sex offenders lists

[zedaxax]

complicated question you ask

it has two sides

but in the end its about privacy and danger

[Biggles]

The ideal situation would be to be able to answer Yes. However, the experience to date has been rather unfortunate. One of the Sunday Newspapers tried to lead on this and the result was not good. Several people were attacked and cars and houses burned. Rather ridiculously, the house of a female Paediatrician was also attacked (as if an offender would place their crime as a job title in the phone book )

Recently, a house in Scotland was subject to similar treatment when it was thought that Maxine Carr was living there. People came from England to beseige the house - the fact that the occupant was a Scottish girl from that town seemed not to deter them once they had decided they had their quarry.

These actions were undertaken by very stupid people and therefore, unsuprisingly perhaps, the wrong people and property were attacked.

The sad fact is that there appears to be a pathetic undercurrent of vigilante mob violence in most societies and these people do not seem to have the ability to handle the kind of responsibility that goes with open information on such things

Arguably information on known drug dealers should also be made available as these people destroy more children's lives than molesters do.

I haven't voted as I would like to vote Yes but can see it wouldn't work and I am reluctant to vote No.

[Rick Phlegm]

I haven't voted as I would like to vote Yes but can see it wouldn't work and I am reluctant to vote No.

Same with me, but I took the plunge anyway.


You all know what I mean tho

[vidcc]

please understand everyone that a "no" vote isn't a vote to "let them get away with it"

[Chewie]

As Biggles has pointed out there are a lot of intellectually challenged people that see a list published by a tabloid and act on their hastily jumped-to conclusions, but I believe that those terrible mistaken-identity incidents would not occur if an official list was published.
The very possibility of sex offenders disappearing is a little alarming until we consider that even when authorities know where these bastards are it does not help prevent these crimes anyway and, let's face it, we'd rather they didn't do it than they did and were caught... prevention is better than cure.

[MagicNakor]

I think they should be made available to the public. We have a right to know who is living in our communities.

I don't entirely agree that vigilante groups against sex offenders are wrong. The law is much too lenient with respect to these monsters (IMHO). Some asshole molests his daughter and gets five or ten years... and his daughter a lifetime of horrendous memories? I don't agree that there is ever a repentance for that. I'd shed no tears to hear that a child molester were beaten to death by an angry mob. If it were my child involved, he'd be dead before he ever got a trial.



I completely agree with that statement.

You're aware that Karla Homolka is being released this summer then? Free to go wherever she pleases. Twelve years kind of crept by quickly.

[Cheese]

No, people are idiots.

And micro tracking devices? What? :speechless:

Where does it end? Next you'll be tracking former drug dealers, former football hooligans, drinker drivers...until we're all being tracked.

[j2k4]

Chose the 1st "yes" option.

As to vigilantism:

1. Pedophile offends, is caught, tried, convicted, released.

2. Vigilante confronts/abuses/maims/kills pedophile.

3. Vigilante is prosecuted, etc., etc., etc.,.......

The law works, and life goes on...I see no difficulty here.

[cpt_azad]

Yes, so not only can we be aware but because it'll humiliate them enough so they learn their lesson.

[Snee]

What if they get put on one of those lists and it turns out later they didn't do it? Ever so often it happens that someone gets accused of rape when it isn't true and similar. Some people have been known to make that kind of allegations for petty revenge or whatever.

Even if they get proven not guilty, their names'll circulate around on public lists for ages before they get taken off.

Tho' if they get caught redhanded and there are no possible ways to doubt they did what they did I say they ought to be surgically neutered.

EDit: and by allowing such a list to be published, we do open the door to vigilanteism and whatnot, as well as further registration of criminals. Some people are doubtless going to see this as a license to take the law into their own hands as they get a list of targets from the government itself. And where there is people there will be ****ups.