Reconsidering sex offenses

Two interesting articles in the MetroWest Daily News yesterday on the nature of sex offenses and how we as a society handle them.

The second article, in particular, is enlightening, listing a number of clearly ridiculous results of various laws around the country. For example, in Oklahoma, a woman who flashed an undercover detective got registered as a sex criminal and now has to live in a homeless shelter because she is not allowed to live within 2000 feet of a school, daycare center, park or playground. She did not want to live in one of the handful of motels outside those ranges because those motels are full of sex criminals. So now she and her daughter are in a homeless shelter.

Or two Virginia teenaged girls who took topless photos of each other must now be registered as sex criminals for life for creating child porn. Or the Wisconsin woman who is registered because, as a child, her mother made her and her sister perform sex acts.

Lest anybody misunderstand, there can be no doubt that there are a lot of very dangerous people out there, and registering can be a good way of keeping the public safe. Unfortunately, a lot of not-so-dangerous people get caught up in the net.

Meanwhile, as laid out in the first article, the dangerous folks still sometimes slip through the net. For example, only 10 percent of child molestations are committed by strangers. And yet a Fitchburg man known for being dangerous was seen taking pictures in a Chuck E. Cheese.

Furthermore, there is a credible argument to be made that by keeping track of harmless "offenders", we are overtaxing local police departments who would be better served by tracking the truly dangerous.

It's fun and profitable for policitians to push for zero-tolerance laws. Makes them sound tough on crime. But sometimes tough is not needed; smart is. Massachusetts makes a good start on smart laws, by classifying sexual offenders into 3 levels, based on risk to re-offend. Registration requirements and other procedures vary based on which level an offender is categorized as.

A good start. We must be careful to maintain these sorts of smart laws and resist the urge to "tighten" them or "stregthen" them by overly draconian laws (as found elsewhere in the country) that only destroy families and lives and save none.