What are They Trying to Accomplish?

I guess I am a dimwit--the state of Georgia has me baffled.
They turn sex offenders loose--won't allow them to live anywhere-not even in the woods--why not just keep them in Jail?

If every state would keep them in jail--we'd know where they are--in JAIL!

Too easy!

I always have trouble with those situations. I've been on committees on what to do with abusers and batterers, how to keep people safe, how to put the criminals in jail.

But those people will not get life sentences, rehab is questionable, and they won't magically disappear from our society.

It also depends on the crime, what level of abuse, and under what circumstances.

There are no easy answers.

9/29/2009

Alice..

I have always said and will say
sex offenders should either be given
life in prison no parole or execution.
Everyone knows they will do it again
and again, society can't chance children
going through that horrible trauma..

Cheers...Joe

Carol and Joe,
Great points!

I think if I couldn't live anywhere, work anywhere, why live?
I think they should be incarcerated for life.

They are sick and should not be neglected or mistreated. If they wsih to die--execute them painlessly--i.e. blow chloroform under thier door while they are asleep.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/29/iphone.app.fight.crime/index.html

I do declare--such apathy. Can't even get anyone worked about the sex offenders.

Dave answered my question--said the state pf Georgia of Georgia wants them to live elsewhere.

Do you want them, to live next to you?

There are individuals who have committed the crimes of abuse and are not ill. In a weak moment of their lives of raging hormones or just plain rage, they committed an act punishable by a prison sentence. Not all abusers act again.

I know a sexual abuser. As far as I know and believe, he was a young man away from home with raging hormones making a very bad choice. It has taken him many years to deal with the crime as well as his punishment. He now has a good steady job where I am sure there was a background check. It is not the job he would have wished for, not the career that would have made his life complete, but he values it greatly in that it enables him to participate in honorable parts of his life that he loves. I do not believe he has an illness. He was rehabbed in his heart, not from the outside.

I spent a great deal of time supporting him and encouraging him. He would do the "poor me" bit and I'd never buy into it, always telling him what I believed he could do and be.

Last year when I was very ill, I told him I needed to spend time alone, that he couldn't come by all the time he had in the past. He emailed and called me several times with his successes and gentle words. I think it was a good thing I wasn't there as in the past. He knew he had a chance at life, that he could do it himself and my not being there re-enforced that belief.

I wish him the best. I hesitated to put this here, but felt it would not harm him but also show that we cannot generalize.

Carol

It is very hard for a person to get on with their life after they have been in prison. In Florida and Georgia, and in most other states, there are very few companies willing to hire an ex-con. And it's not just murderers and rapists and sex offendors, it's any ex-con.

There are times when a person has been found guilty of a crime that carries a 30 day sentence, and then the judge puts him on probation. A week later he fails to make the payment to the court and is picked up. Now he is guilty of violation of probation, and given 11 months and 29 days in jail. However, once again he is put on probation. By now he's probably lost his job because he missed time during his initial two or three days in jail awaiting his trial, and of course he can't pay the fine. He is picked up again for violation of probation, sentenced to two years in prison, and carted off to do the time. When he gets out he finds that he can't get a job, he's lost his car and has no place to live, and the only people that will associate with him are other ex-cons, which is against the law. So what is he to do?

And how about the 18 year old guy who has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, and then marries her, and is then charged with a sex crime? He carries that stigma the rest of his life, and most people just see the term sex offendor and don't have a clue what it was all about. The problem is that he's stuck with it. I agree with Marie, there has to be a way to make all sex crimes not the same. There should be different degrees, or else all crimes of that nature should not be called sex crimes.

And I also agree that our system says that once a person has paid for their crimes their debt to society is no longer owed. We all know that just isn't the way it is, but nobody ever addresses it.

I agree. People always think the worst. Say someone was convicted of CONTRIBUTING TO THE DELINQUENCY OF A MINOR and everyone envisions terrible events. Around here if you give a 16-year-old a cigarette, that's the rap. I ran up against this sort of thing all the time when I covered the courts. To get it over with right at the beginning a friend of mine always introduced himself by saying, "My name is Jimmie Hendricks and I served twenty years in prison for a murder unintentionally committed."