NEWS: California Law Would Require Lifetime Tracking Devices For Sex Offenders

Originally posted by texmiller
To make a long story short he met someone online that was a 19f and he being 24 thought nothing of it when he agreed to meet, mind you "she" sent the directions. When meeting he was arrested and was told he is now a sex offender. Now, he has to regester for 10 years as a sex offender.

She was a He and he was a cop that was 37.

How can this be justice?

I find this story very hard to believe.

Name me ONE state where its illegal for a 19 year-old to date a 24 year-old.

Your friend is lying

Good post astrocreep - this seems to be the subject that many of the brightest among us can't see beyond their emotions and what they've been programmed to believe.

What we have here are the thought police.

They are creating crimes that don't exist.

Next they'll want to jail people who shoot cops in computer games.

Can anyone say they've never had a bad thought? Are you all that perfect & squeaky-clean?

Maybe we should make all males capable of an erection be tested by placing sensors on their penis and showing pictures of various objects, males, females, animals young & old. Then anyone who is aroused by anything other what is allowed by the state should be tracked for life or castrated. You could argue that you would never put yourself in that position thus it could never happen, but I would argue since you are predisposed to get off on that subject matter that we have determined to be illegal - you are a criminal.

Better yet we can just download everyone’s brain patterns & put it through all sorts of different scenarios & the ones that make too many wrong decisions we'll execute - and thus prevent all future crimes, accidents, or mistakes.


[edit on 18-8-2005 by outsider]

Originally posted by texmiller
Agreed:
I myself have a friend that has been entrapped.
He was online on a public website for dating (a popular one in fact that alot of people and commmericals promote). I can't tell you which one because of the agreement on the parole. To make a long story short he met someone online that was a 19f and he being 24 thought nothing of it when he agreed to meet, mind you "she" sent the directions. When meeting he was arrested and was told he is now a sex offender. Now, he has to regester for 10 years as a sex offender.

She was a He and he was a cop that was 37.

How can this be justice?

There's something wrong here, no law has been broken if the facts in this post are accurate. 19 is legal age. Some thing smells.

Oops, Amuk beat me to it.

[edit on 18-8-2005 by intrepid]

Originally posted by Amuk

Originally posted by texmiller
To make a long story short he met someone online that was a 19f and he being 24 thought nothing of it when he agreed to meet, mind you "she" sent the directions. When meeting he was arrested and was told he is now a sex offender. Now, he has to regester for 10 years as a sex offender.

She was a He and he was a cop that was 37.

How can this be justice?

I find this story very hard to believe.

Name me ONE state where its illegal for a 19 year-old to date a 24 year-old.

Your friend is lying

I agree. If your friend is a reg. sex offender, he don't want you to know the truth. Do some investigating on your own & you might be surprised at what you learn.

I don't really have a problem with this and as far as rights go, well, they lost them when they took the victims rights away. What I don't understand is why are only sex offenders tracked? I have concerns about kids under 18 that commit murder and then have their records erased as if nothing happened. This then allows them to buy guns legally as just slide into a community as if everything is fine and dandy. Someone who commits murder is not of the right mind to begin with and when that person is a child it is a huge red flag of mental/emotional issues that I doubt were solved in a kid jail system.

They better define just what a sex offender is. I have a friend who is considered a sex offender. His offense? Having Consentual Sex with a 15 year old.....when he was 17... so if this law were to be enacted in Ontario he would be subject to lifetime tracking.

Don't get me wrong, Child Rapists have no rights and should be subjected to this law, I just believe we need to carefully think this through and not do anything rash, like saying every sex offender on file MUST be subjected to this treatment as I illustrated above not all official Sex Offenders are Sex Predators who prey on the weak and vulnerable.

BTW You don't need to get convicted to have your name on the Sex Offender Watchlist that Childrens Aid keeps. All that is required to get a name on that list is an accusation that's it.

