Topological Pre-emptive Punishments
When I first heard about this blogging pedophile in LA who was (understandably) creeping parents out, but who wasn't breaking any law by standing around perving on little kids, I thought, someone's going to pass a stupid law. Yesterday he was served with a restraining order which orders him to stay at least 30 feet away from every person under the age of eighteen in the state of California. That's...undoubtedly physically impossible in many places at most times. He can't teleport into a wall when a family starts walking towards him on the street and breaches the 30 foot barrier, so this just amounts to saying he can't go anywhere, ever, except unpopular national parks. There are plenty of sex offender regulations that I think are counter-productively harsh, such as those which make most of a city off limits to anyone on a sex offender registry by requiring them to live at least x distance from every school, church, day care center, etc. Those at least apply to people who have been convicted of crimes (even if I often think that too many people end up on sex offender registries). This guy hasn't even been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. He's a repulsive person and unlikely to inspire anyone's sympathy, but it's not against the law to be a repulsive pervert. It's against the law to actually molest children. I sometimes think that public sentiment against child molesters would more profitably be channeled into educating people about the real threats, namely, the child's family and family friends. But then I think that might just engender harmful paranoia. The problem of what to do with proven sexual abusers who are almost certainly going to go on and commit more crimes is a thorny one. Measures that do nothing to lessen the threat to kids from their stepdad or skeezy uncle, and also violate the rights of people who may have committed statutory rape once in the far past but cleaned up their act, seem particularly dumb. But what would I do if I found out this guy was spying on my kids? It's against the law to arrange for people to fall down three flight of stairs, or to threaten to kill them. I guess if I thought I could get the cops to make his life difficult...hmm. But this is why we don't let individual crime victims and their families make laws on the spot, right, or there'd be people strung up from every tree?
jholbo-at-mac-dot-com
the real threats, namely, the child's family and family friends
And lest we forget, satanic pre-school program directors.
Posted by: The Modesto Kid | August 05, 2007 at 08:42 AM
It's against the law to arrange for people to fall down three flight of stairs, or to threaten to kill them.
only in a very technical, narrow legalistic sense.
Posted by: dsquared | August 06, 2007 at 09:44 AM
I often think that too many people end up on sex offender registries
True that.
Posted by: Matt Weiner | August 07, 2007 at 12:39 AM
I dislike mandatory registries and the public notice requirements for the same issues you list, but I feel increasingly comfortable with the "Dangerous Offender" and the "Long Term Offender" approaches as practiced here in Canada (and elsewhere). They do abandon the common law tradition of full discharge after pennance, I think this is realistic -- there really are people who are bent. Nature or nurture is beside the point when considering a 45 year-old repeat offender.
The clear difference is that these are in response to real crimes, not thought-crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_offender
http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/PUB/C20.htm
Posted by: Michael | August 07, 2007 at 05:52 AM
Of course, a result of these laws are many cases such as this. And this. Of course, is homelessness worse than "civil confinement"? It's all madness.
Posted by: Gary Farber | August 14, 2007 at 09:55 AM