These people are out on parole. That means that they could be in prison instead, but the authorities have decided to be nice and let them out early under supervision. They can be sent back to prison for simple things like associating with the wrong people, or failing to tell the government about their movements.

This restriction doesn't seem terribly useful to me, but nor does it seem particularly onerous.

I don't think it will have any impact either way. Any danger of sex offenders using Pokemon Go to lure children is vastly overstated, but I also agree that people out on parole can be subject to restrictions.

It's mostly a waste of taxpayer time to be considering this.

Most of the negativity is really about the attitude that Pokemon Go is somehow dangerous.

I also find it a little troubling that Niantic is being compelled to review user data in a search for "criminals."

Why is "criminals" in quotes there? These are people who have been convicted of crimes and are still serving their sentences.

It's in quotes because I suspect the threat of sex offenders actually playing Pokemon Go is minimal. There's no reason that the government should be able to force Niantic to search for arbitrary lists of users without a court order.

How onerous it may be is irrelevant. The government shouldn't do things that aren't useful. This is exactly as stupid as a law requiring paroled sex offenders to stand on their heads and whistle Yankee Doodle each morning.

Governments so often do things that are destructive that I welcome it when they merely do something that wastes their time.

They also want to restrict Niantic from creating pokestops near sex offenders' homes which is ridiculous.

> nor does it seem particularly onerous

I disagree for reasons other than putting a burden on parolees. To me, this is effort wasted on our legal system in drafting, passing, arguing against, and ultimately maintaining when its no longer relevant. Additionally it places a burden on Niantic, and any company that builds similar products, to cross reference their customer list with the list of NY sex offenders (and potentially other similar lists of states that follow suit). In my opinion, any potential payoff from this is so small that it's almost certainly something we could do without.

It's also impossible to cross-reference since all you need to play is a Google account

Sex offenders in New York are required to give the government information about all of their accounts online, so it would be easy to reference against that list. I'm sure it's easy to refrain from doing so and not get caught, but it's something.

Didn't realize that was part of it. But yea, creating a dummy gmail address and only use it for Pokemon Go seems extremely easy to do and not get caught.

3000 sex offenders are on parole? I wonder how many of them are potential threats and how many are the "took a piss on a playground at midnight while drunk with no children in sight" variety.

> potential threats

Well, since "sex crime" (to the extent that this is even a cognizable category at all) has such a low recidivism rate, it's reasonable to say that they're aren't much of a threat to begin with.

More than 90% of the perpetrators of crimes against children, including sex crimes, are personally known to those children.

>These people are out on parole. That means that they could be in prison instead

Will you be fine if people are allowed to beat up an inmate scheduled for death penalty ? How does it really matter if we break a few bones right before he is dead ?

I think the logic is the whole "sex offender" registry is bullshit. Check what sort of things can get you on that list. So people on parole are not necessarily hardened horrible criminals we should despise.

Even if they are bad people why should not be they allowed to play a game ? How on earth do we even enforce such restriction? Creating restrictions that can not be enforced reduces overall respect for law. Tomorrow the politician will say Itunes should not sell pop songs of teenage singers to such people are we supposed to comply ?

I see this as sex war pretty much like drug war.

I don't see how beating up death row inmates is analogous. I don't support the death penalty at all, but even ignoring that I don't support physical violence against prisoners, no matter how guilty.

I do, however, support punishing criminals. And since letting criminals out on parole is a nice thing we do for them, not a requirement, I think we should consider the fact that these people could easily still be in prison instead. If they hadn't been paroled then they wouldn't be able to play Pokemon Go either, and they'd have a bunch of other restrictions on their lives besides.

Clickhole just did a piece about Pokemon Go and sex offenders.

http://www.clickhole.com/article/gaming-safety-ftw-pokemon-p...

Teach them to jailbreak/root their phone so they can spoof their GPS data and play without leaving home.

Wouldn't this require players to identify themselves to prove they aren't paroled sex offenders?

Let's say this law does get passed? How do sex offenders learn about it? When they get arrested?

This law is redundant, so they should already know about the restrictions.

That will teach them :-)

Wow, lucky them. What crime do I have to commit to be barred from _hearing about_ Pokemon Go?

Probably the same crime. You'll be barred from Internet use (and all shall rejoice).

Good effort, but I'm not sure your post makes sense. If I committed the same crime, wouldn't I get the same punishment? In this case, that's being banned from playing Pokemon Go, not from the Internet as a whole.

(Stupidly, IMO), many sex offenders in NY are indeed completely banned from using the Internet.

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