> When you are no longer being punished, your full rights as a citizen
> should be returned to you, but that would, in turn, make mock of the
> corrections industry, which the governments really support. PAT]
What about registered sex offenders?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, what about them? They have one
of the longest 'supervision' periods of all -- I think, ten years in
total, after their conviction, according to the uniform rules the
federal government seems to enforce on all the states -- but at some
point their punishment is, or should be complete; zip, nada, done,
over, finished. There are a few people who claim that 'sex offenders
are never rehabilitated or cured'; but if in ten or eleven years or
however long their incarceration lasted _plus_ their registration
period there have been no subsequent offenses, then why hang on to
them, clutching them for dear life as the corrections industry is
prone to do?
Trouble is, sometime during that decade there will be some other
heinous offender somewhere, and all the citizens will go on a rampage
for 'justice' and demand the laws be changed, post-facto for _all_
offenders. Forget the double-jeopardy implications, _this is just too
important_ claim the citizens. The sex-offender registration lists are
too cluttered up, and were started, theoretically, to 'warn the
neighbors' about offenders living in their midst. And the way police
always pounce at the opportunity to get still more people listed
(except of course themselves or their buddies in blue) the lists will
only get longer and more cluttered. And some states have dropped the
word-phrase 'sex' or 'sexual' from the name and started referring to
the 'Registered Offenders List'. That's because in some places they
now include drug (buying, selling, possessing) as a registerable
offense. So, what were you saying about 'Registered Sex Offenders'?
PAT]
Sam Spade (sam@coldmail.com)