...and I don't feel fine.
Welcome to sunny Pedophile Acres in FL, USA; the happy trailer park (go figure) where every other neighbor is a convicted sex offender.
I'm snarkless. I mean, my first thought was "Let's just take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure," but this gets so much more complex than that...
1) What does it say about our society that, in order to make room for more pot smokers, tax evaders, and cigarette smugglers (but I repeat myself) in our jails, we have to parole whole trailer parks full of baby rapers?
2) If you've done the time, have you paid for the crime? Or are you still in jail on the outside? If so, why bother with the whole cells'n'guards'n'walls thing in the first place?
3) Are convicted sex offender support groups as intrinsically creepy as, to steal a phrase from P.J. O'Rourke, "Rottweilers Against Child Mauling"?
4) Parole? Are you mad? How can anyone look at a parole board and say "Yeah, I did horrible things to that six year old, but I'm sorry and I'm all better now," and be believed?
If this was Marko's blog, this would be posted in his category "Sick Sad World".
Well, at least they're no where near Maine and that middle school that's allowing the school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11. Some kind of perfect storm that would be...
ReplyDeleteI've spent the majority of my working career either trying to lock up those guys, or feeding them breakfast. (I think my jailer's license is still current...) I've got the degree in that stuff, and a year or so of grad school in it, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll tell you right now: I don't have the answer.
Others don't seem to mind. Teresa Atkins moved into the Palace a year ago. She is not an offender and didn't know, at the time, that almost half of her neighbors were.
ReplyDelete"I'm very safe here. None of these men want to go back to jail. They will do anything to keep from going to jail," she said.
Is she mad? I realize folks are pretty damn stupid these days, but sex offenders have a very high recidivism rate compared to other offenders - almost four times higher.
One day I arrived at my office and mail-drop, email and voicemail unfolded a panorama of horrors from horrified residents - a European with a corporate apartment on my property had ensconced therein a pedophile employee of his on a permanent basis, and this being his registered address, Texas Dept of Corrections notified all the residents in the community. Having a strict policy against such residents, I phoned the European, who was completely cavalier about it, saying the man (28) had had sex the year before with a 14 year old guy and it was "completely consensual" and that the only reason he was prosecuted is because "the guy's father was a cop." Uh.. mah... gah!
ReplyDeleteWe were on the phone so I was at vast remove from the temptation to slap the ever-loving shit out of him. And the horse he rode in on. Needless to say, he moved out toute-de-suite.
I don't know what the answer is. But I do still have some canisters of CN-20 if we want to gas the whole nest.
ReplyDeleteOh, I dunno. In this case, it might be beneficial to have 'em all in one spot, instead of scattered all over the city.
ReplyDeleteWell,
ReplyDelete"Sex Offender" encompasses a lot of territory. Personally, I am not sure that there is anything inherently wrong with consensual sex between two people when one is aged 14-18. OTOH, below about 14 any sex can have disastrous consequences.
We have seen reports of 19 year old boys getting sent to prison for having sex with their 17 year old girlfriends. Heck, we all know at least a few guys who at 18 had sex with their 14 or 15 year old freshman girlfriends after prom.
For me, if someone rapes another person then they should dance at the end of a rope. If they are so sick that they need to have sex with toddlers, or pre-adolescents then they should dance at the end of a rope.
Beyond that the State has no reason to be involved.
Of course, I have been called a Neanderthal.
Awesome. Klutzo the Clown can settle in there when he gets out of prison, if he doesn't kill himself first.
ReplyDeletehttp://thearmedschoolteacher.blogspot.com/2007/10/cant-sleep-clownll-get-me-allegedly.html
Klutzo's Tale
ReplyDeleteIf they're not gonna be needle-stuck, nor locked forever and forever, they gotta go someplace. This sort of thing seems like it's much better than, as Marko said, scattered all over a city or county.
ReplyDeleteAnd the comment about only one recidivist is far more encouraging than most factual recitations about this particular sort of criminal.
Hey, if nothing else, it saves a heckuva lot of gasoline and driving time...
Art
Ok, so I wasn't the only person who's first thought was target rich environment"...
ReplyDeleteBut why would they allow "normal folks" to move into that park?
I'm sayin'!
ReplyDeleteMaybe for the same reason you have "No Shoot" targets in IPSC matches?
My only problem with hanging all sex offenders on general principles is the folks who get tagged for "indecent exposure" after getting busted for taking an emergency whiz behind a dumpster when there's no restroom available or folks who get tagged for "crimes against nature" for going down on their Signifigant Other even if all involved were of legal age. Hearing about pedophiles, however, results in me quoting Hannover Fisk from "Heavy Metal". "Hanging's too good for 'im! Burning's too good for 'im! HE SHOULD BE RIPPED INTO ITSY-BITSY LITTLE PIECES AND BURIED ALIVE!!!"
ReplyDeleteI'm with Gregg.
ReplyDeleteEver since the McMartin preschool psychodisaster, about every third person in this whole dizzy country has completely lost his or her fuckin' mind behind anything having to do with sex, and I say we're just about at the point where all bets are completely off and nothing surprises me anymore, either way.
It's just another day at the Endarkenment.
To be fair, even the writeup says that "A few" of them are pedophiles.
ReplyDeleteMost sex offenders aren't.
Hell, some states, "peeing in the alley behind the bar because it's closed and you Gotta Go" becomes "indecent exposure" if a cop happens by... and then you're a "sex offender".
