PLEASE NOTE: It took me forever to write this and it is overlong. I beg your indulgence. We have a tendency to pass laws in this country and then think that the problem is fixed. Often the laws cause as much heartache as the heartache they were meant to prevent. Like you, I am troubled by the predation and victimization of children. Problem is that I am also troubled by what our laws do to children.
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No longer a registered sex offender, but the stigma remains - CNN.com
The linked story is one of a life destroyed by sex offender registration laws. It is an example on what happens when "we the people" do not stop to consider the broad impact of our actions. It is an example of what happens when knee jerk politicians craft laws to support re-election efforts.
These stories repeat the tragedy again and again. The problem with these laws is that they criminalize normal adolescent behavior. Let's be clear here that we are not talking about boys having sex with children. It is true that the attachment to children as sex objects begins early in life, and so intervention designed to address that is a good idea (although community attitudes towards sex offenders often make it difficult for those so labeled to have a normal life.) Nor are we talking about forcible rape (a term that always struck me as redundant), there are sufficient laws on the books to deal with rape. What we are talking about is the very fuzzy area of law known as "Statutory Rape." Statutory rape (these laws date to the 14th century and were originally intended to protect an important economic resources: a daughter's virginity) occurs when a person has consensual sex with a person below the age of consent.
There are several problems with these laws. One is that the age of consent is different in different states. In California it is 18 in most others it is 16. This means that if a 19 year old boy has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend of 2 years, he has committed statutory rape in one state, but not in another. In a sign of a drift toward rationality, many states now reduce the act to a misdemeanor if it there is not a 2 or 3 year difference in the age of the perpetrator and the "victim", but why criminalize sex at all? Because here's the thing, what consent laws also mean is that if a 16 year old boy has sex with his 14 year old girlfriend he has committed statutory rape in almost every state. He has become a "sexual offender."
A troublesome problem arises from the idea of consent itself. The basic idea of consent laws is that children are too "immature" to be able to manage the transactions involved in giving consent (although this same immaturity does not keep these kids from being tried as adults when politicians need to be "tough on crime".) This concept dovetails nicely with other approaches to power differentials in relationships, such as those on which sexual harassment laws are based and they make perfect sense when thinking in terms of adults having sex with adolescents, or adolescents having sex with children. they do not make sense when considering the behavior of adolescents within their peer group.
It is true that peer pressure can tilt young people towards behavior that they will regret later, but the idea that this is somehow something that is peculiar to adolescents is not supported. The whole concept of "groupthink" for instance, is based on the idea that everyone - even otherwise very intelligent adults - can be swayed by the pressure of their peers to adjust their thinking in not so useful ways. There is no doubt that peer pressure and sex are problems in adolescence, but to criminalize sexual behavior in this age group - and, in particular to require the inclusion of the names of these "criminals" in the registry of sex offenders - is unconscionable.
Another problem with these laws is that they are inconsistently enforced. In some states even different counties enforce state law differently. There are a variety of factors that cause this. One is ideological. Conservatives, who have held sway in the Federal government for many years, favor jail as "punishment" for this act. This is all tied up the the "Strong Father" movement and the "Purity" agenda, something that has some pretty creepy overtones of its own. The Supreme Court has been - or at least was before the empaneling of the Roberts Court - fairly clear that religious morality is not a sound basis for public law. The fact that some people consider premarital sex immoral is insufficient reason to destroy the lives of adolescent Americans.
And it was conservatives who pushed the "Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act" (Part of the Adam Walsh Act - are you as tired as I am of laws named after victims?) which required "offenders" as young as 14 to be listed on the registry, along with their photo, address and a notification on their driver's license. Now, again, there are reasons for the registry and with habitual offenders there is some potential for protection in the community from their predation. There are however significant constitutional questions about the act, the 9th Circuit Court has already struck down its retroactive notification section.
But what is the point of extending the registry to include 14 year-olds in the first place? A broad review of the available research on juvenile sexual offenders, edited in 2006 by Howard Barbee and William Marshall tied down several relevant facts about young sexual offenders. The first is that there are five groups of young offenders: 1) those who offend but stop at some point do not re-offend; 2) those that offend, are never caught and continue to offend in adulthood; 3) those who offend, are caught and never offend again;4) those who offend, are caught and treated and never offend again; and 5) those who offend, are caught and treated but continue to offend. This last group is the one included in most statistics about recidivism - but Barbee and Marshall's work demonstrates that recidivism rates are only about 15% for juvenile offenders. More important, what these categories tell us is that our laws intended to prevent re-offending have cast much too large a net. What we need are more effective techniques for addressing that 15%, not a mechanism that unnecessarily compromises the lives of the others.
