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February 3, 2016
"Do sex offenders deserve a scarlet letter on their passport?"
The question in the title of this post is the headline of this Los Angeles Times editorial. Here is how it starts:
After rousing themselves from the 30-plus-year bad trip that was the war on drugs — or rather, the war on drug users — many Americans in and out of elected office looked around for someone else to persecute. Someone, somewhere, must be so depraved and hateful that liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans could join in common cause to vilify them.
They appear to have found their target: sex offenders. The current case in point is a congressional proposal to alert the nations of the world that particular U.S. citizens who have committed sex offenses against minors are planning to visit. Passports would be specially marked so that other countries could turn travelers away at the border because of old crimes for which they have already served their time in the U.S.
This vindictive bill has been wisely rejected numerous times in the past, but now it's heading to President Obama's desk. He should veto it.
Sex offenses against minors are particularly horrendous crimes. But when offenders have completed their sentences and periods of supervision, there is no more reason to continue hounding and harassing them than convicted murderers or drug traffickers, who don't bear scarlet letters on their passports.
But wait, some supporters argue, people who commit sex crimes against children are a special case. As soon as they've done it once, they'll want more, posing imminent danger to any underage person anywhere. Their front doors should be marked to warn trick-or-treaters. They should be banned from park benches.
This blatantly false argument thrives on ignorance. There are indeed mentally disordered sex offenders whose conditions make them extremely high risks to commit more crimes of the same variety. Some may target minors. But that is far different from saying that anyone convicted of a sex offense against a minor falls into that very narrow category. Corrections officials in California report that most sexual crimes committed by adults against minors occur among family members, and that the rate of recidivism is fairly low.
Prior related post:
February 3, 2016 at 09:59 AM | Permalink
Comments
Comparison with Nazi Germany is terrible, but Nazi put J in all Jewish citizens passports, and now US put Sex offender in all passports of people with sex offender conviction.
The same identification as in USSR they put Nationality Jew in my soviet passport. And now in US they will put S in my American Passport to identify me again. Of course I will never travel but the question is What next? I compared situation of soviet Jews in 20 century
and american sex offenders in 21 century
http://fimafimovich.blogspot.com/2014/10/discrimination-of-soviet-jews-and.html
Posted by: Fima | Feb 3, 2016 10:59:05 AM
If this law gets signed then there's no hope left.
Posted by: kat | Feb 3, 2016 12:23:53 PM
kat:
It'll just have to get challenged in the federal courts. And it will be, without a doubt. Whether or not it will be upheld is another story entirely. The SOR and it's ever-growing list of attendant "regulations" is punishment by a thousand cuts, though our judiciary has shown a tremendous intellectual cowardice in consistently refusing to call it what it is. IML is just the latest iteration of it.
Posted by: Guy | Feb 3, 2016 1:17:17 PM
Anyone think government is too big yet? It is far past time to destroy every government in America by any legal means necessary. The only good government in America is a completely broke, dysfunctional, ineffective government.
These huge, criminal, nanny big governments (NBGs), including the federal government, can absolutely be declared "enemy combatants" by a very large group of Americans. The U.S. is in a civil war.
I will never support governments in America. I will never support their employees, especially not their law enforcement employees. We have seen who they are and their agenda.
Timothy McVeigh was right. These NBGs will continue to create more domestic terrorists with their "sex offender" witch hunt. Revoking the passports of "sex offenders" will keep them in the U.S. and very well motivated to work.
Posted by: FRegistryTerrorists | Feb 3, 2016 1:41:15 PM
"Anyone think government is too big yet?"
Yes .. THIS is the straw that breaks the camel's back! Not really.
"Timothy McVeigh was right."
Not really helping.
Posted by: Joe | Feb 3, 2016 4:43:06 PM
I do think this is a very bad idea.
Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Feb 3, 2016 5:13:35 PM
I am wondering how this would affect a child sex offender who is NOT on a registry. I skimmed this law and concluded that 1. the passport stamp is only for registered offenders and 2. while technically they can report any sex offender to other countries, there is no process put in place for identifying those offenders who are not on a registry, so those people will likely fly under the radar. I'd appreciate it if someone could verify this.
Posted by: 234234 | Feb 3, 2016 5:44:07 PM
@234234 My understanding after reading the law is that one has to be currently registered in their jurisdiction, which is defined as US States, Territories, and Native American Tribal Land, in order to qualify for the scarlet letter. This sounds like those living abroad would be exempt from this part of the law.
Posted by: Joseph R | Feb 3, 2016 8:01:53 PM
If you are a convicted of a sex offense you are on the registry. I do not like the term "sex offender" because it suggests that the registered citizen is in a constant state of offending. The idea that once someone has committed a sex offense they will likely do it it again is a horribly damaging myth. The recitivism rates are 3-4%. Many registered people are normal, good folks who made a mistake. They aren't monsters or perverts. Many of them certainly pose no danger to anyone much less children. Most have children and love them very much. Once a person has completed their sentence they should be able to rebuild their lives and contribute to society. Why shouldn't a redeemed individual get to travel freely? Show me proof that a specific individual is truly dangerous and sick and I'll show you someone who should be in jail or a mental ward. If I am so dangerous why was I not thrown in jail? I wasn't because no one believes that I am a threat. I made a stupid, damaging mistake. I will live with deep regret; I couldn't be more sorry. I have an inappropriate encounter with a 16 year old. I know that a minor can't in any way consent and that makes me very wrong for what I did to him. I want wrong for what my actions did to my family. Should I have just killed myself? I think my life wa worth saving. I am m not human trash. I have accepted reaponsibility, turned my life around but I will never escape the punishment. So many civil rights have already been taken from me no by association my husband and child. Let me be free to see the world one day! I am not the person you should be concerned about. Redemption, hope and basic rights.....is that to much to ask?
Posted by: Ash | Feb 3, 2016 8:53:35 PM
Are you people nuts? Having committed (and been convicted of) a child sex offense is not the same thing as belonging to an ethnic group by birth. I agree that there should be a culling of the SORs, but any argument that's premised on "preventing international child sex tourism = Nazis" is mindbogglingly dumb, both tactically and on the substance. If nothing else, consider that no one who is not already 100% on your side is going to be convinced by this kind of thing -- I'm guessing it actively repels a significant number of people.
(Broader question -- I've noticed that the online defenders of child pr0n, sex offenders, etc, have become especially prominent lately on a number of blogs/mainstream news sites. I get the feeling this has become an offshoot of the broader "white men are persecuted by our pussified society" movement that includes "race realists," pick-up artists devoted to manipulating women, Trump supporters, etc. I don't want to start searching the internet on this topic, but it would be interesting to know the origins of this apparent movement.)
Posted by: Jay | Feb 4, 2016 12:37:58 AM
@Joseph R. Okay thanks. That settles the question on the passports. About the provisions that mandate notifying other countries, if anyone wants to verify what I concluded, I'm all ears.
@Jay I also think talking about the Nazis makes no sense here. But I wonder what exactly the United States hopes to gain by passing this law. This is not a treaty where other countries are going to pass the same sort of information to the United States. Other countries will probably do nothing. So the United States spends money on sending notifications and gets nothing. What is the benefit for us?
I also don't think defenders of sex offenders have become especially prominent. Where did that happen?
Posted by: 234234 | Feb 4, 2016 2:23:29 AM
Q. "Do sex offenders deserve a scarlet letter on their passport?"
A. NO !
Posted by: Docile Jim Brady „ the Nemo Me ☺ Impune Lacessit guy in Oregon ‼ | Feb 4, 2016 7:18:33 AM
Jay:
You are a mental midget (I know, not PC but who cares). No one on any site that I have seen has defended "real" molesters or rapists. The VAST majority of people on SORs are NOT child molesters or rapists. A significant portion of them are for non-contact offenses and I don't mean downloading CP. In my day, plain out "necking" (college - high school students) would now put you on the SOR. Look, we have about 850,000 RSORs and 90% of them are men (best estimate as there are no official figures). You end up with approximately 1% of all male men and children in the US registered. What constitutes a sex crime in the US is really broad in many states.
