Sexual registry law needs to be changed - Editorials

Federal attempts to keep track of convicted sexual offenders have been rejected by most states, including Hawaii, and the arrest of a convicted Hawaii offender in Arizona last week might illustrate the problem.

[datruthandfacts]

The federal law - named the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act after a 6-year-old boy abducted and murdered in 1981 - requires that offenders update their information in person as many as four times a year. That means offenders living on neighbor islands would have to fly to Honolulu every 90 days to pay a visit to Bennett's office, and that is unrealistic.

You mean the State AG's office only serves Oahu? They can't have a satellite office on the neighbor islands? Ho Hum, I guess it would be inconvenient sort of like having a neighbor island kid get fondled huh?

[KAzman]

25% delinqunet? I wonder how many other repeat offenders out there are "delinqunet" or howmany others getting caught in other locations are also "delinquent".

[Solution]

oh, so just b/c the attorney general's office deems that the law "doesnt make sense" they can simply choose not to follow it? O.k...guess I'll ignore, pick or choose which laws I'd like to follow as well since some "don't make sense" to me either.

[daniwitz13]

This law should be unconstitutional. If there is such a thing as double jeopardy, why do they allow double punishment. No other type of crime, when they serve your time, are required to register for life on any registry for their crime. Why only on this crime? Recently they claimed that this law has reaped benefits like bringing charges against 615 sex offenders for failing to register or update their registry. Not that they did anything against someone but forgot to dot their "I" or cross their "T's". This a tragedy and travesty of justice.

[watchdog]

hmmmmm....kind of like car insurance.You get a speeding ticket and pay it, but it stays on your record, and the insurace company can check it and charge you again in the way of increased insurance rates for at least three years....kind of like paying again and again.. guess the solution is Dont Do It In The First Place....then no problems.hmmmmmm????

[Kilu]

Bottom line these "offender's can't be cured. There are only future victims waiting to added to the list. Solution? Castration or a tatoo on the forehead so everyone knows who they are. No registry needed which does not contain correct data.

[SexOffenderIssue s]

Kilu wrote:

Bottom line these "offender's can't be cured. There are only future victims waiting to added to the list. Solution? Castration or a tatoo on the forehead so everyone knows who they are. No registry needed which does not contain correct data.

What a load of BS! Guess the sheeple will believe anything. I have many studies, with links to the originals, which prove what you say is crap!

http://sexoffenderstudies.blogspot.com/search...

And here is one from the Bureau of Justice:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#reci...

Recidivism

* Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

* The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 accounted for nearly 4,877,000 arrest charges over their recorded careers.

* Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.

* Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.

* Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.

Sex offenders

* On a given day in 1994 there were approximately 234,000 offenders convicted of rape or sexual assault under the care, custody, or control of corrections agencies; nearly 60% of these sex offenders are under conditional supervision in the community.

* The median age of the victims of imprisoned sexual assaulters was less than 13 years old; the median age of rape victims was about 22 years.

* An estimated 24% of those serving time for rape and 19% of those serving time for sexual assault had been on probation or parole at the time of the offense for which they were in State prison in 1991.

* Of the 9,691 male sex offenders released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, 5.3% were rearrested for a new sex crime within 3 years of release.

* Of released sex offenders who allegedly committed another sex crime, 40% perpetrated the new offense within a year or less from their prison discharge.

Child victimizers

* Approximately 4,300 child molesters were released from prisons in 15 States in 1994. An estimated 3.3% of these 4,300 were rearrested for another sex crime against a child within 3 years of release from prison.

* Among child molesters released from prison in 1994, 60% had been in prison for molesting a child 13 years old or younger.

* Offenders who had victimized a child were on average 5 years older than the violent offenders who had committed their crimes against adults. Nearly 25% of child victimizers were age 40 or older, but about 10% of the inmates with adult victims fell in that age range.

[American Infidel]

How about a registry for murderers, rapists, iceheads, drug dealers, identity thieves and all the other scumbags that live among us. Where are those??

