Sex Offender Registration

*In my best Helen Lovejoy Voice*

"Won't someone think of the Children"

Yes, I know that is the outcry of everyone that thinks the sex offender registration is a good idea.  It doesn't matter what rights are trampled on, it doesn't matter what we do to anyone Else's life, as long as we think of the children.  After all, you gotta keep an eye on them there sex perverts.  They are lurking everywhere, behind every tree, just waiting to grab our kiddos and run.

And we also know, from reading the reliable (cough) news reports that 3000% of them there sex perverts, once they got a taste of them children, will want to do it again.

Ok, most frivolity aside.... 3000% is an exaggeration, but then again, the numbers that are reported are an exaggeration too.  We are told that over half of the people arrested on a sex crime, will offend again.  If you listen to the reports, it is the highest rate of recidivism of all crimes.  But they are not quite right.  The actual number is between 8 and 13% and has one of the lowest recidivism rates.  And for the record, the sex offender registration list does nothing to lower that number.  The reason being, the people most likely to re-offend, do not register anyway.  So we end up with a lot of people out there, who have made a mistake in their life, who are trying to put themselves back together, and have to go down somewhere between every quarter and every year, and register.  And who is on that list?  The worst of the worst?  Not hardly.

There is one person on the sex offender list, because he was in a hotel room, having, um, relations with his bicycle.  The made used her master key, and walked in on it, and there you have it, he is on the list.

Another person is a priest, in Northern Colorado... now wait, he wasn't one of THOSE priests.  He was jogging at 3:00AM on an enclosed track, and got too warm, so he took his clothes off.  He's on that list.

This is not to mention all the guys who were underage themselves, had an underage girlfriend who led them on, then called rape when their parents found out.  They are all on that list too.

So I ask you, just exactly who are we trying to protect?  The children, or our own self-righteous bigoted ideas that we are actually doing something.  I think you know how I see it.