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Halloween: Children told where sex offenders live

Vixen

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Vixen
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Some sex offenders are suing Butts County [sic] in Georgia because it put up signs on their lawn last Halloween 2018 warning children not to 'trick or treat here'.

The claim is, it is a violation of their rights.

According to the court filing, in late October 2018, the sheriff’s office put up warning signs in the front yards of more than 200 registered sex offenders.

After November 2, deputies went back to the offenders’ properties to collect the signs.

Yurachek argues that in doing so, the sheriff and his deputies violated the residents' rights by trespassing on their property to place and collect the signs without their consent.

He also maintains that Georgia's sex offender registry statue does not call for warning signs to be placed at the homes of offenders.
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It seems quite extraordinary to me that officials can point out where sex offenders live in this way. It encourages vigilantism.
 
Vixen said:
Some sex offenders are suing Butts County [sic] in Georgia because it put up signs on their lawn last Halloween 2018 warning children not to 'trick or treat here'.

The claim is, it is a violation of their rights.



It seems quite extraordinary to me that officials can point out where sex offenders live in this way. It encourages vigilantism.
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Is that a bug or a feature?
 
Those damn sex offenders have a negative impact on the healthy development of children, the future of the country. You wouldn't want your kids to grow up and become rapists, exhibitionists or some other kind of disgusting pervert now would you?

Better they take candy from drug dealers, tax cheats, fraudsters, robbers and murderers.
 
What in the ever loving ****? This is Scarlet Lettering. Is the objective here to deny rehabilitation and make these people permanent public pariahs?
 
As if just being on the sex offender list wouldn't rocket them to the top of the list if something were to happen anyway.

You can get labeled a sex offender for getting caught taking a piss outside a bar. This is a little much.
 
Vixen said:
It seems quite extraordinary to me that officials can point out where sex offenders live in this way. It encourages vigilantism.
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They already have on-line sources to look up where sex offenders live in your neighborhood, although I don't know how consistent that is nation-wide. I think there has been a few cases of vigilantism stemming from that.

They can prohibit sex-offenders from doing anything to encourage trick-or-treating (decorating and such), then have cruisers drive past to confirm that.

They can order them to just not answer the door that night.

There is a lot they can do that does not feed quite so much into fear-mongering.

But - this is the South, and Sheriff is an elected position. Plenty of incentive to go the low road if that gets the votes.
 
plague311 said:
You can get labeled a sex offender for getting caught taking a piss outside a bar. This is a little much.
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There are distinctions within the registry and people listed for offences involving minors can be identified specifically. There's a quote that suggests the entire registry may have gotten signs, but given the phrasing it may have been shorthand. The men complaining have been convicted of targeting minors.
 
plague311 said:
As if just being on the sex offender list wouldn't rocket them to the top of the list if something were to happen anyway.

You can get labeled a sex offender for getting caught taking a piss outside a bar. This is a little much.
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There was a case locally, a couple of years back. A man who was on the sex offender list, was killed in his home by vigilantes who gained his home address. It turned out that when the man was 19, had gone behind a bush to relieve himself, and was reported by someone else at the park.

That had been his crime, for which he was punished by having his life taken.
 
They couldn't remove the signs themselves? And replant them on the sheriff's lawn? Granted that being on that registry would almost certainly make a man reluctant to get crossways of lawmen, still: supine acceptance of that kind of crap is just surrendering to very petty tyrants.

And I wonder what a search of this small-town sherriff's hard drive might turn up.
 
wasapi said:
There was a case locally, a couple of years back. A man who was on the sex offender list, was killed in his home by vigilantes who gained his home address. It turned out that when the man was 19, had gone behind a bush to relieve himself, and was reported by someone else at the park.

That had been his crime, for which he was punished by having his life taken.
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It's odd but those that are attracted to vigilantism don't ever seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society
 
3point14 said:
I mean from the point of view of those crafting the legislation.
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The entire impetus for sex offender registration was due to the same sort of vigilantism hysteria; so I'd say yes, it was definitely a win from their point of view.

If there was a rational basis, then there would need to be plenty of other registrations as well.

crescent said:
They already have on-line sources to look up where sex offenders live in your neighborhood, although I don't know how consistent that is nation-wide. I think there has been a few cases of vigilantism stemming from that.
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As has been noted, the sorts of people likely to resort to vigilantism are not always the brightest bulbs, and are often unaware of the online registry searches.