[daniwitz13]

Just recently, 90,000 pedophiles were purged from the Internet on MySpace with the urging of AG of many States including Hawaii. Facebook that has 150 million users claim they have yet to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor. It seems to me that it would be better to keep the sex offenders at home on their computers and their fingers on the key boards than turn them loose on the streets with their fingers on your daughters. The Justice Dept. are either clueless or this is the plan to put more people in jail that the courts in Calif. demand they let out because of poor conditions and overcrowding. Law enforcers are crazy and totally out of control.

[Poi Boy]

Who's going to enforce the registry if it is changed????????

[Anonymous]

daniwitz13 wrote:

Just recently, 90,000 pedophiles were purged from the Internet on MySpace with the urging of AG of many States including Hawaii. Facebook that has 150 million users claim they have yet to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor. It seems to me that it would be better to keep the sex offenders at home on their computers and their fingers on the key boards than turn them loose on the streets with their fingers on your daughters. The Justice Dept. are either clueless or this is the plan to put more people in jail that the courts in Calif. demand they let out because of poor conditions and overcrowding. Law enforcers are crazy and totally out of control.

That is scary.

[daniwitz13]

To those of you that are for continuing to punish people that have already served their punishment, as an analogy, would you, after punishing your child for some wrong, keep on punishing that child the rest of his life? I don't think you would, not only because it's your own child, it is just not the way to treat anyone. No one should be punished forever. Consider that something happened 20 years ago when your grey matter didn't develop yet and after serving time, must still be punished with registry the rest of your life.

[daniwitz13]

Our Attorney General,(MB) Is at the forefront to put away and punish people that he thinks should be in jail. He lobbies for particular laws that applies to one person but not to another that does a very similar crime. One gets 9 mos. while the other gets 10 years. They pick and choose who to go after. He lobbies for a law that gives a maximum 10 years for a crime that has no victim, only for thoughts in one's mind. It's a law that they tell you what's on your mind and arrest you for what they think you were thinking. Now that's scary.

[Cat the bounty hunta]

American Infidel wrote:

How about a registry for murderers, rapists, iceheads, drug dealers, identity thieves and all the other scumbags that live among us. Where are those??

why only a sex offender registry? what about a DUI registry? i would want to know if my neighbor drives down the street drunk. or a theft registry? i want to know if i have to lock my tool shed from my neighbors.

its not right to punish the sex crimes people again by having a registry. they did their time.

[rsoinyourhome]

Most people don't want to hear this. But the laws against sex offenders will NEVER be able to help the majority of children that are sexually abused. 93% of all sexual assaults are committed by a family member, or someone that the person trusts and is known to them.
Out of 100% of sex offenders that are on the registry, only 2.5 to 7% will ever re-offend. Yes, that is a terrible number, but it is not high. The only other group of criminals that has a lower re-offense rate are murderers, and seeing that a great number of them are incarcerated for life or put to death in some states, that may be a good indicator as to why their numbers are so low.
The laws that the minority of idealists wish to keep not only continue to punish an offender, they also touch the offender's family. Are the wives and children of an offender not also worthy of being protected? Does a past action, no matter how you view it, warrant the inclusion of the innocent children of an offender that had nothing to do with the crime many many years before? How about the 18 year old kid that happened to fall in love with the 15 year old girl in High School. Are they this terrible offender that makes you hide your children?
It isn't all black and white, people, and until you turn off the Television, and actually go to the published reports, you will always be ignorant of the real issues involved. The sapping of Constitutionally granted rights, The continued punishment for crimes already paid for, the threats and abuse of family members by vigilante groups that call, send mailings, and further harass these families.. Make no mistake. The groups out there to 'inform' others of sexual offenders are nothing more than hoods that wish to strike fear into your hearts. Ever wonder how much money a few college dropouts can make? Do you think they do television for nothing and help NBC just because they are concerned? Get real and smell the stench...

[William A]

It will not improve public safety or "protect children" if the POS Adam Walsh Act (POS AWA) is implemented or not. All of the provisions in it will "work" exactly as Registration "works" - not at all.