[edit on 18-8-2005 by sardion2000]

What I dont understand here, after reading 4 pages of heated debate, is why people are ok with sex offenders being released from prison in the first place? If they are such a threat they should not be released from prison. Pedophile re-offending rates are around the 80-90% mark. These people shouldnt be released in the first place, forget tracking devices! Lock them in prison for life.

Also pedophiles are only one component of sex offender registries, like mentioned earlier, there are people on the sex offender registers that shouldnt be jailed for life or tracked. These include people caught urinating in the street, statutory rape and streakers.

The conspiracy theorist in me sees this as a plan to get lifetime tracking accepted by the general American population. To do this you simply target the most heinous and vile criminals we know of, sex offenders. The fact that these people probably shouldnt be allowed to remain in our society doesnt figure into the totalitarian response of lifetime tracking. If we conceed that these criminals should be tracked then a few decades down the line we wont question the lifetime tracking of all criminals. Afterall, wouldnt the same logic apply here? Wouldnt we all be safer if we knew if a burgular lived in the same block as us?

Dont let these people play on your fears and passion. There are better ways to treat pedophiles and other violent sex offenders and that is pass harsher laws and jail them.

[edit on 18/8/05 by subz]

This worried me a bit.

I remember a court case last year, where a guy had been dating a girl for about 7months. During this period she had lied to him about her age, including a fake ID and using her parents credit cards (she was claiming to be about 18/19 and looked it).

Now they met through an internet dating agency, which required you to be 18 and over to join and luckily the Judge ruled in the guys favour. He had no ability to check her true age and the girl had gone all the way to create a fully new identity...

and the worst thing is I see this all the time. You can visit any club, in any part of the "Western" world and find such things happening. Fake IDs are common practice and easy to get a hold of and a lot of cases are by mistake. Really if you are in a club for over 21's you expect everyone there to be 21 and over.

How many times has anyone here asked for a girl/boy's birth-certificate?

However, I see it's advantages for certain offenders - especailyl repeat offenders, however I'm pro-death penalty for them already. :|

Amuk, the guys wasn't telling a lie.

His friend just confused some of the facts, it happened over here and the Police arrested the guy after the parents of the girl found out about it (I think they broke up and she told them).

I'm concerned about grouping what I consider misdemeanor crimes into the term as sex offender which sounds heinous. I'll list some examples that I might think of. Someone is traveling by car and there are no restrooms around so he stops to urinate by his car. A policeman sees he stopped, investigates, and suddenly he is convicted and is a sex offender.

Another case might be a college prank to run across an empty field streaking. However the police knew something might be up so they had someone staked out and nabbed the guilty person. He or she is now a sex offender.

Another example, a woman is breastfeeding in a restaurant but someone passed a law or didn't allow her to do so. A cop arrives, arrests her, and suddenly she is now a sex offender.

Another example, a mother takes some digital pics of her baby taking a bath and kids playing around. Oops they are naked and she put her digital pics on her private computer without thinking about it. Her computer breaks down and the repair technician calls the cops and reports child pornography. She is arrested and is now a sex offender.

I see all of this as a possibility and these people don't need to be tracked for life in my opinion.

Originally posted by Odium
Amuk, the guys wasn't telling a lie.

His friend just confused some of the facts, it happened over here and the Police arrested the guy after the parents of the girl found out about it (I think they broke up and she told them).

He said his friend was the guy arrested so how could his friend confuse the facts?

What charges COULD they file against a 24 year-old man for dating a 19 year-old woman?

She is not a minor.
Was she forced, kidnapped, raped, etc?
Under what statute was he charged with a sex crime?

He said he was registered as a sex offender so it should be a simple matter to tell us what he was charged with because its a matter of public record.

If she was 16 I might believe it but 19?

somethings fishy

Originally posted by orionthehunter
I see all of this as a possibility and these people don't need to be tracked for life in my opinion.

