Georgia law puts non-offenders on sex registry
Child molesters, rapists and other sex criminals often remain dangerous even after they’ve served their time, and Georgia’s sex offender registry is designed to keep a leash on them.
The law, one of the nation’s toughest, tracks most offenders until they die, dictating where they can live and work.
But the law has a peculiar twist: There are a growing number of registered sex offenders in Georgia who did not commit a sex offense. The law applies to anyone convicted of kidnapping or false imprisonment of a minor, regardless if a sexual act was committed. (continued…)
I have very little faith in the concept of the sexual offender registry. This is based on experience: I am personally aware of at least one child rapist who is not on the registry thanks to a plea-bargain. The conviction on record is felony child abuse, not indecency with a minor. This story leaves me with even less faith in the idea. Not only are there offenders who aren’t on the registry, there are registrants who aren’t offenders.
In other words, the sexual offender registry (at least in its current form) is little more than a clumsy, brute-force instrument. It certainly doesn’t appear to actually protect public safety.
At the same time, though, research shows that many sexual offenders will strike again. In the situation where I was involved, it was a clear case of abused-becoming-abuser. The rapist sincerely did not believe he had done anything particularly awful or unusual. That scares the hell out of me for all kinds of reasons.
So while I might quibble about the right to live or not live somewhere, I don’t argue the idea that the public does need to know the identity of sexual predators. It just seems that the sexual offender registry, based strictly on the criminal conviction, is not the right way to handle it. At the same time, we can’t register offenders on a case-by-case basis. That requires making specifics of sex crimes rather more public than they are. That penalizes the victim as much as the criminal — and the victim has already been through enough.
I’m more familiar than I care to be when it comes to the psychology behind this sort of situation. Neither harsher sentencing nor forced medical treatment will stop sexual offenses upon minors. This is not me being a bleeding-heart liberal. This is cold, hard fact. You cannot stop a disease with the threat of imprisonment or death. You cannot give mental illness treatment to a person who doesn’t acknowledge having the problem.
In fact, I’m not entirely sure that sexual abuse of children can be stopped. It can only be managed. The question is thus how to manage it. Clearly, the registry isn’t working. The question then becomes…what will?