Maps! We Got Maps!
Sex offender in your neighborhood? Don't know? Why not map them and find out?
I am conflicted over web applications like this. I have a hard time balancing my concerns for civil liberty with the need for public safety. I tend to believe once you serve your time, you should be done. You have in one sense paid your debt to society. However, this has to be balanced with the indisputable and ugly fact that sex offenders (especially pedophiles) are generally recidivists waiting for an opportunity. I'm not bright enough to know what the answer is. I lean on the side of full disclosure, but I might be wrong. In any event, if you live in Texas, you might scare yourself a little by typing in your address.
I am conflicted over web applications like this. I have a hard time balancing my concerns for civil liberty with the need for public safety. I tend to believe once you serve your time, you should be done. You have in one sense paid your debt to society. However, this has to be balanced with the indisputable and ugly fact that sex offenders (especially pedophiles) are generally recidivists waiting for an opportunity. I'm not bright enough to know what the answer is. I lean on the side of full disclosure, but I might be wrong. In any event, if you live in Texas, you might scare yourself a little by typing in your address.
posted by T at 3:08 PM
1 Comments:
We can expand the problem. Many criminals, not just sex offenders, are recidivists. And, in many cases, persons convicted of certain crimes are in some sense restricted after they have served their time. I don't know if Martha Stewart can ever lead a public company again, but I do know that Richard Nixon and several of the Watergate folk were disbarred. So there is a precedent for continuing some form of punishment after a person's sentence is complete.
That having been said, I believe that it is unreasonable to say that a released sex offender is not allowed to live anywhere in the United States, which is what the activists are effectively proposing. If a sex offender can't live in neighborhood A, or neighborhood B, or neighborhood ZZZ, eventually the sex offender ends up floating on a barrell somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. And that, my friend, is the very definition of "cruel and unusual."
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