iPhone’s Latest Hit App: A Sex Offender Locator | Hacker News Reader

iPhone’s Latest Hit App: A Sex Offender Locator

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IMO the sex offenders list is crap as it lumps a large range of offenses together.

Caught urinating in public? Had consensual sex at age 17 with your high school sweetheart^? If you got caught doing either one you end up on the same list as the child molesters and rapists. Lucky you.

And the sad thing is I don't see this changing anytime soon as any politician who tries to tackle this will be clobbered by his opponents for being lenient on those evil sex offenders.

^Given sexual trends among teens I'm guessing a ridiculous portion (I'd venture over 80%) of the people in America should be on the sex offenders list.

I think the only real chance of that happening is for the courts to strike these things down as cruel and unusual punishment, which I firmly believe they are.

While I agree mostly with your view, I just spent quite a bit of time looking over the local sex offender lists of several cities I've lived in, and I can say for sure that at least in these random samples, the outliers you mention (public urination, high school sweethearts separated by too many years, etc) are nowhere to be found on any of the lists I have looked through.

I think it's strangely primitive and archaic for this sort of public humiliation to exist in our modern society either way, but a few moments of clicking around these samples at random goes to show that a vast, vast majority of these people have been convicted of what most would consider "serious" sex crimes.

It's why this isn't a story he can laugh about later:

http://www.recordcourier.com/article/20090703/NEWS/907029986...

Dude's life is ruined because there happened to be kids there.

Yes, those poor children, scarred for life because they saw some genitals.

Americans at the dutch beaches invariably are absolutely shocked when I take them there on a visit. There is more casual nudity there (and these are the 'regular' beaches) than on the average porn site.

Being a 'sex offender' for something like this completely degrades the term, it is supposed to be reserved for sexual predators that make a career out of stalking the defenseless, not for an act of stupidity or sillyness.

At least with a custom app you can filter the database and only show cases that seem relevant to you.

While I don't care atm, to be very honest, if I had little children running around outside, I would probably take a look at that database.

I am sorry for the humiliation these people go through. I consider their predicament a disease and I truly feel sorry for them. However, as long as we can not cure that illness (and we can't afaik), the safety of my children and relatives comes first. I believe the point of laws and crime deterrents should not be to "even out the guilt", it should be to prevent crimes from happening (Edit: that's of course a broad generalization, a balance has to be found between preventing crimes and overly restrictive laws. Hopefully the experts on psychology etc. can find the appropriate judgement).

(Note: obviously I don't talk about urinating in public and kissing your sweetheart when you were 17).

We all understand that a sex offender is low on our list of people we care most about, But taking such a medieval, and profiteering approach like this app, Doesn't make us much better than the offenders.

The authorities are already aware of where these people are, The target audience here being only those who feel threatened, or scared, to know these people might live nearby, But that chance has always been there.

I feel this app can only serve to boost paranoia within the public mind.

I think the target audience is people who read the daily mail / watch fox news etc.

The same people who are staying inside, petrified of catching swine flu and dying from it.

Are you saying that if you had a young son/daughter, and their walk-to-school route when straight past a sex offenders house you wouldn't consider taking another route? Theres something like an 8% rearrest rate for treated and ~15% rearrest rate for untreated offenders. That's a risk I wouldn't knowingly take.

The biggest threat for your children is their family and their friends. Only in about 10% of cases sexual abuse is commited by strangers. Instead of having them walk another route, why not forbid your relatives from seeing them?

That's like saying you shouldn't buy a lottery ticket because its unlikely you are going to win. Littlewood's law says we are likely to experience events that are one in a million relatively frequently.

So are you really saying that you wouldn't change their route to school, given that there is somewhere at least 0.8-1.5% chance of this sex offender reoffending with a non-family member? (Assuming a reoffence rate of 8-15%, with 10% of those people offending with non-family members)

>> "That's like saying you shouldn't buy a lottery ticket because its unlikely you are going to win."

Yes, which is why lottery tickets are largely just an unfair tax on the poor and uneducated.

I don't play the lottery for similar reasons I don't bother finding out the personal criminal history of everyone living in my town - waste of time. YMMV

They're more likely to get hit by a car.

How many sex offenders have offended random school kids walking to school past their house? I'd say it's likely to be miniscule.

Really? Do you have the stats on that?

This kind of thing is just horrible in my opinion. If you are a known sex offender, you've been convicted and also served your time. You've payed your debt. How the heck does it help you to get back to a normal life if people in your neighborhood are able to alienate you for something that you've already served your sentence for?

I think the publics opinion is that sex offenders can never change/be cured, whereas say a murderer can.

It'd be interesting to see repeat offense rates for sex offenders compared with other crimes.

Isn't trying to 'cure' say a pedophile, a similar task to trying to turn a homosexual straight? (Serious question, I don't know the answer).

It's not a good idea for anyone to witch hunt and obsess about such a small threat.

Unfortunately, being caught e.g. urinating in public may also put you on the sex offender's registry.

The US Department of Justice has puts out reports on recidivism rates. Some information from the last report:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rpr94.htm

Those most likely to be rearrested within 3 years of release from prison committed these crimes: robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), and motor vehicle thieves (78.8%).

Those least likely to be rearrested within 3 years committed these crimes: homicide (40.7%), rapists (46.0%), other sexual assaulters (41.4%), other violent offenders (51.7%).

If you look at the sex offender recidivism report, you find that 5.3% of sex offenders are rearrested for another sex crime:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rsorp94.htm

It's useless information. What are you going to do? Upgrade from a .38 special to a .45 ACP?

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