Some might think it’s bad enough to take a person who has paid his debt to society and make him a perpetual pariah. Some might think it’s worse when the cause is some technical offense that threatens no one and offer no potential for future harm. Some might think it’s sufficient to regulate them to the point where they will never be capable of getting a lawful job and have to live under a bridge for lack of housing that complies with impossible limitations.
But no. That’s not enough for the Richmond County, South Carolina, Sheriff’s Department. Mere registration and online availability of sex offenders isn’t sufficient to impugn them publicly and fit nicely within the regulations designed to preclude any possibility of their returning to a normal, law-abiding life. They needed to do more. From the local Fox affiliate, MidlandsConnect :
It’s not the most enjoyable thing to read, but law enforcement officials say it’s necessary.
“When you are convicted of certain offenses, you are required by the court to register as a sex offender,” says Captain Chris Cowan of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. “What we try to do is not only provide that information online, but to produce publications that are accessible to the community.”
Savannah Jernigan picked up a copy of the newly-released Lexington/Richland County Sexual Predator Offender’s Listing out of curiosity, and she was surprised by what she saw.
That’s right, the Sheriff is producing a local newspaper, listing the names, addresses and photographs of around 850 local sex offenders.
Currently, 40,000 copies of the newspaper have been distributed throughout the Midlands.
It’s an aggressive approach to monitoring sex offenders; however, Tiffany Edwards doesn’t feel that it’s unfair.
I think everyone should know where these people are living, especially if you have kids,” Edwards said. “I have a child, so I want to know who is near me and in my neighborhood.”
Of course Tiffany doesn’t feel it’s unfair. Tiffany isn’t in it. Tiffany doesn’t know anybody in it. Tiffany has children, and like most people, has no issue with sacrificing others for any sense of safety. Whatever is good for Tiffany, even if it doesn’t mean a thing. Hey, you can never be too careful, provided it doesn’t impact your life.
The idea that it’s not enough to make it available, but that the full panoply of sex offender information needs to be pushed into the hands of mothers, is another nail in a coffin that we thought was already closed as tight as possible. But Doug Berman sees opportunity this time around.
I wonder if they take advertisement in this newspaper. I ask about ads in the sex offender newspaper half-jokingly, but I do think it might be useful for there to be links to my blog and other resources that discussion sex offender sentencing law and policy in these publications. (Of course, I would be too keen on having my picture run with a plug for this blog.)
While this rag is produced by the cops, consider the potential for some entrepreneur to develop local sex offender papers everywhere, and make a killing on related advertisement. The potential is huge, from ads for Tasers and pepper sprays to entertainment directed at adults with peculiar tastes.
And if this doesn’t bother you too much because, well, it’s only those disgusting freak child molesters (yes, we know that’s not the case, but we’re channeling Tiffany here and she doesn’t think about all the other offenses that got tossed into the sex offender registration hopper that have no reason to be there, so let it go), the advertising potential for a weekly that lists drug offenders could dwarf the opportunity here. The hydroponics ads alone would make someone a fortune.
While availability of the information on registered sex offenders is sufficient to make life untenable, and essentially preclude the return to a law-abiding life if that’s what you thought a well-conceived sentence might accomplish, pushing this information into the hands of Tiffanys is outrageous. Obviously, one sheriff thinks this is a brilliant idea, or that its at least sufficient to win him a few friends, but if this becomes a trend, and it certainly has the potential, it’s brings a bad idea to a level of insanity.
And if it happens, be sure to check out the advertisers. No doubt there will be a huge opportunity for lawyer ads as well.
There’s a weekly paper in Pasco County, Florida that consists of nothing but the mug shots taken by the sheriff that week, alog with a statement of what the person is charged with… at $1 a copy, the paper sells very well…
When Connecticut state’s attorneys took a dislike to me when I filed a criminal complaint for theft against lawyers at a prominent statewide corporate law firm, they tried to entrap me for drug/and or sex crimes using women as lures. One of their aims besides jail time for my “crime” was registration for me in a sex offender website, I believe. If I had fallen for the trap, besides planting drugs in my car or my apartment, the woman stooge probably would have claimed we had engaged in crazy sex.
So from my experiences, I’ve come to understand intents and goals circulating through law enforcement. Sex offenses are the crimes du jour. On one nightly CT news channel, there is the de rigeur nightly report of a sex crime complete with photograph of the accused. If law enforcement can’t eventually get the picture at a sex registry site, in its coziness with the media, it will nonetheless be satisfied with accomplishing the next best thing–namely, a spot on the nightly news. One night I recall this CT news channel ran three sex crime stories back-to-back–a trifecta no doubt good for ratings and also for the umbrage of the audience.
