Know your neighbors (sexual predators)

young snitch

the murderous repeat offender is such a small percentage of the people who are considered sex offenders by megan's law.

http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectID/CE94CFF2-60DD-4360-B25676BA311048C7/104/143/153/ART/

In the fervor of cracking down on pedophiles and rapists, few foresaw the devastating impact these new notification laws would have on those whom no one expected to appear in these databases -- but appeared nonetheless. Gay men convicted of sodomy before 1976 when it was still a criminal offense; teenagers convicted of statutory rape for having sex with their teenage sweethearts; drunken partygoers convicted of indecent exposure after streaking hijinx -- these and other people caught in moments of indiscretion have been labeled sexual offenders and pulled into the registration system.

alafairnadia

the real problem with Megan's law (as a former criminal defense attorney) is not what it does to murderous or rapist offenders. it is what it does to, for instance, people who commit statutory rape. they are classified no differently than someone who rapes and kills an 8 year old. that, to me, is a huge flaw.
unfortunately, the courts don't agree. and I don't practice anymore.

jjb

Yeah, that's probably the main reason I have a problem with Megan's Law. It's extremely difficult to have sympathy for the dude who forces his way into a woman's buidling and rapes her, or the dirty old man who molests kindergarteners, but what about the 21-year-old man (or woman) who gets involved with a teenager, or the person (to use an earlier example from this thread) who gets wasted and exposes himself in a public place?

These people may be immature and lacking in good judgment, but do they deserve to be stigmatized for the rest of their lives? Is it fair—and does it even make any sense—that their names will forever appear on a public registry of criminals while, for instance, the dude next door who once robbed somebody at gunpoint (or drove drunk and killed somebody with his car, or punched somebody in the face for looking at him the wrong way, or whatever) gets to enjoy relative anonymity?There are plenty of law-breakers who'd make more worrisome neighbors than a guy who showed his weenie in public, but we don't get to look up their names on a registry, so why should we be able to look up anybody who ever broke *any* law related to sex?