While this is slightly off topic, let me ask you this: do you feel that the current sex offender registry is running as it should?
I am of mixed opinion. I have a bit of a problem from a liberty standpoint with certain aspects of the way we treat those convicted of 'sex' offenses in the USA. For example, long term or permanent civil confinement following a completed prison sentence for those judged to be 'sexual predators'. On the one hand, I don't want sexual predators running around loose - society must be protected. On the other hand, I don't feel comfortable with locking up people who have served their time. Perhaps a better solution would be indeterminate prison sentences for some sex offenders, but locking up people who are technically no longer under the sentence of a court for the crime of which they were convicted strikes me as not American.
That flows down to the various sex-offender registries. I have a number of problems with them, not the least of which they are too broad; they place people who pose absolutely no threat to the public safety in a category of second-class citizen, doomed to be punished for the rest of their lives for a transgression that can be as simple as public urination or paying for a hooker. I can certainly understand why those convicted of sex crimes who are sexual predators - child molesters and rapists and so on - are a threat to public safety, perhaps forever, and I understand what makes it important that society have the ability to know if there are such people living in their neighborhoods.
However, whether the list contains real threats or people who took a drunken pee in an alley, I am also concerned that the various registration lists have gone from a means of keeping track of such people to a means of actual punishment; sometimes cruel and unusual punishment that never ends. In Florida, as I recall, we have stories of people on the sex offenders registry who are actually forced by law to be homeless, living under bridges and in tent cities because there is no legal residence in their city in which they can live and comply with law restricting how close they can come to certain buildings and areas. Was that really the purpose of the registration law - to force weenie waggers to go live under a bridge for the rest of their lives? Yeah, weenie waggers are not nice people, they're disgusting, they are undeserving of sympathy; but really, even murderers get released from prison when they've served their time; weenie waggers can't even hold a job or live in a room with walls and a roof for the rest of their lives?
In other words, the various registration lists seem to go from being a tool for citizens to be aware of real threats to their safety to lists of people that it is OK to torture and torment to satisfy whatever popular political thought thinks is best, not to mention actions I have mentioned previously in this thread by vigilantes against those whom they wish to punish themselves.
No one wants to defend sex offenders. No one wants to stand up and say they have rights. To defend a sex offender is basically to invite criticism that one is 'soft on crime' or fond of sex offenders for whatever reason. I get that. But I *do* defend our legal system, and I think in many ways these registries have gone far beyond what their intent was, and have strayed into really questionable behavior by vigilante citizens and lawmakers who want to propose popular laws that will get them reelected.
Long story short; I'm not basically against sex offender registries; but I do not believe they are being used in a useful or even a legal manner. They capture too much and too many; they allow for infinite punishment and denial of basic human rights to those on such lists - which may reflect our common dislike of sex offenders, but which is really not legal - and they are open-ended; they are constantly open to revision and additional requirements being added to make the lives of those on the lists more onerous and difficult. This doesn't protect public safety and really isn't even about public safety anymore; they're about public anger and retribution.
If we really want to bring back public stocks and lock sex offenders in them forever, then let's man up and do that; this registration list thing is just a modern way to lock a person in stocks forever and never let them out; nothing to do with public safety in the end analysis.