reply to post by crazydaisy
Or how about you teach your children/grandchildren not to go into stranger's yards? What is he going to do through a fence? Snatch one? You have more
than one, the other could run over and tell an adult that the first one had somehow been picked up and pulled over the fence, which wouldn't happen
because people who have already been convicted of something are not likely to commit a crime in broad daylight with witnesses around.
They certainly wouldn't commit a crime within their own block, they would be the FIRST person the police would look into if a child went missing!
You're just allowing yourself to succumb to overhyped fear. Even child molesters don't molest every child they see, they do it maybe once or twice a
year if they manage to not get caught. And if they're young enough to not know how to scream if someone tries to get them to come with him, they are
not old enough to walk to the bus stop alone. I wasn't allowed outside alone until I was 11, and I wasn't irreparably damaged by it. Friends who had
older siblings were allowed more freedom because they had someone to look after them, but most kids these days do not walk to school or a bus stop
alone until they are at least 10, at which point you can obviously tell them strangers are not to be trusted and expect them to understand that.
And that bus crime would not have been prevented by branding. School districts do not hire anyone who has a police record of any crime associated with
a child. That would have still happened regardless of laws and punishments.
Not to mention, you couldn't retroactively brand someone for a crime they committed and had already been punished for. It would take over a decade
for this to be a legitimate means of telling if someone had been convicted of a sex crime against children.
And do you have any idea how many people are wrongfully accused of and proven guilty of crimes in a decade? More than you would think. Children are
growing up much earlier than they did when you were a child, and it is commonplace nowadays for an unruly child in a grocery store to scream that
their parent they are shopping with is not their parent, they can and do accuse parents of crimes that have not been committed. I know a woman who
tapped her daughter on the leg (not even leaving a red mark for a second) and her daughter told her father that the mother BEAT her, which prompted a
social services inquiry. The fact of the matter is that this type of punishment would cause innocent people to lose all social connections, and would
cause reformed criminals to revert back to criminal activity due to people refusing to allow them into their lives because of the branding. It would
also cause curious 5 year old children to ask their parents what a pedophile is, why that man is being punished for something. I highly doubt that you
would have wanted to explain pedophilia to your children or grandchildren at the ages they are most likely to notice the difference and ask those
kinds of questions (3-5 years old). It is better for their mental health to be simply told not to go anywhere with strangers, than to tell them that
only the people with a P on their foreheads are bad. There is such a thing as first-time offenders, and this would not protect you against them.
childprotection.lifetips.com...
"In one year alone, approximately 4,300 child molesters in 15 states were released from imprisonment.
* Of the 4,300 child molesters released, approximately 3.3% were rearrested within three years for another sex offense against a child. "
3% reoffend in the near future? That is almost nothing. Assume that that number repeats itself, give the offenders an average age of 30. ("*
Approximately 25% of child molesters were age 40 or older. ")
142 reoffend in 3 years. Now, immediately afterwards is when someone is most likely to re-offend (* Of those released sex offenders who were accused
of another sex crime, 40% were arrested for the new offense within a year after their release.), but we'll take the more pessimistic view and say
those rates continue. Assume an average death at 80 years old, or at least an average onset of dementia making the person unable to continue
committing crimes. This brings us a total of 2151 out of 4300 who reoffend. So about half of those convicted will NOT reoffend in their lifetime. This
means that you are unfairly punishing half of all those who commit the crime. You are literally branding them for life for something they feel
shameful of and never intend to repeat. You are causing them a life of solitude, because no compassionate person would want to be with a child
molester especially if everyone they met would know about it and judge them both based on it.
And once again illustrating that strangers are not the only danger, "One-third of the convicted offenders had committed a crime against their own
child." And that's just those who were convicted. Those molested or raped by their parents are much less likely to report it to the police than
those attacked by a stranger, because the second parent is not going to pretend not to believe their child was molested by a stranger.
And for those claiming that people who commit sex crimes against a child cannot be rehabilitated, perhaps this is why they so rarely are: "According
to the Survey of Inmates of State Correctional Facilities, the judge ordered approximately 13% of child victimizers into a treatment program."
How are you supposed to rehabilitate someone without even trying?
Oh right, by refusing them access to real counseling, and isolating them from society by branding them across the forehead. Right. Make them better by
making their entire lives a living hell. Great way to make someone be a better person.