These laws are 10 - 100 times more likely to put your son on the SOR than protect anyone from molestation. And now that we have bastardized the classical idea of "sex-trafficking", if anyone (parent/child) receives any financial aid from a "woman of the night, and not just "pimps", (aka, Spitzer's girlfriends), the prosecutor could (and often does) choose to prosecute these people as traffickers and hence put them on the SOR.
The devil is in the details and not stereotypes.
An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.
Posted by: albeed | Feb 4, 2016 7:59:37 AM
One more thing I might add:
Often, the "offense" for which a person is placed on the SOR is legal in many countries of the world (and I don't mean third world countries). In the US, the age of majority is 18 years old in many states. In much of Europe it is much less, to as low as 13 in Spain and 14 in many other countries. So other countries can send us their "sex offenders" but we can't send them ours!
Huh?
The representative from NJ is a real winner there!
Posted by: albeed | Feb 4, 2016 8:17:13 AM
Jay:
The "origins of this apparent movement," as you put it, may well have to do with the explosive growth of SORs and rapid expansion of offenses that require registration. In 2004 there were ~500,000 people on a registry, whereas in 2015 there were ~850k. For each person on the registry whose lives are functionally ended by an ever-growing patchwork of local, state, and federal laws regulating essentially every aspect of a person's life (despite having "served their time," mind you), there is a family that is similarly affected.
So, to answer your question, perhaps there are simply more people who are directly impacted by the draconian nature of these laws and feel compelled to speak out.
And w/ regard to the Jewish analogy: no one is saying that they are the same thing, but the comparison is apt (assuming that you believe, as is the stated political and legal rationale for SORN laws, that they are for regulatory purposes only and not punishment). For example, anti-semitism amongst the Jews was fanned by hysterically false beliefs regarding Jewish practices (i.e., that they drink the blood of Christian children).
Similarly, the fear, anger, and hatred directed at "sex offenders" as a class are predicated on entirely false notions and beliefs about sexual violence, such as rates of re-offense. Also similarly, this fear, anger, and hatred has become codified and enshrined with the veneer of respectability and legitimacy of law -- and International Megan's Law is just the latest example.
I mean take a look at the findings section of the bill -- the drafters state that children are victims of international sex tourism (a fact which is true), and then state that sex offenders travel internationally (a fact which is also true), but make no attempt to craft a nexus between the two other than by mere implication. There is no evidence whatsoever that sex offenders are responsible for child sex tourism. The evidence that is known (i.e., that 96% of all reported sexual offenses are perpetrated by first-time offenders, not repeat offenders), would suggest that this is a "solution" that fixes nothing in regards to the harms visited on children while simultaneously further abridging the human rights of an already hated group of people.
So no one is saying that sex offenders are just the same as Jews, but the similarities are apparent for anyone willing to be the slightest bit intellectually honest about it.
Posted by: Guy | Feb 4, 2016 9:09:19 AM
This proposal for imposing a scarlet letter or travel ban on former sex offenders could lead to some disruptive incidents in our airports if, say, a disgruntled former sex offender decides to retaliate against this new proposal, if passed, by entering an off-limits high security part of the airport with the intention of putting the whole airport on lockdown and cancelling several flights for at least several hours. Such a former sex offender may feel that if he or she is not allowed to fly, then nobody else at that airport should be allowed to either.
Have Obama and the other right wing politicians pushing for this new restriction thought how it might give former sex offenders nothing to lose by disrupting other peoples' flight plans as a way of retaliating against such a stupid law?