Cavemonster said:
There are distinctions within the registry and people listed for offences involving minors can be identified specifically. There's a quote that suggests the entire registry may have gotten signs, but given the phrasing it may have been shorthand. The men complaining have been convicted of targeting minors.
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This varies considerably by state. Some stated differentiate between levels of offenders, some do not. Some specify the actual cases for specific offenders, some do not.

In my state, offenders are differentiated into several levels, depending on the nature and severity of the offense, and the perceived likelihood of re-offending. The registry does show the specific violations for each offender on the list. However, it only shows higher-level offenders, those in the lowest level do not show up on registry searches.

Being that the lowest levels are typically those who are on the list for offenses not involving actual children -- public nudity (such as the drunken urinating in public incident mentioned above), hanging around the sketchier parts of the Internet, and similar sorts of things; it makes rational sense not to have them show up with actual child molesters and serial rapists. Reduces the problem of vigilantism rather a bit.

There are also very few restrictions on where registered sex offenders are allowed to live, again tied to the level of offenses; and most neighborhoods have at least one, usually two or three, registered offenders living in them.

However, some people are not satisfied with that, and there are periodic local campaigns to make the registry search show all offenders of every level, and to increase restriction on all offenders, essentially treating a drunk or dumbass kid hanging around the Chans the same as a serial child rapist. Fortunately, my state (so far) takes a more rational approach, since the numbers show that offenders who are able to successfully integrate back into society are much less likely to re-offend.
 
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Our next door neighbor passed away soon after buying the house. The father of her teenage child moved into the house with his mother to continue raising the child in the same home. They were odd, but whatever.

A friend of the family flagged us down when we were in the yard with our kids and just said: "search the registered sex offenders list." Yep, the father was a registered sex offender and his conviction was for something relating to children. I know it wasn't rape, but it was something along the lines of exposing himself of or sexually harassing a minor. Our database gave the actual conviction.

We stopped doing trick or treat just to make our whole portion of the block less attractive.

The good news is the kid next door finally became an adult and kicked the father and grandmother out of the house and then sold the house for a good chunk of change. I haven't thought of that kid in some time. I hope they are doing well.
 
Vixen said:
It seems quite extraordinary to me that officials can point out where sex offenders live in this way. It encourages vigilantism.
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In my state, when a person is convicted for a sex offense, is released from jail, or moves into a new neighborhood, "sex offender alert" flyers are automatically mailed to all surrounding homes within a certain radius, which contain a photo, address, and description of the charge. I get a few of these every year. To my knowledge it has not resulted in increased vigilantism.

When I lived in Ohio, there was a rule on trick-or-treat night: people with candy, turned on their external lights. People who didn't, left the light off. I could be completely mistaken about this, but my impression is that in Ohio on Halloween, sex offenders were not allowed to put up external Halloween decorations and were required to stay home and keep their outside lights off during the posted trick-or-treat times. Local police made phone calls and patrols to enforce the rule. To me, this sounds like an entirely reasonable way to keep children from going to sex offenders' houses on Halloween, in a way that does not draw special attention to them - there's no way to tell the difference at street level between a sex offender who is required to keep his/her lights off, and some rando who just doesn't participate in Halloween.

I have also heard of specific townships "rounding up" - or rather, requiring attendance of - sex offenders at a certain location on Halloween night; they have pizza and coffee or something and sometimes there's a talk given by a therapist or safety expert or what not. This also strikes me as acceptable, and might appeal to those who would prefer a more proactive safety program as opposed to just making sex offenders stay home and keep their lights off.

All that said: while I understand what the concern is; I predict these signs will not result in vigilantism (above random background) either. They may at most result in children not knocking on those doors seeking candy.

ETA: No, actually, scratch that. I expect that the signs would not have resulted in increased vigilantism, but perhaps all bets are off now due to the Streisand Effect. Suing to prevent the sheriff's office from putting signs on their lawns on Halloween will be extremely easy to interpret as sex offenders actually wanting children to unwittingly come to their houses on Halloween. It might have been wiser to pursue this lawsuit at the beginning of the year, rather than just before Halloween.
 
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I don't know about this. It might be better safe than sorry, but at-risk Trick or Treaters, the little ones, should be accompanied by an adult regardless right?

But I've always been critical of this sex offender registry crap. Teenagers trading sexts or a legal and underage couples are in the registries. It's madness. Neighbors are largely not in any state of mind to sit down and sift through the facts of each case. The teenager who made a mistake once in his life is on the same list as Nathaniel Bar-Jonah.
 
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