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Sex Offenders Have Rights Too
by Bryan Mack
10-26-2005
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There's 2 crimes I will never understand, and they're quite similar. I understand there's a time to kill, a time to steal, a time to cheat, and a time to lie. Most every crime, I can see reason behind. Kill all the animals you want, rob a few banks, drive 120 MPH in a school zone, frankly, I don't care. However, when it comes to....
A) Rape
B) Anything involving children and sexual acts
.... I just don't get it. Why would anyone, ever have a desire to do this? People who do either of these things are plain fucked up.

That being said, I am strongly opposed to all these damn sex offender regestries and "where sex offenders can live" laws. This is getting quite out of control and is not fair at all to the people who committed those crimes. It has gone so far that a 73 year old man in Des Moines now flat out cannot find a place to live. Iowa, as ridiculous as this is, is basically trying to disallow past sex offenders from living in the state.

Now you'll ask me, I'm sure, "Bryan, would you want to live by a sex offender?" or "Bryan, if you had kids wouldn't you want to know that a sex offender lived next door?" You probably know the answers to those questions, "no way" and "yes" Regardless, these laws are bullshit and unfair to the recently un-incarcerated. Based on the crime, we're judging someone after we've agreed to give them a second chance by letting them out of jail! How does this give them a second chance? Apparently we're worried they'll commit the crime again. If they're still that dangerous - leave them in jail. It's as simple as that. If you're going to let them out of jail, treat them like any murderer or thief. Do murderers or thieves have to go door-to-door to tell their new neighbors of their past crime? Do we say they can't live within 2000 feet of any park, school, church, or Starbucks? Do we build new parks just so it eliminates more square footage in which theives can live? Nope, this is only for sex offenders.

If we're trying to make their lives miserable by embarassing them by placing them in public and forcing them to live in certain areas and tell everyone and their dog that they're a sex offender, that's quite selfish. We're doing this to try to ruin their life via embarassment - and in the meantime - we're not looking out for society. Mind you that sitting in solitary confinement is more safe for society and a lot less dangerous to society. You mean to tell me that because a man lives 2000 feet from a school that he can't drive there? How fucking nieve is this idea? If a guy's going to do a crime, he'll find a way.

Let me sum this up quickly.... once someone is out of jail, they have their probation, and then they're free to live their life. If you don't wish for them to live their life out of jail, keep them incarcerated. Instead of wasting our $$ passing ridiculous laws like this, why can't we spend it on more psychological evaluations of these criminals to see wether they should be released or not. Repeat offenders are high - so we have 2 choices:
1) Leave them in jail
2) Ensure they're rehabilitated before we release them.

Everything else is a waste of money and a slap in the face to those whom we've given a "second chance" to. If a sex offender, murderer, thief, rapist, animal killer, politician, or drug dealer is let out of jail - he has the right to live wherever the hell he or she wants. Period.

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Note: this originally appeared on October 26, 2005's News page and can be found in the news archives

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