The List

March 7, 2016 7:57 PM

When juveniles are found guilty of sexual misconduct, the sex-offender registry can be a life sentence.--Longform by Sarah Stillman in the New Yorker.
posted by MoonOrb (21 comments total)

You know how people look back at phrenology and think "what the fuck were these quacks thinking?"

The plan also included a monthly polygraph (a hundred and fifty dollars) and a computerized test that measured how long his eyes lingered on deviant imagery (three hundred and twenty-five dollars). He would also have to submit to a “penile plethysmograph,” or PPG. A gauge is wrapped around the shaft of the penis, with wires hooked up to a laptop, while a client is presented with “sexually inappropriate” imagery and, often, “deviant” sexual audio.

This is our 21st century phrenology. I thought we all fucking learned when we were 14 that boners are completely involuntary and can't be controlled consciously anymore than we can control the weather by thinking it.
posted by Talez at 8:11 PM on March 7, 2016 [45 favorites]

Holy shit that was indeed a longform. We, as a society, are fucking barbarians. Barbarians that demand blood for truly youthful indiscretions. Draco himself would approve heartily of what we've done. The worst part is we can't fix it because no matter the noble intentions, helping sex offenders is an attack ad that basically writes itself.
posted by Talez at 8:30 PM on March 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Within about 12 years we'll end up stoning them in the public square -- which will actually be more convenient than it sounds since they'll be there anyway, because most of them are going to end up homeless due to the fact that landlords won't rent to them and no one will hire them.
posted by jamjam at 8:40 PM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Deviant imagery"? "Sexually inappropriate imagery"? Are we talking about (real or faked) child porn here? Our legal system's response to crimes like the ones described here involves forced viewing of child porn?

I am amazed that any of the people profiled in this article kept their sanity.
posted by ostro at 8:43 PM on March 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

A ten year old, and it follows her until she's at least 35. Jesus wept.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:47 PM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just the idea that someone in the "justice" system can argue, with a straight face, that a teenager who takes a naked picture of themselves is both the sex offender and the victim makes me want to leave this country.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:51 PM on March 7, 2016 [48 favorites]

Isn't it a life sentence for anyone who gets that designation?
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:03 PM on March 7, 2016

Back in 2006, she helped bring a Florida father, Mark Lunsford, to Capitol Hill, to tell the story of how his daughter, Jessica, had been kidnapped, raped, killed, and buried by a man with a long history of abusing children. Together, they lobbied for the passage of Jessica’s Law, in Florida and beyond. But, soon afterward, Rumenap learned that Lunsford’s eighteen-year-old son had been arrested in Ohio, for heavy petting with a fourteen-year-old. Now the teen faced inclusion on the very registry that his father had fought to bolster in his murdered sister’s name. “When these laws started getting implemented and enforced, we didn’t realize what would happen,” Rumenap told me. “Now here we are, stuck asking, How do we solve this problem?”

This seems to be a pretty common pattern, where people don't realize what they're doing/perpetuating until it affects them. (See also: Men publishing thinkpieces about understanding feminism now that they have a daughter, politicians softening on anti-LGBT legislation once one of their kids comes out, etc.)
posted by CrystalDave at 9:06 PM on March 7, 2016 [29 favorites]

I play acted sex with my male cousins in the loft of my grandfather's barn. We were about 11-12. Basically we pretended we were married, we'd hop into the horse sled and pretend it's a car, we'd do groceries, then we'd climb up to the loft into our house that we built with hay bales. And then he would lay on top of me. Fully clothed, no kissing, and it wasn't really arousing. It was just exploring. Then when I was about 12 me and my female cousin would run around my basement naked. These to me seem like things that maybe the parents should intervene and say "this is not ok, don't do that", and that's the end of it. We were children. We didn't know. How can you punish someone that didn't KNOW?
posted by Hazelsmrf at 9:19 PM on March 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I am amazed that any of the people profiled in this article kept their sanity.

I am seriously amazed more of them haven't killed themselves, because we're preventing them from making much of a life.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:44 PM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Jfc. The "treatment" is way worse than the offense. I kinda wonder if the "treatment providers" shouldn't themselves be on the registry but get away with it because "well we're training offenders out of their sins, see".
posted by divabat at 11:14 PM on March 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Within about 12 years we'll end up stoning them in the public square -- which will actually be more convenient than it sounds since they'll be there anyway, because most of them are going to end up homeless due to the fact that landlords won't rent to them and no one will hire them.

