As I am done handing out candy for the night, I leave you all with Grits' post about the panic involved in the annual Halloween restrictions:
I'm glad to see this year more thoughtful critiques popping up of grandstanding by law enforcement and the annual, mostly fact-free media hype surrounding registered sex offenders and Halloween. (See prior, related Grits posts.) In Maryland, officials partially backed off their "scarlet pumpkin" strategy after becoming the butt of national jokes...
Laughing at stupid public policies is sometimes the best way to influence public opinion, so I'm glad to know the Saturday Night Live piece struck a nerve and many in the public apparently see through the hype. After all, trick or treaters are statistically much more likely to be hit by lightning than molested by a registered sex offender while soliciting candy....
The annual demagoguing over sex offenders at Halloween is a classic example of what security expert Bruce Schneier calls "security theater," hyping (and pretending to solve) a threat that in reality is extremely remote, even to the point of diverting resources from policing activities like DWI enforcement that would protect more people and save more lives. The approach is dumb, it's wrong, and it makes the public less safe.
Perhaps we'll look back sometime in the future and consider 2008 the year the media and the public began to re-think these thoughtless, hype-driven policies. I hope so.
Laughing at stupid public policies is sometimes the best way to influence public opinion, so I'm glad to know the Saturday Night Live piece struck a nerve and many in the public apparently see through the hype. After all, trick or treaters are statistically much more likely to be hit by lightning than molested by a registered sex offender while soliciting candy....
The annual demagoguing over sex offenders at Halloween is a classic example of what security expert Bruce Schneier calls "security theater," hyping (and pretending to solve) a threat that in reality is extremely remote, even to the point of diverting resources from policing activities like DWI enforcement that would protect more people and save more lives. The approach is dumb, it's wrong, and it makes the public less safe.
Perhaps we'll look back sometime in the future and consider 2008 the year the media and the public began to re-think these thoughtless, hype-driven policies. I hope so.
I agree. And I'm hopeful that policymakers will start focusing on real solutions to sexual violence as opposed to politically expedient ones.
I anticipate they will use the statistics of those rounded up for "non-compliance" as proof these laws are needed. A non compliant sex offender of course is by definition a danger to society.
So once again bogus statistics will be manipulated to the extreme, and the laws, rules and regulations will reflect that.
Posted by: | November 01, 2008 at 02:26 PM
...which is what has happened with the registry in general. The SOR is lauded as a "success" based upon compliance rates rather than abuse prevention.
Posted by: Ilah | November 02, 2008 at 10:51 AM