Posted by: william r. delzell | Feb 4, 2016 9:39:08 AM
The whole problem is the term "Sex Offender". It is so general, used so broadly, that some people seem to have now confused non-contact sex offences that can get you on the registry, such as public urination, skinny-dipping and internet downloading, with real sex offences like child molestation and child trafficking. We are talking about totally different kinds of offences and that's what the government needs to realize.
Why put people in prison to "serve their sentence" and then let them out when they have to continue to serve an endless sentence. May as well bypass prison altogether.
Posted by: kat | Feb 4, 2016 11:39:54 AM
"Having committed (and been convicted of) a child sex offense is not the same thing as belonging to an ethnic group by birth."
How is it different? This claim keeps coming up and it is bogus for two reasons. First, people seem to be deeply confused about how Nazism worked. One could simply become a "legally valid Jew" simply by marrying a Jew. So the idea that the Nazi only persecuted someone who "belonged to an ethnic group by birth" is plain error. Nazis did in fact persecute people for the choices they made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geltungsjude
Second, it is unclear whether at least some sex offenders do in fact make choices. There remains a robust debate within the field of psychology about the role genetics plays in sexual orientations, whether that be homosexual or pedophilia. Indeed, it is quite possible that some sex offenders has as little choice in their actions as "those who belong to an ethnic group by birth."
So the comparison to Nazis (if having grown trite) is apposite.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 4, 2016 2:32:21 PM
@kat I would even argue that the term "child trafficking" is losing its meaning as well. A 17 year old prostitute who willingly works and gets paid and pays a cut to a 19 year old friend/pimp who to send her clients is fundamentally different than 8 year olds being kidnapped in poor countries and smuggled into brothels on the other side of the world.
Neither type is ok, but mixing those statistics under the umbrella of "child trafficking" is disingenuous.
Posted by: Joseph R | Feb 4, 2016 2:56:22 PM
Granting the policy is bad, if this is akin to race, are classifications by sexual offender status warranting strict scrutiny (in fact, more than sex, which is currently only heightened scrutiny)? Kinda think there is a bit of a difference. Doesn't make this okay.
Posted by: Joe | Feb 4, 2016 11:23:33 PM
@Joe
You have a fair point. As I tried to explain above there are two separate issues. The first issue is whether or not sexual offenders choose their behavior or whether a person's sexual orientation is determined by their genes. There is robust disagreement on that point. FWIW I am in the camp that sexual orientation is a choice, as much for pedophila as it is for homo- or hetro-sexuality.
But even if sexual orientation is a choice, does that mean that what a country can do to sex offenders is unlimited? This is where the analogy to the Nazis come in. Some people take the position that the reason that the Nazi's behavior to the Jews was exceptionally cruel is because they persecuted people for a status (Jewishness) that the person had no control over. As I referenced in my prior post, such a position is based upon a gross misreading of Nazi history. It is true enough that the Nazis did persecute people who were born in a certain ethnic group, but Nazi cruelty was by no means limited to such a narrow classification because Jewishness to the Nazis was not solely regulated to racial ancestry.
So I do not think that as classifications sex offenders and race are the same. What makes them the same is the legal reaction to such classifications...i.e, setting one group apart for special penalties. IMO, the root cause of all of this is national exceptionalism--because only a nation that sees itself as especially good needs to single out certain groups to be especially bad.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 5, 2016 11:49:01 AM
@Joe
You have a fair point. As I tried to explain above there are two separate issues. The first issue is whether or not sexual offenders choose their behavior or whether a person's sexual orientation is determined by their genes. There is robust disagreement on that point. FWIW I am in the camp that sexual orientation is a choice, as much for pedophila as it is for homo- or hetro-sexuality.
But even if sexual orientation is a choice, does that mean that what a country can do to sex offenders is unlimited? This is where the analogy to the Nazis come in. Some people take the position that the reason that the Nazi's behavior to the Jews was exceptionally cruel is because they persecuted people for a status (Jewishness) that the person had no control over. As I referenced in my prior post, such a position is based upon a gross misreading of Nazi history. It is true enough that the Nazis did persecute people who were born in a certain ethnic group, but Nazi cruelty was by no means limited to such a narrow classification because Jewishness to the Nazis was not solely regulated to racial ancestry.