The POS AWA will just cause trouble and harass those people who are listed on the idiotic Registries who have no intention or desire of ever breaking a law. That is the vast, vast majority of people on the Registries (learn the FACTS, not the lies!!!). For the other people on the Registries who do have bad intentions, the laws do not hinder them to even the slightest degree. On the contrary, they exacerbate, to a ridiculous extent, all the major factors that have factually been linked to increased anti-social behavior and criminality, including increasing the recidivism for sexual crimes.

The entire "sex offender" witch hunt is idiotic. Just take a look at the facts. The laws are not just worthless, they are worse. There are literally NO experts in the entire country who support these laws.

The reality of Registration, and especially ALL the tag-along, worse-than-worthless laws that Registration has enabled (e.g. Banishment), is that it all provides very, very miniscule additional "public safety" and those same benefits could very easily be achieved in numerous other, much more effective ways. But while Registration and the rest provide no needed benefits, they also constantly promote recidivism, cost a fortune, create a false sense of security, reduce the likelihood that people will do what is truly effective to reduce sexual offending, divert precious, limited resources and attention away from trying to reduce sexual offending, and create a very large class of people who don't care at all about being good citizens.

It is really not a good idea to force the people listed on Hawaii's Registry to update their information every 90 days. That is because a large and growing percentage of the people on these Registries (600,000+ people) are retaliating because (and only because) of these idiotic "sex offender" laws. They are retaliating in completely legal ways against the criminal governments (local, state, and federal) who have enacted and support these laws and the scumbag "people" who support them. The retaliation occurs every single day and a good part of it includes doing exactly the opposite of what the "people" who support these laws would like. It is costing society a fortune in time, money, and effort. It is not a good idea to force those people to do anything because every single time that happens, they must retaliate at a level of at least ten times of what was required of them. So, while updating information may not be a huge amount of effort, retaliating for it is. And none of any of it benefits the United States.

[SexOffenderIssue s]

American Infidel wrote:

How about a registry for murderers, rapists, iceheads, drug dealers, identity thieves and all the other scumbags that live among us. Where are those??

I totally agree, but I would go further. All people, who have committed any crime, be it speeding, stealing, gang member, selling drugs, doing drugs, DUI, or anything else, to be put on a registry for all to see.

I'd love to know everyone's past as well.

Put everyone on a registry for all to see, and on the Internet. If it's good enough for one group, which studies show, have the second least recidivism rate, besides murderers, then it's good enough for everyone else.

The very laws which are suppose to protect children, which are just placebo's to make you feel safe, do neither.

If they actually worked, we'd not be having more and more crimes committed.

We need to move away from being tough on crime, and move toward being smart on crime.

Work on prevention, and not just punishment. If you just punish someone, throw them in prison, eventually they are going to get out, and in 90% or more of these cases, they do not get treatment/therapy in prison, only when they get out are they then forced to get treatment, at their expense, but, it's too late then. Why do they not get treatment in prison?

Stop the mass hysteria and moral panic, using sex offenders as societies scapegoat. No matter how many laws you pass, more crimes will occur. If you do not think so, you are living in Wonderland.

[SexOffenderIssue s]

Poi Boy wrote:

Who's going to enforce the registry if it is changed????????

And how many of these 90,000 sex offenders were actually using MySpace to troll for kids to molest? I am willing to bet less than 2%.

They just discriminate, and assume all sex offenders who use these services, like millions of other people, to keep in touch with friends and family, and lusting over kids to molest.

Fear and propaganda, that is all this is, IMO!

[TJC]

Simple solution:
Death penalty for child molesters, murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. Most of our problems would dissapear!
-TJC
Honolulu

[Kay K]

TJC in Post #24: I hope and pray that your children, grandchildren, and other family members are the next "sex offenders" that join the 600,000+ listed on Registries in our once-great country.

Once your children get on a Registry I will gladly join the tyrannical masses and harass them and their families for the rest of their lives. Or, if we get the punishments that you desire, I'll help the criminal governments murder them.

That is what people who think like you deserve. When things like that happen to people like you I always enjoy it and think that karma is a wonderful thing and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.