Update: we've moved the stoning to the overpass.
posted by phearlez at 5:51 AM on March 8, 2016

Sometimes I feel like a broken record about this particular point, but

because most of them are going to end up homeless due to the fact that landlords won't rent to them and no one will hire them

Homeless for about 3-4 months, maybe, until the sex offender registry catches up with them (or they get picked up on a petty loitering or trespass charge), at which point they face a brand new, enhancable, and easy to prove felony charge for failure to comply with the sex offender registry, because being homeless is incompatible with the registry. Which is to say that it is actually very close to a literal life sentence, rather than a metaphorical one -- as in, a lot of sex offenders on the registry (i.e. the poor ones or folks without supportive family networks) will spend their lives in prison due to the initial offense and its collateral consequences.

Another fun fact, even those folks who were convinced in the 90s (or earlier) before registry laws got so strict can and are grandfathered in to the 20 year or lifetime registry requirements, because the new laws lengthening those periods of time have been held to be administrative not penal, and therefore not subject to the constitutional constraints of the ex post facto clause.
posted by likeatoaster at 5:51 AM on March 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Jesus. I remember....being in maybe first grade? Around 1984 or 1985. There was a boy we all had a crush on. He had a Beatle-esque mop of the thickest, most unruly hair which we all looooved. I remember us teasing him, one girl saying something about he had a HAIRY CHEST (I don't know why? Because he had so much hair on his head, I guess) and we all found this hi-larious. So I ran up to him and pulled his shirt out so I could look down it. I said something like IT IS SO HAIRY! and then we all ran away shrieking.

So in a different place and time, that coulda gotten me on one of these lists?
posted by Windigo at 6:23 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Perhaps we can convince someone to abolish the registries because they're bad for property values.

Also from the abstract: the majority of registered sex offenders are transient, with durations of less than 6 months at an address.

I wonder why? Oh wait, no I don't. Here's something that apparently originated on a neighborhood listserv and which some other member was "kind enough" to repost on Nextdoor:

We have a registered sex offender living in the neighborhood, on 6th St.
...
We are working with an attorney to reach out to the trustees who own the house. There will be fliers on several telephone poles asking neighbors to refer to the registry.

I went and looked at the registry entry, which had little detail. Had to go looking at his home state to find more detail. Two exposure-related incidents, twenty years ago, in compliance ever since.

I'm sure making sure he can't have a home and job will create the sort of stability to contributes to staying on the straight and narrow.
posted by phearlez at 6:58 AM on March 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

Metts settled into his new life in the oil fields, reluctantly accommodating an array of strictures that he regarded as pointless. Each Halloween, for instance, he reported to the county probation office with dozens of other local sex offenders, and was held from 6 to 10 p.m. and shown movies like "Iron Man 2," until trick-or-treating was over.

Are you fucking kidding me? Wow. This is perhaps the most senseless thing I have ever heard.
posted by lock sock and barrel at 10:24 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is perhaps the most senseless thing I have ever heard.

Only if you consider it as a method to protect people from harm. If you approach it as a security theater measure to make voting citizens feel better while costing nothing[1] in comparison to actual treatment programs, it's a big win. Basically like the registry concept itself.

[1] Till the MPAA gets wind that they're doing 'public performances' and sues for payment anyway
posted by phearlez at 11:04 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

[1] Till the MPAA gets wind that they're doing 'public performances' and sues for payment anyway

Or worse, the Daily Mail gets wind of it and the headline "PERVERTS GET FREE HALLOWEEN MOVIE SHOWING" shows up on the front page.
posted by Talez at 11:10 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

As DuBuc discovered, getting off a state’s online database doesn’t mean the end of online notoriety. Some companies have programs that retain information that was expunged from registries, which they publish online, demanding that offenders pay steep fees in order to have the damaging data removed. Charla Roberts, who had “pantsed” her classmate in Paris, Texas, when she was ten, was removed from the registry in her early twenties, with the help of Lone Star Legal Aid. But the Internet refused to forget. Not long ago, she learned that her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend was circulating a link to a commercial Web site called SexOffenderRecord.com. The site featured Charla’s photograph along with her race (black), age (twenty-five), and home address, as well as the message: “To alert others about Charla Lee Roberts’s Sex Offender Record . . . Just Click the Facebook Icon.”

Truly, these companies who refuse to delete data without first paying a king's ransom are bottom feeders.
posted by tittergrrl at 11:15 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

I don't have the science and I'm not spending my day looking at scientific articles studing sex offenders, but I went to a training once where the Illinois Department of Corrections said that the zoning rules (can't living within 500 feet of this or that) are bullshit and didn't stop motivated offenders from offending.

If you think about it, 500 feet is like 2 blocks.

Some states are also ruining adults lives, by placing prostitutes or urinating in public on the sex offender registry.

It is a complete shame that we have an entire system dedicated at not looking at the details, punishing children and adults and focused micromanaging.

I want serious offenders of the streets. But the reality is that most offenders aren't caught and the registry is just a comfort tool.
posted by AlexiaSky at 11:30 AM on March 8, 2016

This is just so evil and inhuman.
posted by zipadee at 11:35 AM on March 8, 2016