People also have a right to lose everything and start a new life. this is something that people could do just a few decades ago
As someone that once faced serious jail time for plants, I think that would have been a nice option, but I wasted two years of my life in court/etc.
If someone is still a danger to the public then maybe don't release them from prison.
I don't know why we don't do this for all crimes, though. Why no murderer registration list or bad-check-writer registration list? I guess those we outsource to the private sector.
It's probably because sex crimes are extremely hard to prove. If there is a murder, somebody is dead and somebody killed them. It's not that ambiguous. Consent can be extremely ambiguous. It drives people mad because you want every rapist to be six feet underground and every falsely accused innocent person to be free but there are all too may cases, plausibly the majority of cases, where there is no way for the system to conclusively distinguish them.
And then we hesitate to kill rapists because we're uncomfortable about that when it's so easy to get it wrong, but if we don't, people feel the guilty ones are being insufficiently punished. This is kind of a recipe for ending up with bad laws.
Do they? A quick mental scan of well know paedophiles suggests that famous ones face limited repercussions.
The sentence isn't the longest of any crime for the same reason it isn't death (or, for the jurisdictions without the death penalty, the same as their penalty for murder).
The difficulty of proving rape is why rape conviction rates are low. Imprisonment for rape is shorter than imprisonment for murder because most people consider murder worse than rape.
> The difficulty of proving rape is why rape conviction rates are low.
Even despite the low conviction rate, rape convictions are reversed at a higher rate than other crimes, because it's so difficult in those cases to know the truth.
> Imprisonment for rape is shorter than imprisonment for murder because most people consider murder worse than rape.
Many countries historically imposed the death penalty for rape and a few still do. Typically the ones less concerned about proof beyond a reasonable doubt in general.
People viscerally hate rapists and, even more, pedophiles. Murder is nominally worse but not by much. The penalty for rape and second degree murder are typically about the same. In multiple US states the penalty for rape is higher.
I mean if you killed someone specific for specific reasons the likelihood of you murdered a random person for no reason is somewhat low. Not so if you’re a child molester. How do you even ensure that they can never get jobs related to children let alone be near them without a registry..
62.5% of sentenced prisoners committed violent crimes, which includes 15% for murder and 15.5% rape and sexual assault. All drug offenses put together make up only 12.6%.
Also, you haven't considered length of terms.
If 62.5% are serving for violent crimes, they are most likely serving longer sentences than those convicted only of drug offenses. This means over the time of one violent criminal's stay in prison, you have maybe 1.5 or 2 or even 3 or more drug offenders being taken in and released. This doesn't affect the amount of people in prison at one time, but it affects the amount of people who end up going to prison.
Also by the same token, you’ve essentially made my case that “mass incarceration” is more a consequence of harsher sentences for serious violent crimes than it is a consequence of drug prohibition. If you favor even harsher sentences for serious violent crimes (I do too) then you need to accept that this will require significantly more prison capacity. Either that or we need to start talking about expanding the death penalty, and expediting the appeals process in capital cases so it can be applied at scale.
I don’t know about you but I don’t have this problem.
> Pointing out that your feelings about how rapists should be sentenced should not depend on whether or not drug prohibition is just because of 'room in the prisons' is perfectly valid.
It’s completely beside the point here. I’m making the argument that if we want to incarcerate rapists for life, we will need the prison capacity to do so. Which means, keeping everything else equal, building more prison capacity and increasing the degree of “mass incarceration” in the country. Something that is a very controversial suggestion to say the least.
AnthonyMouse responded with the claim, “Let out the non-violent drug offenders and there will be plenty of cells for the rapists and pedophiles.” I could have backtracked and tried to make the argument that one has nothing to do with the other. But there was no need because I could, and did, simply refute AnthonyMouse’s claim directly.
> Statistics that mean nothing without broader context and analysis are pointless and misleading.
You’re clearly implying this is a mistake that I’ve made. I don’t think that it is. While you’ve pointed out a specific complication that I didn’t explicitly mention (the relationship between length of prison term and share of prison population), this complication doesn’t undermine my point but rather strengthens it. You made a further suggestion that maybe we should consider the violent crime that’s caused by drug prohibition. That would be a fine counterargument for you to make! Bring your own data and analysis and maybe we can both learn something.
The problem is that it’s a lot easier for you to sit there and criticize me for not bringing enough “context and analysis” when you’re not bringing any of your own. If you have a point to make, make it. Don’t complain that my arguments are “simplistic” when you’re just going to make lazy sniping comments and expect me to do the work of making your counterarguments for you.
Sex offender recidivism is a complicated topic that is very difficult to study, and 'sex offenses' are not something that are standardized between societies or systems, and acting like your solution is a decent one means that you think that a simple solution can solve a complex problem.
Thus any conversation you are going to have on the topic is going to be fruitless unless you are trying to push an agenda with no regard for a real path forward.
> I don’t know about you but I don’t have this problem.
One can be intelligent and intuitive but without the proper background and without the awareness to know when out of depth then a lot of damage can be done.