It should be relatively simple to separate these people from those raping 9 year-olds wouldn't you think?

I agree that we need to make sure strict guidelines about who is or is not a sex offender should be followed. I dont think anyone here is suggesting a woman breast-feeding a child is a sex offender and should be tracked for life.

A fairly simple rule of thumb could be someone over 18 having sex with someone under 12. I think we can all agree an 11 year old is too young.

The only other thing I can say on this topic is that California voters should be very, very careful with the wording of any law they pass in this area. If not, the law of unintended consequences will rise up and bite them in the posterior. A good place to start might be with re-defining what a sexual offender is and is not. Sexual offender is entirely to broad a label to even think of requiring everyone convicted as such to wear an electronic tracking device for the rest of their life.

Ok maybe single sentences can make it easier to understand.

Forget about tracking devices! If they are that much of a danger still KEEP THEM IN JAIL!

Originally posted by Amuk

A fairly simple rule of thumb could be someone over 18 having sex with someone under 12. I think we can all agree an 11 year old is too young.

Oh yes, I even think 15 is way too young as well but what we are talking about here is those cases where we have people labelled and convicted of acts where there was no criminal intent. Two 16 year olds in the backseat of a car is one thing but tracking, kidnnapping and molesting a child is another. They should not be in the same catagory. I think we can most all relate to the first example but to the second, there should be no mercy and no rights.

However, the creation of a crime by authorities which might not ever occur has to be stopped. I am a very strict person regarding the law and I believe non are above it especially those charged with enforcment. If an undercover cop buys or sells drugs, he/she has broken the law just as the person they are entraping. Why, because it is illegal for ANY citizen to engage in that act. I understand there is a need for undercover officers to be able to observe a crime but the initiation of the crime is going way too far. How do we know a crime would even exist in some cases?

If I'm on my way home and I'm a bit put out with my intamite life as of late but I am just slightly frustrated, I may continue on home anyway. Now put a seductively dressed woman in my face offering to remedy some of that for some cash and you have altered the entire scenario as it may have played out without her there. You have initiated and cooerced a crime and made a criminal of someone who was originally just having a bad day and had no criminal intent.

Originally posted by intrepid

Originally posted by texmiller
Agreed:
I myself have a friend that has been entrapped.
He was online on a public website for dating (a popular one in fact that alot of people and commmericals promote). I can't tell you which one because of the agreement on the parole. To make a long story short he met someone online that was a 19f and he being 24 thought nothing of it when he agreed to meet, mind you "she" sent the directions. When meeting he was arrested and was told he is now a sex offender. Now, he has to regester for 10 years as a sex offender.

She was a He and he was a cop that was 37.

How can this be justice?

There's something wrong here, no law has been broken if the facts in this post are accurate. 19 is legal age. Some thing smells.

Oops, Amuk beat me to it.

[edit on 18-8-2005 by intrepid]

Tell that to my friend who has to live with this "Scarlet Letter" for 9years 8months and some odd days. Tell that to his family, friends.

They all know it was wrong for the police to do this to him and the reason why he was sentenced to probation is because his family couldn't afford a really good lawyer and a computer forensic speacilist.

O and one more thing.

You want to know the kicker.

My friends parents and himself have the evidence that she was 19 and the cops changed it two days after being arrested to 15. The evidence was thrown out and he had to take a plea bargin.

Truely sad.

I ask you again is this justice and the "american" way?

I think this law fails all common sense tests. If the person is so dangerous then don't release them. That simple. If that isn't the case then leave them the heck alone. Once you are released you have paid your debt to society. I have a problem with this life long harassment. Either keep them locked up or get over it.

Originally posted by Indy
I think this law fails all common sense tests. If the person is so dangerous then don't release them. That simple. If that isn't the case then leave them the heck alone. Once you are released you have paid your debt to society. I have a problem with this life long harassment. Either keep them locked up or get over it.

Agreed!