The sex offender registry in most jurisdictions doesn’t work — at least, it doesn’t work to deter re-offence and it almost certainly doesn’t work to protect the public. What these registries do quite successfully, however, is to continue punishing the criminals long after they have served their sentences.
People who appear in these registries have a long list of prohibited activities, most frequently requiring them to stay a certain distance from schools (which often means there is little or no choice for where they can live, work, or travel, as the legallly mandated distance exceeds the average distance between schools). Ordinary ex-cons have great difficulty getting employment even in a growing economy, and the situation for identified “sex offenders” is close to impossible.
As a general rule, having your name added to the sex offender registry is as close to a life sentence as possible, but with no hope of parole and no hope of even a semblance of living a normal life.
Georgia apparently thinks this situation is not only fine, but they’d like to add non-sexual offenders to the registry too:
Georgia’s Supreme Court is upholding the government’s right to put non-sex offenders on the state’s sex-offender registry, highlighting a little-noticed (but growing) nationwide practice.
Atlanta criminal defense attorney Ann Marie Fitz estimated that perhaps thousands of convicts convicted of non-sexual crimes have been placed in sex-offender databases. Fitz represents a convict who was charged with false imprisonment when he was 18 for briefly detaining a 17-year-old girl during a soured drug deal. He unsuccessfully challenged his mandatory, lifelong sex-offender listing to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled against him Monday.
Under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2007, the states are required to have statutes demanding sex-offender registration for those convicted of kidnapping or falsely imprisoning minors. The Georgia court ruled that the plain meaning of “sex offender” was overridden by the state’s law.
If it’s your world view that criminals should never be forgiven for their transgressions, then this sort of deliberate act is understandable. It’s morally indefensible, but it’s understandable.
Your headline is misleading.
The article says that those convicted of kidnapping and false imprisonment of a minor are added to the sex offender list. Kidnapping and false imprisonment are not “ordinary” crimes. Your headline suggests that people are being added to sex offender registries for things like parking tickets and jaywalking.
I agree that these lists are harmful. As a form of de facto double jeopardy — in the sense that someone on the list is , in effect, constantly being tried for a single crime — they may even be unconstitutional. But don’t exaggerate things by suggesting that “ordinary” offenders are making it onto the lists. Unless, of course, they are adding jaywalkers and technical writers to the lists just for the hell of it.
Comment by Lickmuffin — March 19, 2010 @ 08:36