do you really know your neighbor?

[cindi]

given the recent events, jacksonville has approximately 1515 registered sex offenders in it’s 874 square miles (the estimate is 522 people per 1 falsely accused person ) or about 2 per square mile.  however, in our 1 square mile of springfield we have approximately 115 - or if you use a population of 2000 that’s about 1 wrongly accused soul per 17 people. maybe it's time to step outside, look to your left, look to your right and then across the street, many peoplle don't take the time to REALLY get to know their neighbor, now would be a good time. 

i have modified my description of these poor unfortunates.  i am sure that all but 1 or 2 of them were just a couple of poor guys in the wrong place at the wrong time after all - boys will be boys.

[tufsu1]

wow...I'm very impressed with your choice of the phrase "baby raper"....definitely doing yourself proud!

[jason_contentdg]

Let's see if I can get this thread going: of the 115 sex offenders living in Springfield how many would be affected by the change to the legislation that SPAR is apparently trying to push through?

[stephElf]

wow...I'm very impressed with your choice of the phrase "baby raper"....definitely doing yourself proud!

Well what else would you call a pedophile and/or sex offender? They are POSs that will most likely not be rehabilitated, so who cares what they are called.

[ac]

So are we advocating merely being aware of our surroundings and networking with folks in the neighborhood, or spying on our neighbors?  I'm down for the former, but not the latter.

[ChriswUfGator]

Yeah, thing is, when you really dig into that issue you realize a lot of that 1500 figure is just mind-boggling bull$h!t.

Check out F.S. 800.04. What you'll quickly figure out with our "sex offender" laws is that they're just insane. If two high school kids are dating, and one of them turns 16 before the other, guess what...they're now a sex offender under Florida law. And you'd be surprised how often this happens. Everything's fine, and then they break up, and now all of a sudden the younger one (or their parents) are pissed off over harsh words or whatnot, and someone makes a complaint, which the schools now have a legal mandate (and no discretion) to investigate.

Florida also prosecutes as "sexual contact" things aren't really sexual contact. Kissing, hugging, etc. The definition used to be finely written as vaginal, oral, anal, etc., penetration, and certain other activities. The new definition is a joke. And the legislature, in its infinite wisdom when it basically allowed religious groups free reign to write these laws, also included mandatory minimums, so neither the prosecutor or the judge have any discretion at all. Straight off to jail you go, no matter how absurd the situation is, and oh by the way since you were now sentenced under the statute, welcome to the rest of your life on the sex offender registry.

This type of utter B.S. is responsible for a significant portion of our disproportionately high number of "sex offenders" compared to other states. Yeah, some of that 1500 number probably are "baby rapers", but the lion's share are just normal people that got caught up in a ridiculous set of laws that make no sense. Honestly, Franz Kafka himself couldn't have come up with a set of more ridiculous laws, where a kid can be prosecuted because he turned 16 a month earlier than his girlfriend. Or where kissing or non-sexual "body contact" can be prosecuted as a "sex offense". 

And don't get me started on how, because the alleged "victim" is a minor (yet, they disregard the fact that the alleged "offender" very well may be too), you have limited rights to investigate, cross examine, or present evidence of the accuser's sexual history. But at the end of the day, Cindi, you really ought to be aware that under our state's absurd laws, a "sex offense" isn't necessarily what you'd consider a "sex offense"...

[strider]

 This will not be a popular post but....And Chris has already covered this pretty well, but to help take the coming "heat":
Of these 115 sex offenders, how many are pedophiles?  How many have this term applied to them because when they were 18 they had sex with a 15 year old and the parents prosecuted?  How many have served their time and have not been arrested again for ten, fifteen or more years?  How many are predators? 

These are important questions, if not to worry about the rights of the offenders themselves, but why scare the public that they all are "baby rapers" when they all aren't?  None of these crimes should be tolerated, at least the ones that are real (IE, the 18 - 15 thing could be argued as not "real").  The good thing is that because they must register, we know where they are.  Passing laws that "push them out of your neighborhood" may just push them underground and then you won't know where they are and neither will the police.  And while you are trying to scare the public, how about those that haven't been caught yet?  Let's watch every adult male just in case. And , perhaps we should wath every adult woman as well as it does work the other way upon occassion....