I’ve got to admit though the power of the sex offender registries. I’m sure glad I wasn’t so careless or concupiscent to fall for the entrapment schemes. But having come to recognize the power of this tool for exposure of crimes, control of social undesirables, and informing the public of risks to it, I have come up with the ambition of other kinds of registries for similar purposes. One of these, for example, would be a registry of criminal and corrupt judges complete with pictures, addresses, and specified, verifiable incidents of crimes and corruption. There could also be like registries for abusive police officers, corrupt politicians, and others.
It’s rare that government has a good idea (look at New Orleans Katrina, the AfPak militarim) that private citizens would want to adopt. But I don’t think anyone would say that the sex offender registry is not a good idea for exposing and stigmatizing corrupt and criminal individuals. So why not use it innovatively as a remedy against the greater social ills of crime and corruption throughout government.
Don’t mean to veer to far off topic, but wasn’t Kathleen Rice, possibly New York’s new attorney general, doing some dopey variation on this, but for drunk drivers. Some kind of wall of shame?
It was her patron, former County Supervisor Tom Suozzi, who came up with the Wall of Shame, though it was still more pull than push as people had to go to see it rather than have it brought to them.
Veering even further off-topic, I’m in the Kathleen Rice television ad zone and I’m constantly amused by her pitches to, essentially, change legislation as attorney general.
I have no faith in the public’s ability to recognize the limitations on the powers of law enforcement to enact criminal statutes, so I suppose the ads are working. But, I can’t help giggle when I hear her proclaim, “And I will work make sure it’s illegal to…..” Lady, isn’t promising to enforce the laws you do have – overreaching as some of them are – enough on your plate?
Sorry – I’d been meaning to put that comment on this site somewhere for a few weeks.
Victor
Yea, people are getting so lazy that they don’t even want to be bothered leaving the house for the excitement of exercising a daily, sustaining bit of moral indignation. If the Wall of Shame is any farther than a walk to the trash can, it probably doesn’t work. Just another wasteful government project; nice try, but no cigar, hardly any fear generated, hardly any increased bonding between law-enforcement and regular, manipulable people. Hence the South Carolina Sheriff’s Department’s publication of the newspaper with sex offenders. Now South Carolina residents will have a cause for moral indignation delivered to them. Makes you wonder how fearful they really feel when the Department has to go to such imaginative lengths to try to make them fearful. Apparently the Sheriff doesn’t find the citizens fearful enough for him with all of the information on sex offenders already available.
If there need to be sex offender registries, I want them to include sufficient details of the crime so that I can distinguish somebody who got caught relieving his bladder by the side of the road and somebody who’s raping babies; a 17-y/o having sex with her 15-y/o boyfriend and a serial rapist/torturer. You know, tell the difference between someone who’s an actual threat and somebody who isn’t likely to re-offend.
This is an excellent idea.
We continue to divide up society, control thru registries after the fact. You’ve paid your debt to society now you must continue to be punished for the rest of your lives, just like non-violent felons they are all lumped in with anyone felony conviction.
We are slowly creating a huge class of down trodden without regard to the consequences of of such a creation. They have already been found guilty, punished by the courts now society will continue to punish them by ensuring they’ll never have another real job, they’ll never be able to live anywhere without running afoul of the law.
And they will carry the sex offender scarlet letter with them forever regardless if they are a rapist or they had sex with their 15 year old girlfriend when they were 16.
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
— James Baldwin
Not to mention the fact that the more we expand every crime into a felony, we are disenfranchising the convicted. Here in Virginia, good luck getting that right to vote back after your larceny over $200 conviction.
Its seemed that, at the beginning, the offender registries were designed to identify those individuals who were deemed to be those who possessed a high level of recidivism–based on years of studies, science, and analysis.
Not only has much of the science been debunked, but the program has creeped into anything involving the human groin or portrayals of it.
Now, we are taking it to the next level by pushing the limits of public humiliation.
The only consolation that I can give my clients is that most of my juries/judges are taking registration into consideration and adjusting jail and any other punishment accordingly.
If I knew that one of my clients was going to be living in a jurisdiction that published these “magazines,” I’d make it into a huge issue during the sentencing hearing (and merits if the judge would allow it).