fuzzis
07-23-2007, 01:51 PM
I finally finished reading this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22juvenile-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&em&en=94d997992d4d5456&ex=1185336000) (it's quite long, but worth the read, imo).
I did not know that juveniles were eligible for listing on sex offender registries. Something strikes me as extremely wrong with that.
...At least 25 states now apply Megan’s Law, also known as a community-notification law, to juveniles, according to a recent survey by Brenda V. Smith, a law professor and the director of the National Institute of Corrections Project on Addressing Prison Rape at American University’s Washington College of Law. That means on many state sex-offender Web sites, you can find juveniles’ photos, names and addresses, and in some cases their birth dates and maps to their homes, alongside those of pedophiles and adult rapists.
Now that concept has reached the federal level. In May, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed guidelines for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, named for a 6-year-old boy (and son of John Walsh, the host of TV’s “America’s Most Wanted”) abducted from a Florida store and murdered in 1981. Among other things, the legislation, sponsored by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, and signed into law by President Bush last year, creates a federal Internet registry that will allow law enforcement and the public to more effectively track convicted sex offenders — including juveniles 14 and older who engage in genital, anal or oral-genital contact with children younger than 12. Within the next two years, states that have excluded adolescents from community-notification laws may no longer be able to do so without losing federal money....
...Under the Adam Walsh Act, a 35-year-old who has a history of repeatedly raping young girls will be eligible for the public registry, and so will a 14-year-old boy adjudicated as a sex offender for touching an 11-year-old girl’s vagina. According to the law, the teenager will remain on the national registry for life. He will have to register with authorities every three months. And if he fails to do so — not an unlikely prospect for some teenagers, especially those without involved parents — he may be imprisoned for more than one year.
Also, under the proposed guidelines issued by the attorney general’s office in May, the law is retroactive: hundreds of juveniles who are on probation for sex offenses that preceded the law could be eligible for the nationwide registry. Regardless, the Adam Walsh Act sets only the minimum guidelines; many states will retain their own, more stringent community-notification laws for juveniles. Already the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia and other organizations are considering challenges to the law based on, among other things, the fact that juveniles are subject to the same registration requirements as adults without the benefit of a jury trial or similar protections....
I'm all for locking folks up and throwing away the key when it comes to pedophilia and child sex predators, but I don't think that most juveniles fit that pattern. With recidivism rates of less than 10%, I think that there might be much more harm done than good.
I understand why we have one-size fits all approaches, but I can't help but feel like maybe we need to take a deep breath and really consider what it is we're doing and why we're doing it.
I did not know that juveniles were eligible for listing on sex offender registries. Something strikes me as extremely wrong with that.
...At least 25 states now apply Megan’s Law, also known as a community-notification law, to juveniles, according to a recent survey by Brenda V. Smith, a law professor and the director of the National Institute of Corrections Project on Addressing Prison Rape at American University’s Washington College of Law. That means on many state sex-offender Web sites, you can find juveniles’ photos, names and addresses, and in some cases their birth dates and maps to their homes, alongside those of pedophiles and adult rapists.
Now that concept has reached the federal level. In May, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed guidelines for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, named for a 6-year-old boy (and son of John Walsh, the host of TV’s “America’s Most Wanted”) abducted from a Florida store and murdered in 1981. Among other things, the legislation, sponsored by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, and signed into law by President Bush last year, creates a federal Internet registry that will allow law enforcement and the public to more effectively track convicted sex offenders — including juveniles 14 and older who engage in genital, anal or oral-genital contact with children younger than 12. Within the next two years, states that have excluded adolescents from community-notification laws may no longer be able to do so without losing federal money....
...Under the Adam Walsh Act, a 35-year-old who has a history of repeatedly raping young girls will be eligible for the public registry, and so will a 14-year-old boy adjudicated as a sex offender for touching an 11-year-old girl’s vagina. According to the law, the teenager will remain on the national registry for life. He will have to register with authorities every three months. And if he fails to do so — not an unlikely prospect for some teenagers, especially those without involved parents — he may be imprisoned for more than one year.
Also, under the proposed guidelines issued by the attorney general’s office in May, the law is retroactive: hundreds of juveniles who are on probation for sex offenses that preceded the law could be eligible for the nationwide registry. Regardless, the Adam Walsh Act sets only the minimum guidelines; many states will retain their own, more stringent community-notification laws for juveniles. Already the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia and other organizations are considering challenges to the law based on, among other things, the fact that juveniles are subject to the same registration requirements as adults without the benefit of a jury trial or similar protections....
I'm all for locking folks up and throwing away the key when it comes to pedophilia and child sex predators, but I don't think that most juveniles fit that pattern. With recidivism rates of less than 10%, I think that there might be much more harm done than good.
I understand why we have one-size fits all approaches, but I can't help but feel like maybe we need to take a deep breath and really consider what it is we're doing and why we're doing it.