You’re wrong, so let me correct you. As per my previous comments, I’d be perfectly happy executing the lot of them. I don’t think that’s politically feasible, so as a compromise, I would be satisfied building as many prisons as are necessary to incarcerate them for life. But even that is politically infeasible, largely due to widespread misconceptions about the bogeyman of “mass incarceration”—including the misperception that mass incarceration is primarily a consequence of drug prohibition. So now that we’re backed into the corner where rapists and child molesters are eventually released from prison anyway, I much prefer them to be registered as sex offenders than for them not to be registered as sex offenders.
Since Anthony has some sort of problem with sex offender registration and was the one to suggest life imprisonment in the first case, I pointed out that the natural consequence of such a policy would be the expansion of “mass incarceration”. I wanted to see if Anthony was serious enough about life imprisonment to accept the necessary tradeoffs of such a policy. He replied by claiming that mass incarceration is the consequence of drug prohibition and that the required prison capacity could be freed up by releasing nonviolent drug offenders. This claim is false and I refuted it.
> I shouldn't have bothered pointing out your statistics are pointless
No, you shouldn’t have, because they aren’t. The point was to refute Anthony’s claims that mass incarceration is the consequence of drug prohibition and that the required prison capacity could be freed up by releasing nonviolent drug offenders. If you would like to refute my refutation, please feel welcome to introduce whatever data and analysis you have toward that end. I only ask that you put forth the effort yourself instead of gesturing vaguely in the direction of a refutation and then scolding me for not doing the work of presenting your side of the argument.
> Sex offender recidivism is a complicated topic that is very difficult to study, and 'sex offenses' are not something that are standardized between societies or systems, and acting like your solution is a decent one means that you think that a simple solution can solve a complex problem.
The rate of recidivism among dead men is zero, and while lifelong prisoners do engage in recidivism against other prisoners, at least they aren’t committing crimes against the rest of society. So there actually are relatively simple solutions available to us. If we are all in agreement that we are willing to bite the bullet and increase the scale of either the death penalty of mass incarceration, I would be satisfied.
When people object to sex offender registration by asking “why are we releasing them from prison in the first place?”, I am not actually convinced that they are serious about lifelong incarceration. I worry that they are using this point as a rhetorical cudgel and have no intention of actually accepting a policy of lifetime incarceration for sex offenders, especially when such a policy would likely conflict with what I reasonably presume to be their attitudes about “mass incarceration”. Now, maybe my presumption was wrong and Anthony is actually totally fine with mass incarceration, but if that were the case he would have said so. Instead, he introduced the canard that mass incarceration was the consequence of drug prohibition. He provided zero data to back up this claim and the data I provided refutes it. Anthony had no response and your responses have been little more than pointless bromides about how these issues are “complicated” with next to no data or analysis on your part about what these complications might be or why they would change our conclusions.
> Thus any conversation you are going to have on the topic is going to be fruitless unless you are trying to push an agenda with no regard for a real path forward.
Between the two of us, you’re the one who is struggling to contribute anything that could make this conversation fruitful. I hope I’ve clarified my position well enough for you to add something of substance. For one, I’m not actually clear on what specific position you’re taking here, other than “against Phil”. Perhaps this is another presumption on my part, but I assume that when people argue with me, it’s because there’s some point they disagree with me on. So what is it?
That being said, it is completely stupid that people are actually made to register as sex offenders when they really were just peeing. Doubly so when they did so without anyone other than themselves seeing their private parts.
They should visit India once. Of course many people will pee against an object (wall, tree) but at times not so hidden
Incidentally saw this funny discussion yesterday (the comments are funny): https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedstatesofindia/comments/18ufbu...
I think these United States have gone way above and beyond their duty as far as calling people sex offenders (not saying that Indians are right)
This is his story that I've not independently verified, but I don't think he was an actual sex offender from what I knew of him. He was certainly a drunk though.
Either we are giving people second chance without stigma or we are tracking everyone forever. I'm fine with both.
You'll find thousands of articles about it. You won't find a single case.
Yes it does. Puppy killers like to claim that it doesn't. /s
Here are a few examples with names: https://www.menshealth.com/trending-news/a19541024/you-might...
There is a ton of posts from lawyers confirming the fact that in many states you can get convicted for public urination and put on the sex offender list. For example, here is a post from a Texas-based lawyer: https://www.craiggreeninglaw.com/can-you-really-become-a-sex...
The reason it's so hard to estimate the real number of these cases is that the crime is listed as indecent exposure or lewdness.
Yes, the article contains actual names. Thing is, none of those people are registered sex offenders:
1. Juan Matamoros is not a registered sex offender.
2. Julie Amero was a crazy case involving false testimony by a police officer. Her conviction was vacated on appeal, and she is not a registered sex offender. (That all happened long before the article was written.)
3. Wendy Whitaker is no longer a registered sex offender.
4. Janet Allison is no longer a registered sex offender.
5. Eric Williamson was acquitted. He was never a registered sex offender.
Men’s Health is not a reliable source for investigative reporting.