Although I fully support the idea behind sex offender registries, I also know that none will ever provide 100% protection. They are a good start, but will never be able to be a complete answer to the problem of keeping predators at bay.
Take for instance, Jerry Buck Inman, the convicted sex offender who has confessed to murdering Tiffany Souers. He was registered in both North Carolina and Florida, and yet that did little to protect his victim from him. In fact, for both states he had listed different "last addresses". And, being listed in a sex offender database did little to keep him from leaving the state.
We have no way of currently knowing how many sex offenders are leaving their home states, how many are failing to abide by registration laws. I know that within my county there are a little over 200 registered offenders... and to be honest, I have to be willing to accept that not all those convicted of sexual crimes make it to that list.
The registry will never be a fail proof system. Even the much talked about GPS devices now assigned to some sex offenders will not present a perfect answer to the problem.
The truth is that for as long as there are sexual predators out there, we will never have an answer as to how to be 100% safe from them. Even if we were to lock everyone convicted of a sexually natured crime up, we'd still have new generations of them, there would always be one more fine tuning his skills, evading capture, and creating more victims. It's as impossible to completely stop as is the robberies that happen everyday across the United States. We can up the security, but we must be willing to accept that someone will always find a way to avoid it.
Do I still believe that registration should be required? Yes, because all though it is not a perfect answer, it provides us with one more level of awareness. It can not stop all sexual crimes from happening, and there will more than likely always be loopholes in which people can slip through, enabling them to commit even more crimes- BUT the benefit knowing that someone has a sexually based criminal history gives more warning, and more of a chance of preventing their next crime than not knowing does.
No, it'll never be the fail proof protection we desire, but I'm willing to take something over nothing.
Categories: predators
Sex offender registries not foolproof
Take for instance, Jerry Buck Inman, the convicted sex offender who has confessed to murdering Tiffany Souers. He was registered in both North Carolina and Florida, and yet that did little to protect his victim from him. In fact, for both states he had listed different "last addresses". And, being listed in a sex offender database did little to keep him from leaving the state.
We have no way of currently knowing how many sex offenders are leaving their home states, how many are failing to abide by registration laws. I know that within my county there are a little over 200 registered offenders... and to be honest, I have to be willing to accept that not all those convicted of sexual crimes make it to that list.
The registry will never be a fail proof system. Even the much talked about GPS devices now assigned to some sex offenders will not present a perfect answer to the problem.
The truth is that for as long as there are sexual predators out there, we will never have an answer as to how to be 100% safe from them. Even if we were to lock everyone convicted of a sexually natured crime up, we'd still have new generations of them, there would always be one more fine tuning his skills, evading capture, and creating more victims. It's as impossible to completely stop as is the robberies that happen everyday across the United States. We can up the security, but we must be willing to accept that someone will always find a way to avoid it.
Do I still believe that registration should be required? Yes, because all though it is not a perfect answer, it provides us with one more level of awareness. It can not stop all sexual crimes from happening, and there will more than likely always be loopholes in which people can slip through, enabling them to commit even more crimes- BUT the benefit knowing that someone has a sexually based criminal history gives more warning, and more of a chance of preventing their next crime than not knowing does.
No, it'll never be the fail proof protection we desire, but I'm willing to take something over nothing.
Categories: predators
Sex offender registries not foolproof
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