Having just watched the film Little Children, it occurred to me to log into the National Sex Offender Registry to see what was just around the corner. Not good news, friends. Not good at all. Go here: http://www.familywatchdog.us/
What was beautiful about the film Little Children was its sympathy, which is a writer's virtue and which is dangerous. I am wondering, mothers and fathers out there, how being a writer and a parent has changed you, how it has changed your characters, how it has sharpened the focus of your eyes and placed necessary boundaries on your world. It is good to live with open palms and certainly becoming a parent widens the heart, but in what ways must it close up and contain and protect and limit?
4 comments:
Absolutely scary, the sex offender registry is definitely the most terrorizing issue that most parents face for their children. Without a doubt, these convicted child rapists create more tension than any other criminal or individual, and in my opinion, they should be banned from neighborhoods completely.
Although I've posted to several sex offender blogs, I still feel it's very important to get this message through. Our children and families are under a greater threat of domestic terrorism than at any point in our country. We should consider not only restriction the length of distance a child molester lives from our schools and parks, but consider a concentrated place to intern registered sex offenders AWAY from ALL children and vulnerable citizens.
It is time we seriously consider building sex offender colonies throughout the western United States and Alaska.
It is obvious. Nobody wants sex offenders to live in their neighborhoods, or even their cities. I'm a parent, and I would fight tooth and nail to prevent sex offenders from living anywhere that children may live, even if their victims were people they knew. It means NOTHING to me; what means EVERYTHING to me is they committed an atrocious crime against children. That's enough for me.
Unfortunately, these sex offenders have rights. If they are not in prison, they will probably get the ACLU to sue the city and we will have to spend thousands of dollars defending the restrictions.
The ONLY thing, therefore, is to create an amendment to the US Constitution, creating sex offender colonies to restrict where these convicted sex offenders live in the first place. How to do this?
The first thing that needs to be done is to create an outline of such an amendment. I looked at the process for how an amendment is created. Here is the process:
Under Article V, there are two ways to propose amendments to the Constitution and two ways to ratify them.
To propose an amendment
1. Two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to propose an amendment, or
2. Two-thirds of the state legislatures ask Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments.
To ratify an amendment
1. Three-fourths of the state legislatures approve it, or
2. Ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states approve it.
I would submit that the state legislature route would probably be more effective, but the congressional method can be tried first. It can effectively be used as a litmus test for voting, i.e., if someone doesn't want to vote for proposing the amendment in congress, their 2008 opponent can have a field day in saying that the incumbent protects sex offenders at the expense of children's safety, etc.
Such an amendment would solve many problems. First of all, the registry would not exist in its current form. Parents don't have to worry where the sex offenders live, as they all would, by law, have to live in the colony. This also eliminates the need for GPS, as the sex offenders would be restricted to the colony in the first place. No worries about convicted child molesters stalking your children's school or favorite park, or trolling on the Internet.
Next, registrants would constitutionally have to be subjected to non-court ordered search of their premises within the zone. In addition, all their mail and phone calls would constitutionally be authorized to be monitored for illicit activities. Internet usage would also be strictly regulated, with all file storage for every computer actually done at the server-level. In addition, emails would be assigned by the administration, no Instant messaging or accessing MySpace or other children sites allowed, and all keystrokes and sites visited will be recorded 100%. All costs for such usage would be borne out by the offender, incidentally.
All registrants would be required to work, with their paychecks being handled by the administrators. Deductions for medical, rent, all services, and everything else would be done automatically, and any credit the registrant have be used for discretionary income ONLY from the colony store. Also, EVERY registrant will be required to go through treatment appropriate to his crime, and be certified as cured; otherwise, he can be subject to a felony charge and returned to prison.
Now, please keep in mind one thing: The sex offender colony is NOT...repeat...NOT a replacement for tough, appropriately long, non-paroleable sentencing guidelines in the first place! THAT IS PARAMOUNT. The colony would exist because society cannot handle the large amounts of offenders in their neighborhoods, with the inherent terror parents have with the knowledge that offenders are around their children. Therefore, the colony is SPECIFICALLY for offenders to spend their entire registration periods in a constitutionally-approved manner, eliminating the need for registries as they exist now.
Keep in mind, many offenders also are able to leave the registry for certain crimes after a specified amount of time has passed. Therefore, once a registrant's time period has expired, he can petition the administration to be relieved of the duty to register and live in the SORERA zone. A panel of professionals, law enforcement individuals, and the offender's victim representatives, will go over the request. If they feel the offender is ready to join society, then he can leave the zone and live anywhere he wants, although he will have to permanently register with law enforcement wherever he goes for the rest of his life. Bear in mind, also, that any registrant who has to register for life will NEVER get the opportunity to leave the zone. Only the most benign of the registrants will ever be allowed to leave.
So there you have it. With a constitutional amendment, we can control where they live, where they work, and how they communicate, with confidence that they won't have a "relapse" when our own children are in striking distance.
All interested people are encouraged to write to me at man4theages@hotmail.com to further this just cause.
Whoah.
There's a little clip in Knocked Up about the sex offender registry and parents being scared of everything. It's pretty funny.
Not that it's funny to have sex offenders living next door, but still.
I haven't seen Little Children yet. I figure it would be a good rental for next month, after everyone has left me and before I leave this place.
wow, someone has certainly thought about this a great deal...Have you thought about the children that will eventually be born in the sex offender colonies? How would you like to tell someone that you grew up in a sex offender colony? or are we going to castrate the men and force hysterectomies on the women? The ideas presented are so far from constitutional on so many levels, we might as well throw out the constitution altogether. As far as I'm concerned, the registry is unconstitutional and should have been banned long ago! It seems to me that after prison, these people have payed their debt to society. Isn't that kind of the whole concept of prison?
Furthermore, who decides which level of sex offenders would be forced into the concentration camp- oops, I mean colony? What about the two teenagers who have sex- both wanted it, but one is 18 and the other is, say 17? Parents can land the 18 year old on that list for the rest of their life...
But I digress, the dangers are really no worse today then the dangers we faced growing up- they have just been repeatedly broadcasted in a fear mongering manner.
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