(Just my habitual reminder that in these days of thoughtless government mandate, even something like "sex offender" might not mean what people take it to.
Which is a shame, both because of the unnecessary opprobrium put on people like our alley-pisser, but because as more people find out about him it takes away from the power of the term used appropriately against the rapists and their kind.)
(I see Cyberluddite beat me to it, but I'm going to pile on anyway.)
Gregg, Cybr, Sig and me. I've learned over the years not to tell people "don't go off half-cocked" in a sex abuse argument.
ReplyDeleteRemember the Lautenberg Amendment? These registry affairs speak to the same issue. A strident minority wants Action Fast; the electorate won't support it, so you ex-post-facto a lifetime of punishment onto a misdemeanor.
Could be our legal tradition hasn't quite been up to dealing with a sudden surge of pedophilia. (Truth? I've been following this 20 years and am still not convinced there is a surge: the real cases were considered too horrible to report a generation back; now there is an industry in finding, or making up, new horrors). Either way, if it's so horrible, let us make laws. Felony laws, with long sentences, and limitations on parole and rehab programs. Don't let an alarmed subculture drag us along to the lynching tree. And don't lead the mob, either.
And by all means, let's get some terminology. At the moment, one good divorce lawyer, or one pissed-off youth group parent, is enough to get you On The List. When the (fully statutory, tried by twelve)hangin's start, we'll have to fix that.
I suspect it's hard because the fear that it strikes at is so primal.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hear "sex offender", my first reaction is "child molester" or "rapist", not "some guy who peed in public"....
According to a local Phychiatrist
ReplyDeleteThe recidivism rate for pedophiles is more like 90%
anon, This may be true, but none of us can know, and, given the politicization of all science (and the replacement of science with poll analysis), we may never know. Each side of each argument has its own surveys. In social policy, science is now useless and will probably remain so for the rest of our lives. Statistics is (now) consistently the tool of activists, regardless of subject. No one will ever say, "Let's give the rapos a break--after all, only 29% of them do it again."
ReplyDelete"The recidivism rate for pedophiles is more like 90%."
ReplyDeleteVery well, then. All you have to do is summarily shoot nine out of ten on the spot.
You really up for it?
Registration Required: Are Sex Offenders Uniquely Dangerous?
ReplyDeleteJacob Sullum
...
Among prisoners released in 1994, 46 percent of rapists were arrested again for any offense within three years, compared to 62 percent of violent felons generally. Recidivism rates for nonviolent criminals were even higher: 79 percent for car thieves, 74 percent for burglars.
Even if we focus on repeats of the same offense, rapists do not stand out. Less than 3 percent of them were arrested for a new rape in the three years covered by the study. By comparison, 13 percent of robbers, 22 percent of (nonsexual) assaulters, and 23 percent of burglars were arrested again for crimes similar to the ones for which they had served time.
...
I've probably posted this article a dozen times over at THR, and who knows where else. As with any study, I can't vouch for the data, but my experience reading Reason in general, and Jacob Sullum in particular, is that both are pretty reliable.
I used to think when I heard "sex offender" OH MY GOD! PERVERT ALERT!
ReplyDeleteThen I learned here in Oregon that "sex offender" includes people that urinate in public. They go on they same lifetime sex offender registry that kiddie rapers do. They are screwed just as much. Hard to get a job, hard to get an apartment, etc.
That got me to thinking...
Without more details I don't know what "sex offender" means. Is it truly some dangerous pervert, or just some drunk who had one too many and had to go? There is a difference.
We have way too many laws like that.
We need to go after the truly dangerous, which are few, and leave alone the non-dangerous who are many.
Ok, you can now hang me for too much "nuance."
I'm with a lot of the other readers. Most people think "sex offender" means someone who rapes children. Not so. I had a friend got nailed for being topless on a deserted beach, and plead to disorderly because indecent would have labeled her a sex offender and required registration. Nor do I think it just that the life of a 19 year old is ruined forever because he had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend, which can happen in some states. My father was concerned when he found out a sex offender had moved into the neighborhood, until he found out his offense was mooning someone... got charged with indecent.
ReplyDeleteThe government has blown all credibility on this issue with me. I don't favor sex offender registries anymore, because I wouldn't be surprised to found out that most of the folks on it are not really any danger so society.
Unfettered capitalism at its finest. As others have pointed out, not all sex offenders are pedophiles or rapists and they do need a place to live. Add to that the proscriptions many are under on where they can live, i.e. not within 100, 200, 1000, or 2000 or whatever the number of feet it is, of a park or school and the number of places they can live drops to almost nil. I remember an Iowa student project showing all of the overlapping banned territory covered the town out to its incorporated limits (old memory could be wrong). And, no I don't want them living anywhere near a park or school, pedophiles anyway. I have a friend who is a convicted "sex offender" or would be nowadays because he mooned a guy once.
ReplyDeleteLots of anecdotal stories about sex offenders who really aren't.
ReplyDeleteGo look at their case files.
You'd be surprised what really happened. People that just pee in public don't get labeled S.O.'s, to speak of.
But S.O.'s sure like to say that's what happened. Or the "bath towel slipped when I answered the door after rub-a-dub time" excuse.
Bull shyte.
See the link at Instapundit about the "sex offender" in Georgia - the woman who (at 17) gave her (15.5 year old) boyfriend a BJ.
ReplyDeleteYeah, nice reason to ruin her life, eh?
(News story mentions a young man who's been in prison for 10 years for the same reason. He's refused several pleas because pleading guilty would put his name on the Sex Offender registry)