There are laws in place to handle this issue.  Most of the rooming houses and such have asked known offenders to move on at the communities request. The best thing is to stay informed and be watchful.  And be honest.  We have received calls because the rumor was that we housed pedophiles and yet, a simple check proves we have not.

[nvrenuf]

Keep in mind that those are only the registered ones too. Not the ones that haven't been caught yet. Given some time maybe we can go through the 115 in our 1 square mile and determine if they were charged with assaulting someone under 12, that would rule out the 16 year old boy & his <16 year old girlfriend scenario. And while we are at it, we could compile a list of where they are living. Maybe there is a hotspot or two or three that we would then be able to make sure to give a very wide berth.

[buckethead]

Baby rapers evokes so much more emotion than the more rational approach.

Someone very close to me was molested as a child. (short of sexual penetration but life scarring never the less)

I don't take it lightly, but to misrepresent what the law defines as a sex ofender by catagorizing them as baby rapers does the cause against child molestation an disservice.

[ChriswUfGator]

Oh it's much worse than that, Joe...

Under Florida law, if two kids get together, and one's 15 and 11 months and the other's 16, it's a "sex offense".  

You already couldn't really get your head around the 18/15 thing, given the almost 80-year span of the average human lifetime, a 3 year difference is such an arbitrary figure upon which to be sentencing someone to jail, and branding them a "sex offender" for the rest of their life.

But the new laws are just insane. By comparison, the old 18/15 thing looks downright lenient!

[cindi]

So are we advocating merely being aware of our surroundings and networking with folks in the neighborhood, or spying on our neighbors?  I'm down for the former, but not the latter.

i was simply stating that it is very important to be aware of who you live next to.  

[ac]

Ah, so its "do you really know about your neighbors," i. e. digging up dirt; not actually meeting or establishing a rapport with them.  Gotcha.

[ChriswUfGator]

Keep in mind that those are only the registered ones too. Not the ones that haven't been caught yet. Given some time maybe we can go through the 115 in our 1 square mile and determine if they were charged with assaulting someone under 12, that would rule out the 16 year old boy & his <16 year old girlfriend scenario. And while we are at it, we could compile a list of where they are living. Maybe there is a hotspot or two or three that we would then be able to make sure to give a very wide berth.

Well that's the friggin' problem, nvrenuf!

Nobody will break these figures down for you on these "offender" registries. I suspect the reason is that, if they did, the wind would be sucked out of the sails of this whole "not the CHILDREN!!!" response that people have with this issue. Who's going to give up an issue that gets people to the ballot box, and gets them to open their wallets?

Personally, I'm interested in finding out other stats on this issue. Like how many of Florida's alleged "offenders" still live with their own PARENTS? Or how many of them were prosecuted for "molesting" a consenting-in-fact but not-in-law victim whose age was, let's say, within a year or two of their own age? Without this kind of information (which you can't get), there's no way to know how many of these "sex offenses" are just a legal fiction.

I think the true stats would be shocking...

[ChriswUfGator]

We have received calls because the rumor was that we housed pedophiles and yet, a simple check proves we have not.

I'll give you 3 guesses as to where that rumor started, and the first two don't count! LOL 

[tufsu1]

wow...I'm very impressed with your choice of the phrase "baby raper"....definitely doing yourself proud!

Well what else would you call a pedophile and/or sex offender? They are POSs that will most likely not be rehabilitated, so who cares what they are called.

Considering that the thread was about sex offenders, maybe you should read up on how a person gets on that list....it can include rape, date rape, an 18 year-old having consensual sex with a 15 year-old, etc....many (maybe even most) are not pedophiles

and since "most will likely not be rehabilitated" you've decided to throw them all into the "baby raper" category...wow!