TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

California drafts pointless legislation

Written by

Trench Reynolds

in

Netting predators:

Add California to the list of states who are drafting meaningless legislation concerning MySpace and sex offenders.

The proposal calls for California to require registered sex offenders to report their e-mail addresses and Internet identities to the state, which would make them available to MySpace and other social networks to block participation.

“It is not a divine right that someone who is a registered sex offender should have access to a chat room of 15-year-olds,” said Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge.

Portantino and Republican Assemblywoman Shirley Horton of San Diego are pushing Assembly Bill 841 in conjunction with MySpace, a massive, virtual community that enables users to share profiles, photos and e-mail.

Opponents of the bill are claiming everything from free speech infringement to additional punishment for sex offenders who have already served their term. Forgive me for being a cold bastard but I don’t really care about the rights of sex offenders. SOs have the highest recidivism rate among all criminals. However, like I’ve said before this legislation is meaningless of the SOs use fake e-mail addresses and still does nothing about SOs that haven’t been caught yet.

Comments

9 responses to “California drafts pointless legislation”

  1. BelchSpeak Avatar
    BelchSpeak

    Yes, this is pointless and it creates a huge stupid compliance and monitoring issue that is really tantamount to suppression of free speech to those that have served their time.

    It is much easier and simpler to:
    1) Ban SO’s from using Myspace
    2) Myspace converts to pay service
    3) Monitor credit purchases of SO’s

    Besides, if a SO can’t go into a chat room, should they be banned from real places like toy stores, childrens book stores, and other similar places where children congregate? And if so, wouldn’t monitoring the credit purchases of sex offenders be the way to enforce compliance?

    Reply
  2. Trench Avatar
    Trench

    3) Monitor credit purchases of SO’s

    That idea is pure genius.

    Reply
  3. David Avatar
    David

    “SO&rsquos have the highest recidivism rate among all criminals. ”

    Sorry, but just plain incorrect. It is an inflamatory statement like this that fans the public’s obsession with sex offender legislation. Go find a stat to back that up and post it. For my part, I found the following to support my position that sex offenders are not more likely to re-offend than any other classification of criminals:

    “Compared to other offenders, sex offenders are less likely to recidivate in general, but are still more likely to reoffend with a sex crime.”

    -Sex offender Recidivism in Minnesota 2007 (www.corr.state.mn.us/documents/04-07SexOffenderReport-Recidivism.pdf) – Check out page 9 in particular.

    Simply stated, Sex offenders are LESS likely in general than most other criminal offenders to re-offend, however when they DO reoffend they are more likely to re-offend with a sex crime than other convicted non-sex offenders (which makes sense). It doesn’t mean they’re more likely to re-offend at all.

    Next, a New Jersey Department of Corrections report that states that sexual offenders released from the ADTC had significantly lower rates of committing both non-sexual offenses and any offense, compared with the general prison population of sex offenders. For both groups, the 10-year sexual offense reconviction rates were relatively low, 8.6% for the ADTC offenders and 12.7% for the general prison sexual offenders, while reoffense rates for non-sexual offenses were 25.8% and 44.1% for ADTC an general prison sex offenders, respectively.

    More facts, less fear mongering.

    Reply
  4. David Avatar
    David

    forgot the link for the NJ report:
    http://www.state.nj.us/corrections/REU/pdf/Eval_o…

    Reply
  5. furpo Avatar
    furpo

    Study: Sex offender recidivism lowest among released convicts:
    http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/86…

    Myths &amp Facts about Recidivism:
    http://www.ipce.info/newsletters/e_18/myths_facts…
    http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivi…

    Reply
  6. Trench Avatar
    Trench

    From one of the links you kindly provided.

    Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison.

    Reply
  7. furpo Avatar
    furpo

    True “Trench”, but you left out:

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

    Personally id rather see an all Criminal Offender List. Im more concerned with the repeat thief down the street than some 19 year old who had sex with a 16 year old girl. The sex offender registry started out with good intentions but after reading story after story in the news about some dude caught pissing in an alley ending up as a sex offender or as i mentioned a 19 year old with a 16 year old girl friend, it`s completely useless. Also 90% of sex crimes are comitted by a family member or close family friend. Your children are far more likely to be assaulted by someone in your family photo album than a stranger.

    Reply
  8. Trench Avatar
    Trench

    Personally id rather see an all Criminal Offender List.

    Well we agree there but if you want to be kept off the sex offender’s list don’t do the things that will get you put there in the first place.

    Reply
  9. furpo Avatar
    furpo

    “don&rsquot do the things that will get you put there in the first place”

    DNA Test Exonerates Man Who Served 25 Years For Rape:
    The expected exoneration on Monday will be the 200th in the nation

    April 21, 2007 http://www.nbc5.com/news/12745787/detail.html?rss…

    Reply

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