So I do not think that as classifications sex offenders and race are the same. What makes them the same is the legal reaction to such classifications...i.e, setting one group apart for special penalties. IMO, the root cause of all of this is national exceptionalism--because only a nation that sees itself as especially good needs to single out certain groups to be especially bad.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 5, 2016 11:49:14 AM
@Daniel
IMO, you're a loon.
Posted by: anon | Feb 5, 2016 6:41:41 PM
For anyone thinking this is a good idea, PLEASE keep in mind you are trusting government employees to control who will get their passport marked. As we've seen with drivers license markers in some states and home addresses on Meagan's law websites being branded incorrectly, I don't believe it will be too long before we start reading horror stories from individuals suing the government after they've been mistakenly turned around from important business trips or vacations. Anyone who shares a name with someone on Meagan's list should be concerned. They only budgeted twelve million for this endeavor, will that be enough to cover litigants who've been turned away from foreign lands or will they simply tell you "tough luck Charley".
Posted by: MikeT | Feb 6, 2016 9:10:28 AM
Just because I oppose this stupid extension of Megan's Law, civil commitment, and other Constitutional travesties, does not mean I am a conservative. This particular white and Southeastern male is very left-of-center in his views. I support Bernie Sanders for president partly because I don't trust the xenophobic right-wing Republicans and their like-minded Democrat colleagues like Hillary Clinton or Sam Nunn to do the right thing.
Bernie Sanders wants a government that will serve the people instead of enslaving the people to the government. Donald Trump and his fellow right-wingers, in contrast, want a big government that will attack defenseless countries around the world, to deny women the right to reproductive freedom, subject men to the anti-male Sexist Selective Service System, etc.
No, this opponent of this stupid scarlet letter law is a left-of-center southern white male independent!
Posted by: william r. delzell | Feb 6, 2016 3:13:26 PM
Sex perversion is related to genes. Do not let Americans with convictions board a plane or leave the country wearing genes or having any in their luggage. If he was a fag then make him wear a dress.
Posted by: Liberty1st | Feb 7, 2016 4:23:48 PM
I will say it again: this new passport law pertaining to former sex offenders could endanger our airports' security. I can imagine a scenario where a disgruntled rso who is suddenly denied the right to fly decides to act out at the airport ticket counter by either deliberately running into a highly restricted area or pulling out an object which resembles a weapon with the intention of putting the entire airport in lockdown for several hours leading to cancellations of several arrival and departure flights. You will also have several hundreds of angry passengers frustrated over abrupt flight cancellations who might create some unwanted outbursts. It would be as if this hypothetical rso was saying: "If I can't fly at your airport, then nobody can. I'll see to that."
Posted by: william r. delzell | Feb 8, 2016 9:34:25 AM
Daniel,
Actually, you may marry a sex offender and basically have many of the same restrictions. Our house is listed on the SO Registry.
It must be disclosed to the school our children attend so the stigma follows them.
We can not decorate our home for Halloween. We live in Missouri.
So, now if we choose to travel as a family we may be be detained because of my husband's status.
One could simply become a "legally valid Sec Offender" simply by marrying or being the child of a Sex Offender.
Posted by: Anon | Feb 8, 2016 10:22:35 PM
My son was convicted of a sex crime over 20 yrs ago and is still jumping thru hoops for the laws that keep changing. He did his time and has been a wonderful provider, husband, father and employer since being released and yet he still has to report anything and everything he does. He did his time WHY IS HE STILL ON PROBATION, they claim it is not probation, hummmm over 20 years of this still going on. And when they change a law and he does not know it has been changed they throw him back into the system, fine him for not following changes he knew nothing about. Please help me end this maddness.
Posted by: Michelle Gryka | Mar 28, 2016 4:24:44 PM
