Living Near Sex Offenders

Anc, maybe you're reading the map wrong.

Share the address, and the rest of us will look at it.

No, such a registry would be against several constitutional guarantees here.

I guess the closest point of comparison would be the German "Sicherheitsverwahrung", roughly a "security restraint". Perpetrators that have completed their jailtime, but are still considered dangerous as likely repeat offenders, can be taken into Sicherheitsverwahrung, i.e. they remain locked away (though under much better conditions).

The practice runs into all the obvious organisational, moral, and legal problems: How do you decide whether an individual is still dangerous? How can they ever prove the opposite? How do you justify infringing their freedom beyond punishment? About a year ago, a high European court finally ruled most of the forms of Sicherheitsverwahrung practiced in Germany to be against basic human rights. Most lawyers in Germany emphatically agreed (and their professional organisations said as much). So we're getting rid of it now for almost all contexts, and good riddance.

Columbia City, Seattle.

Actually, depending on the conditions that sounds like it could be more humane than what we have here.

Humane.

Packard agrees: Yes. And it's still a violation of basic human rights.

According to European Courts.

I don't really see the issue with a Pedovillage for those who have legally served their time but aren't fit to be in society.

Beats living under a bridge.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/sex-offenders-live-miami-bridge/story?id=8420696

We already have Pedovillages. We call them "prisons."

And this really big one, called Vatican City.

Feel free to argue for Life Without Parole to be the minimum sentence for Child Molesters (and I'd join you) but until then we have to deal with reality. And the reality is that we need something to do with chimos when they get out.

I think the Huns might be on to something. Sounds safer for society and more humane for the pedos than what we have now. Might even be cheaper.

We have essentially that system in MA, which I alluded to up thread. My problem with it mainly regards procedural issues. The requirement to prove rehabilitation seems like a purposefully impossible hurdle, so the sentence is de facto life without parole. We need to be more honest. I don't trust a government that pretends life detention doesn't happen but then winks, nods, and make sure that it happens just the same. Do we really want a corrections system to have his power?

And according to the vast majority of the legal professionals that have worked with the system for decades. Also according to me, if anyone's interested.

How do you feel about sending people there that have never molested a child, but are likely to do so according to a geneticist, psychologist, or sociologist?

How do you feel about a village for people who have contracted a contagious and life-threatening disease?

Good for y'all.

No, only those who have been convicted.

I'd need to know the particulars.

However the idea of putting anti-vaxers in their own village safely tucked away from society does appeal to me. You might be on to something there.

So it's not about protection.

Just because someone was caught once doesn't mean they are no longer a threat. Especially not when someone proposes releasing that person back into society.

Quite so. But just because someone was never caught even once doesn't mean they don't pose any danger either. So if it's about protection and not punishment, clearly the operative question should only be: Are they dangerous? And not: have they ever been caught?

False.

How so?

It is about protection.

It's about both, but the presumption of innocence is not negated by either. You first have to prove yourself a real threat, then society can deal with you accordingly.

Are you channeling Clyde right now?

A psychologist tells you that Mr Smith down the road is likely to molest a child someday, although he never has so far. Locking Mr Smith away -- in prison or pedoville -- would protect kids from Mr Smith. But you don't want to lock him away. Clearly, protection isn't the operative criterion for your pedoville.

I may have a genetic disposition to cancer, but I'm not going to start giving myself Chemo.

So the difference is that you don't believe psychologists, sociologists or geneticists know what they're talking about?

Clearly not a valid analogy; chemo won't help you if you haven't got cancer yet, but locking you away will keep you from molesting children, even if you haven't done so yet.

False.

Protection IS the main reason. However protection must be balanced against the presumption of innocence. Mr. Smith has not proven that he is capable of raping a child. Having a predisposition doesn't mean they will. However a Child rapists has clearly demonstrated not only the predisposition to rape a child, and the willingness to rape a child, but the ability to rape a child. There is quite a huge gulf between 'might' and 'has'.

I would also point out that you seem to be using the all or nothing binary thinking usually beneath you. Just b/c you don't do everything possible to protect society doesn't mean you can't do some things to protect society.

Take whatever possible preventative measure that sucks ass and replace that with chemo. C'mon now, use that head of yours!

That computes as:

I may have a genetic disposition to cancer, but I'm not going to [take whatever possible preventative measure that sucks ass].

Here's what I don't get. If it's about protection in any way whatsoever, I'm not interested in whether Mr Smith was capable of raping a child yesterday. My interest in protection is solely in his capability to do so tomorrow. And I see no reason to assume that a realistic assessment of tomorrow's risk will always take the previous molester to be a greater risk than the hitherto innocent.

It would be quite a different thing if you said that the onetime offence loses a man his right to freedom as punishment, and that makes it possible to lock him away indefinitely as a means of protection, whereas the same means can't be justified for the innocent, because the innocent still has the right to his freedom. That would be logical. Honesty, however, would require us to admit that this is punishment: In addition to punishing criminals with jail for some time, we'll also punish them with the loss of a right forever, their concrete freedom to be then actually denied or granted by other circumstances. Homo sacer; vogelfrei.

But instead, you're saying that the previous offender is a "real" risk, as opposed to a risk as judged by an expert. That turns vengeance into a modification of perceived reality -- and essentializes a man's past as his nature. Both of those things are fallacies.

I'll go ahead and say I wouldn't trust a psychologist, sociologist, or geneticist (sp?) to say with any certainty that someone would rape a child. Being "likely" to rape is pretty vague. Teenage boys with red cars are likely to drive fast, but we can't just ticket them before they actually speed.

I completely agree.

That's fine. And then they do speed, and we do ticket them.

But now the proposal is to go a step beyond that. The new idea is that if they have sped once, they are likely to do so again. This belief is itself a psychology, only it's a psychology born from intuition, and probably mixed with ideas about retribution. Why is this empirically unfounded psychology more trustworthy to you than the psychology of actual psychologists?

To me, that layman psychology is less, or at most equally, trustworthy than actual clinical psychology. If clinical psychology does not suffice to lock a man away, neither should layman psychology.

Sorry to say I'm off to bed, as this thread just got interesting. But I'll be back tomorrow.