Saturday, March 19, 2011

Editorial: Reform state's sex offender registry to better fit the crimes

1:54 AM, Mar. 17, 201

Politics remains the art of the possible. So sometimes, a small step forward beats standing in place, especially with an issue as onerous as the online Michigan Sex Offender Registry.

Bills sponsored by state Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, would at least undo one of the most egregious elements of the registry: the so-called Romeo and Juliet cases involving consenting teens. Legislators should approve them.

The bills, approved by the state Senate last week, would enable teens convicted of having sexual contact with an underage partner to avoid the virtually lifelong housing and employment restrictions and public humiliation associated with being registered as a sex offender. Nothing in the legislation would make such liaisons legal; the age of consent would remain at 16.

The bills create a three-tiered list of offenses and would put state law in compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Act. Teenagers committing more serious sex crimes would remain on the registry, but those on the registry could also petition a judge to have their names removed.

"It's not perfect, but it's moving in a positive direction," said Sen. Steve Bieda, D-Warren, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Legislature should not stop here. The debate on these bills is an opportunity to create a legislative committee that would examine the entire registry and its costs to law enforcement agencies, and then recommend further reforms. Such changes should include giving judges more discretion over who goes on the registry, classifying convicts by their risk of reoffending instead of simply by their offenses, and placing more offenders on a private law enforcement registry instead of the public one.

Maintaining the accuracy of the burgeoning list has been a problem for the Michigan State Police. In some cases, names have remained on the list long after their convictions for misdemeanor sexual offenses have been expunged by the courts. Offenders are typically required to register for 25 years or life under Michigan law.

Child predators, the registry's original target, account for only a small slice of registrants. Michigan's sweeping 15-year-old registry, containing roughly 40,000 names, is one of the nation's largest. It's far too broad and includes people who pose little risk of reoffending. Pennsylvania, with a population 25% larger than Michigan's, lists only 10,000 people on its Internet registry for sex offenders.

"We end up putting so many people on this registry who are not going to get jobs or find places to live," said Shelli Weisberg of the ACLU of Michigan. "It spirals them back into the criminal justice system."

Getting rid of Romeo and Juliet cases should jump-start a broader debate on how to refine and improve an overreaching requirement that no longer serves its intended purpose.
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"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
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“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.

But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?

All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
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What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
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“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
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I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”