Michael Connelly at Corrections Sentencing has a nice post discussing the problem of the "one size fits all" approach to sex offender sentencing and regulation:
We talk here a lot about the poor policy, human tragedy, and waste of our needed resources based on the underlying story that all offenders are the same, all "bad guys" whom we the "good guys" should use as examples to show we're better than they are. In too many cases, those "bad guys" exist, but the examples we make don't logically stop true "bad guys," by definition. And in the meantime, the offenders who are accidents, screw-ups (think "My Name Is Earl"), and hardened but salvageable get treated in ways that ensure many more of them than necessary end up victimizing us again, and often worse.
This is particularly true in the area of sex offenders. Many of those "guys" are truly "bad" and deserve what we parcel out. But our "one size fits all" approach in this area leaves a tremendous amount of self-inflicted damage in its wake as we punish people who did something stupid, not serial. The Tulsa World today has a great story on a woman treated to the residency restrictions so popular for a single idiot thing she did when younger. As a result, she and her 16-year-old daughter could only find housing among pedophiles and rapists. Keep in mind as you read the story that OK really does treat all sex offenders, of any offense, as the same "bad guys" and only now is considering a tiered classification system that might bring relief to former offenders who find themselves in this woman's situation.
Here is the link to the Tulsa World article discussed in the post. There have been so many persons caught up in the sex offender nets that you wouldn't expect. There was the guy who exposed himself at a party and was a plaintiff in the Iowa case. There was also the mom in Georgia who bought her daughter birth control when the daughter was the victim of statutory rape (and, I believe, the daugther is now married to that "rapist"). In this case, a young woman flashed and solicited an officer and received a deferred sentence. Now, the woman is a mother struggling to get by despite the numerous restrictions placed upon her because of her status as a sex offender.
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