Big Brother is watching you. That term "sex offender" always puts me in mind of George Orwell's definition of "sexcrime" in his 1984. By that definition (which is also Santorum's definition), you and I are "sex criminals". I'm a "mastur criminal".

That is a good topic for discussion by Dean -or anyone for that matter. I seem to remember that urinating on the side of the road in North Dakota was considered a sex crime (presuming that you were caught) even if it was at 3 am on a cold December night. I agree, to a point, that once you have paid a debt, you should be free of that debt. As is stands now even a conviction of a minor offense -controlled substance, underage alcohol, etc- is sufficient to keep you out of the military. A 18 year old kid gets caught with a beer and the Army doesn't want him? He can pick up a weapon and die defending his country. Go figure. Maybe it should be two strikes for sex offenders? Is there a way that you can assure that they have not only paid their debt a prescribed by law but are rehabilitated? Isn't a sex offender free neighborhood a presumption of a crime that hasn't yet occured? On the other hand you have to weigh the necessity of protecting the innocent. Tough questions.

Good points, Eric. I am of the firm and oft-stated belief that once the penalty imposed by society has been paid, there should remain no further burden on the person convicted. This includes the loss of voting rights, firearm ownership bans, and even, dare I say it, registration of sex offenders. Protecting society be damned!

... and how many people have been arrested for peeing on a barn?

This is simultaneously pathetic and disingenuous.

There is mounting evidence that pedophilia and other sexual compulsions - the ones that actually lead to victimization of innocents - are basically incurable in most cases. The recidivism rates for adult molesters of children is very high.

So we aren't dealing with the innocent foibles of youth, but with a continuing menace to the most innocent members of society.

Duh.

If everyone in the registry was a "sexual compulsive," you might have a point. The registry varies greatly from state to state and some of them probably are full of people who are guilty of things like statutory rape where the offender was 18 and had sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend, or that one time the offender got too drunk and streaked across the quad on a dare.

The State of Washington (where I live) does limit its sex offender list to "Level II and III offenses" (Level I is for non-predatory offenders, many of whom are first-timers) and does not include full addresses of offenders, just the block. It does list the crime, but not when it was committed, the offender's sentence, or when the offender was released, which would be useful to know. The site does provide a helpful, zoomable, color-coded map that indicates where each offender lives in relation to schools, which I find a bit sensationalist, but overall, the site isn't the disaster I expected.

A surprising number of the offenders are apparently homeless, which I find interesting.

If the registry basically restricted to child molesters few would be objecting. In point of fact the way the registries are constructed it's quite difficult to find the child molestors, which is one of many reasons why they are useless.

Jerry: Well, that wouldn't surprise me. A lot of then are basically hounded day and night. They commit suicide fairly often (one did down in Florida recently) and have a hellish time finding anyone who'll let them live anywhere.

We used to have institutes for the criminally insane, and they were precisely intended for folks such as pedophiles who cannot safely be let loose into society once their sentence is complete. If we reinstituted that policy for the dangerous sex predators we could stop having all the registries and other outrages against liberty.

It's incredible to me how we insist on keeping our heads in the sand over mental illness and what to do with folks who are screwed up and need help or are a danger to themselves or others. This is supposed to be "liberal"?

One of the outrages about the lists is that in some states you go in when accused and don't come out if acquitted.

Mind you, I'm going on memory which is flaky, but I remember reading in the paper about some poor guy whose very prudish neighbor accused him of inappropriately touching his toddler daughter (something to do with yanking off her bathing suit -- in his own backyard -- to clean sand off her behind. All observed by neighbor over fence. Said neighbor apparently believing that kids' butts are self-wiping.) The case was thrown out, but poor guy was on sex-offender registry and couldn't get it removed. Which caused him to lose his teaching job. Which caused... You get the picture.

No power given to the government is too little. No compiled list is innocuous. This is one of the reasons to oppose a national identity card or a national health list. Errors and deliberate hyperbole will creep into any list. It's also a good reason not to trust the government to run our health care, police our corporations or, for that matter, deliver mail or pave roads. Yes, I know they're doing the latter, but anyone with half a mind will keep a close eye on them.

P.

in short, I think I was also trying to say : if you suspect a neighbor of crime, you find out quickly there are very rare resources available to the citizen/resident as to how this neighbor can be made aware that the neighbors will not tolerate bad behavior. There is something to be said for involved neighbors, but if there is no watch in place and your only means of defense is an overloaded sherriff's department, sometimes the criminal lists are very appealing as a leverage against a neighbor that you are very worried about.

The thing I am most interested in is how to deal with this problem with the least amount of infringement. But the bottom line is : when someone commits a crime, their rate of exclusion becomes heavier in weight than someone who has never had a record. I think perhaps the lawyers for the genuine deviants/pedophilees have become adept at so muddying the defining line that it paralyzes those who woudl be able to make a true distinction and judgement against one who is a true danger and one who experienced bad luck.

It was said that child sex offenders have a very high recidivism rate. This is actually a fallacy. The justice department did a study of sex offender recidivism and found that sex offenders as a group have the lowest recidivism rates of ANY criminals. In fact, less than 20% of convicted sex offenders will reoffend sexually in their lifetimes. In addition, the NJ Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center, the prison in my state that houses and treats repetitive and compulsive sex offenders, did their own study which yielded a recidivism rate of 6% over a three-year follow-up period. Sex offender registries are simply a means for politicians to show their constituents that they can be tough on crime. Statistics be damned.