Sex offender registry
The sex offender registry is a monumentally stupid idea. First of all, if you think these people are dangerous enough to be put on such a registry, then why release them from prison in the first place? If they've done their time and been released, that should be the end of that.
Secondly, why sex crimes, but not murder? Murder is a worse crime than rape. Yes, sexual assault is a horrible crime, but murder is worse, because nothing is more heinous than robbing someone of their very life, so why no Murderer Registry?*
Third, it is absurdly easy to get on the Sex Offender Registry. There are a myriad of examples of people who did nothing even remotely related to a sex crime. Like the guy that almost ran over a little girl who ran into the street to chase a ball; he grabbed her arm to chastise her, and got arrested for it. His case was thrown out, but he still got on the SOR for some reason.
Oh yes, and there are the minors who get on the SOR for taking nude pictures of themselves, the height of absurdity. Nobody who is under 18 should even be allowed to be put on the SOR for any reason to begin with, least of which for something that they're doing to themselves.** For that matter, nobody of any age should be on the SOR for having naked pictures of themselves of themselves as minors. It is not possible to sexually assault one's self, no matter how old or young you are, and therefore minors being charged and convicted with child pornography charges for taking nudes of themselves is just utterly absurd.
For that matter, mere nudes of children are not legally child pornography anyway, as long as they're not doing anything lewd. If it were, artists and nudism magazines would be in big trouble. Of course, the law does all kinds of bullshit to get around that; if they can prove a person masturbates to the image, the image can be of an Inuit child in full parka and it will be counted as child pornography. Knowing this, I am always skeptical when news articles say someone is arrested with something like "100 GB of child pornography," because for all you know, that could be one lone true CP pic, and the rest could be pictures of fully clothed children that would not normally be illegal.
Oh yes, and let's talk about treatment of sex offenders in prison. Like how it's a violation of human rights to castrate sex offenders, whether literally or chemically. I don't care how horrible the crime, nothing justifies violating their human rights, and nothing justifies state-sanctioned murder. Not even Josef Mengele would have deserved any of that. I find it disgusting that people are willing to become just as bad as the criminals - and often worse - in the name of "justice." Murder by the state is still murder, state-sanctioned torture is still torture, and chemical castration IS torture. It is not pleasant; whatever you're imagining it's like, you're probably wrong.
If you support chemical castration for sex offenders, you are condoning torture, and that makes you a torturer by proxy. If you support the death penalty, you are condoning murder, and that makes you a murderer by proxy. NOTHING justifies torture or murder, NOTHING.
And getting back on topic, if you support the sex offender registry, you are supporting a system that, in the act of trying to fix the sex offender problem, is actively making it worse, and has been used in horrible ways already.
Also, keep in mind that these days, you don't even have to be a sex offender (or any kind of offender) to get on the Sex Offender Registry. So oppose it on selfish grounds, if nothing else. Because our freedoms in this country are quickly eroding, and make no mistake, the state will start using every resource at their disposal, so it's only a matter of time before they start putting people they don't like on the SOR for no good reason. And when they do, do you really think they'll give you any more consideration or respect than they do to other sex offenders?
* = I suspect this is because in this primarily Christian country, people think others will live on after death, and therefore they do not value human life very much. I don't know whether life after death is real or not, so I have to assume that death is the end of a being's entire existence, the erasure of something utterly unique, that can never come back. And that is why I view murder as the most heinous crime there is, shy of genocide (which is basically mega-murder).
** = The SOR is so utterly stupid an idea, nobody should be on it; if they're too dangerous to be trusted out of prison, then DON'T RELEASE THEM FROM PRISON. Otherwise, the SOR is just making things worse by making it damned near impossible for people to rehabilitate, by ruining their lives so horribly that they'd be better off in prison, where at least they'd have shelter and food. But thanks to the SOR and the NIMBY effect, people on the SOR end up homeless and jobless. And if you think that they deserve that, then consider this: homeless, jobless people are harder to keep track of. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the SOR to begin with.
This was cross-posted from http://alex-antonin.dreamwidth.org/231593.html
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