Family watchdog, tracking sex offenders, and murder
BoingBoing has an entry pointing to Family Watchdog. Family Watchdog is a mapping service that shows the home addresses of convicted sex offenders in the US, with their mug shot, and the nature of their crime. Part of me says “bravo! Parents have the right to protect their kids!”, but another part of me is deeply creeped out.
As far as I can tell, the justification for publishing this information is that sex offenders are very likely to reoffend, and vulnerable groups (namely kids) must be protected. Okay, I can handle that. But this kind of listing seems like it would have a whole raft of unintended consequences:
- Mistaken identity leads to haressment of innocent people. This has already happened in at least one case in the US, where a woman put a sign on her neighbour’s lawn stating that he was a sex offender, except she’d screwed the address, and got the wrong guy. Oops.
- Vigilantism. The BBC has reported a story about a man who the police believe was murdered because he looked similar to an offender on a registry. Oops.
- Dangerous people shouldn’t be set free. If the legal system thinks that these people are dangerous enough to reoffend, they shouldn’t be put in a position where they can reoffend. They either shouldn’t be allowed back into mainstream society, or they should be monitored in such a way that prevents them from reoffending.
- Compounding false convictions. If someone is falsely convicted of a crime, then this system will only compound the crap they have to go through. Canada has a proud history of false convictions. The US has a history of incarcerating large portions of its ethnic minorities. Is our legal system trustworthy enough to put potentially innocent people at risk of murder?
- A false sense of security. Most sex offenders are known to their victims (90%, according to Family Watchdog). We shouldn’t be teaching kids to look at strangers with fear, when it’s much more likely that kids will be attacked by a family member, or someone in a position of authority.
These lists seem to be an indication that something has failed in the legal system. One of the roles of our legal system is to ensure that dangerous people shouldn’t be out in society. The symptom of this failure is that innocent people get smeared or hurt.
Fun fact: Family Watchdog is hungry for money, so hungry in fact, that they limit the information available to nonsubscribers. They also state that their website costs $4 million annually to run. They clearly care about your family so much that they are running their own small nuclear power plant to keep the site up in case of power failure. And don’t forget to check out their great store for all the cool fear-inspired merchendise.
Ugh. Maybe when I have kids, I’ll think these registries are a good idea. Who knows?
Are you nuts?? Do you know how many kids are molested each year, and how many this can save. And you’re bitching about the possibility of a few adults being wrongfuly harassed? do you have any clue what it feels like to be molested? Obviously not, it affects you’re whole life, and these kids are never the same. Even if they are hungry for money as you say, the amount of children that can be possibly kept away from these cretins is worth any amount. Our children are targets for these evil people and unless you are doing something to stop this yourself you really shouldn’t be writing this crap.