A quarter of adults to face 'anti-paedophile' tests (UK), page 3

reply to post by stumason

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither freedom or safety.”

These things aren't "required" to keep children safe. The reason government even bothers with all this bureaucratic nonsense is, and contrary to what you may believe about people actually giving a damn, is the very solemn fact that parents today are not passing down the values that they themselves received (or rather neglected) when they were children. This is a cause for concern. Many parents today are just not psychologically equipped to raise children. This is what happens when people become irresponsible. Increasing burdens on society itself forces the government to make their own attempt at correcting common social problems, and this will largely come at the expense of those responsible few remaining.

Your attitude that this is the only way to protect our children, through the submission of our most inalienable rights to privacy, is symptomatic of our very age, a result of the dilapidation of conservative family values, of the dereliction of traditional social norms, and the abandonment of age-old cultural modes. As a part of this massive trend to urbanization, people just aren't psychologically equipped to deal with the artificial lifestyle such city life demands, what with the dissolution of the extended family (and the support network it provides), as well as the massive population densities of large cities, whose inhabitants are rarely closely related...

We need new social institutions to protect our children when it comes to high density urban environments with limited family support. This shouldn't be achieved through laws, which sacrifice our most important privacy rights, cultivated out of the Age of Enlightenment and the Democratic revolutions of the past few centuries. There are better ways. I'm certain key goals can be achieved with the use of not-for-profit organizations whose mission is the dissemination of advocacy information through all media sources and and through lobbying initiatives started by concerned citizens. Prison sentences can be more severe for those who offend.

We should NOT get into the attitude that these people will commit the crimes no matter what the severity of the sentence is. That's ridiculous. No one wants to go to jail forever. If they commit a crime, punish them severely and without remorse, with no opportunity for parole or lenience upon "good behavior". Capital punishment could be a suitable option as well. But it's not like we need to be monitoring every adult individual in the entire country so as to "prevent" crime. That is not the job of the judicial system. All it should do is defined crimes and assign punishments accordingly. Otherwise, they are inclined to overextend the purview of their powers. When the privacy of the citizenry is violated, they have broken the limit of their power. They must be kept in place.

[edit on 2-2-2009 by cognoscente]