Sex Offender Registry Laws
Sex Offender Registry Laws
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In a world of were the children of today are the future of tomorrow, it is understandable why we try so hard to protect our children from sex offenders. The problem is when it comes to making these laws, not everyone reacts with logic. Instead, they react with fear and rage resulting in laws that unjustly punish offenders. Because people don’t understand that all sex offenders are not a threat to society, they place all sex offenders in the same type of category. The laws cause misconception and in some cases hate as well as extreme fear.Something must be done to raise awareness of this situation so that sex offender registry laws can be revised to prevent low risk offenders from being unjustly punished. My goal is to help those people become aware of the many different types of sex offenders, so that they too can see that the laws are unjust and the policies need to be revised.
You could say the registry began with three small town Minnesota boys riding their bikes to a convenience store in October 1989. As they walked home on the dark road that night, a man stepped out of the darkness holding a gun. He told one of the boys to lie face down on the ground, and instructed the other 2 to run into the woods and never look back. Despite countless efforts to locate the child, 11 year old Jacob Wetterling was never heard from again. It was this incident that caused President Bill Clinton to form a bill in 1995 that would keep track of all sex offenders. The Jacob Wetterling act required states to create sex offender registries accessible to police to help keep track of people who commit sex crimes, though at the time this information was not available to the public.That same year, 7 year old Megan Kanka was lured across, raped and murdered by a twice convicted pedophile that lived across the street. Megan’s parents constantly told the media that if they knew a sex offender lived across the street, they could have better protected
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In a world of were the children of today are the future of tomorrow, it is understandable why we try so hard to protect our children from sex offenders. The problem is when it comes to making these laws, not everyone reacts with logic. Instead, they react with fear and rage resulting in laws that unjustly punish offenders. Because people don’t understand that all sex offenders are not a threat to society, they place all sex offenders in the same type of category. The laws cause misconception and in some cases hate as well as extreme fear.Something must be done to raise awareness of this situation so that sex offender registry laws can be revised to prevent low risk offenders from being unjustly punished. My goal is to help those people become aware of the many different types of sex offenders, so that they too can see that the laws are unjust and the policies need to be revised.
You could say the registry began with three small town Minnesota boys riding their bikes to a convenience store in October 1989. As they walked home on the dark road that night, a man stepped out of the darkness holding a gun. He told one of the boys to lie face down on the ground, and instructed the other 2 to run into the woods and never look back. Despite countless efforts to locate the child, 11 year old Jacob Wetterling was never heard from again. It was this incident that caused President Bill Clinton to form a bill in 1995 that would keep track of all sex offenders. The Jacob Wetterling act required states to create sex offender registries accessible to police to help keep track of people who commit sex crimes, though at the time this information was not available to the public.That same year, 7 year old Megan Kanka was lured across, raped and murdered by a twice convicted pedophile that lived across the street. Megan’s parents constantly told the media that if they knew a sex offender lived across the street, they could have better protected