Barbee and Marshall's work lists several risk factors that can be used to predict recidivism. Among them are whether or not the person has been arrested. One of the interesting bits of data from the book is that, although the recidivism rate for teen offenders is only 15% sexually, the recidivism rate for any crime (among the group of offenders) is over 50%. It may be that this statistic reveals a general level of sociopathy in these kids. It could also show the impact of integrating young offenders into the school of crime that is our current correctional system.
Another factor in recidivism however, is social isolation. The more socially isolated a kid is the more likely he is to re-offend. So here is the question. What could possibly increase social isolation more than having your name on a sexual offenders list and being prohibited by law from being in places where your peers congregate?
It is hard to read the stories of the damage done by the registry without becoming filled with rage. For me that rage focuses on the moralistic Americans who trumpet their religious values and believe that it is their job to protect us from our selves. But it is not just them.
We have come to a point in western culture that children are our most cherished possessions. We call them special, don't let them play the games we played when we grew up because they might have their little feelings hurt. We grow these cherished and special little ones into workers so spoiled that they cannot make it in the workplace. We will do anything to "protect" them from danger - real danger of course, but imagined danger as well. We are so mortified by what might happen "if", that we take no risks whatsoever.
Because of this, threats to children are often overblown because the media understands that it is fear of losing these cherished possessions - selfish fear for the most part - that drives us to the point of virtually imprisoning them in over-scheduled lives. And so we have Megan's law and Amber alerts and numerous other legislative palliatives that are designed to encapsulate children so their parents feel better. Extending the registry to 14 year olds is part of this trend.
The irony is that the actions we take to protect our own "special" children bring the cost of ruining the lives of other young people.
Nothing in what I am saying is intended to inhibit the reasonable execution of the laws of the land. The key word here is reasonable. It does not seem to me to be reasonable to throw young lives away in pursuit of goals better attained in other ways (please feel free to expand this argument to the "war on drugs", or the "war on terror" or hell, just war itself.) And the simple fact is that we do not know whether treatment works or why (note: that cite is from 2008, this one said the same thing in 1997.) While it may seem to some to reasonable to label adults as incorrigible, I can see no rationale for the application of that word to brains that are not finished developing.
I beg you please to go to this site and join the effort to get our laws to make sense. And while you're at it, let your kid climb that tree.
_______________________________________________________________
No longer a registered sex offender, but the stigma remains - CNN.com
The linked story is one of a life destroyed by sex offender registration laws. It is an example on what happens when "we the people" do not stop to consider the broad impact of our actions. It is an example of what happens when knee jerk politicians craft laws to support re-election efforts.
These stories repeat the tragedy again and again. The problem with these laws is that they criminalize normal adolescent behavior. Let's be clear here that we are not talking about boys having sex with children. It is true that the attachment to children as sex objects begins early in life, and so intervention designed to address that is a good idea (although community attitudes towards sex offenders often make it difficult for those so labeled to have a normal life.) Nor are we talking about forcible rape (a term that always struck me as redundant), there are sufficient laws on the books to deal with rape. What we are talking about is the very fuzzy area of law known as "Statutory Rape." Statutory rape (these laws date to the 14th century and were originally intended to protect an important economic resources: a daughter's virginity) occurs when a person has consensual sex with a person below the age of consent.
There are several problems with these laws. One is that the age of consent is different in different states. In California it is 18 in most others it is 16. This means that if a 19 year old boy has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend of 2 years, he has committed statutory rape in one state, but not in another. In a sign of a drift toward rationality, many states now reduce the act to a misdemeanor if it there is not a 2 or 3 year difference in the age of the perpetrator and the "victim", but why criminalize sex at all? Because here's the thing, what consent laws also mean is that if a 16 year old boy has sex with his 14 year old girlfriend he has committed statutory rape in almost every state. He has become a "sexual offender."
A troublesome problem arises from the idea of consent itself. The basic idea of consent laws is that children are too "immature" to be able to manage the transactions involved in giving consent (although this same immaturity does not keep these kids from being tried as adults when politicians need to be "tough on crime".) This concept dovetails nicely with other approaches to power differentials in relationships, such as those on which sexual harassment laws are based and they make perfect sense when thinking in terms of adults having sex with adolescents, or adolescents having sex with children. they do not make sense when considering the behavior of adolescents within their peer group.
It is true that peer pressure can tilt young people towards behavior that they will regret later, but the idea that this is somehow something that is peculiar to adolescents is not supported. The whole concept of "groupthink" for instance, is based on the idea that everyone - even otherwise very intelligent adults - can be swayed by the pressure of their peers to adjust their thinking in not so useful ways. There is no doubt that peer pressure and sex are problems in adolescence, but to criminalize sexual behavior in this age group - and, in particular to require the inclusion of the names of these "criminals" in the registry of sex offenders - is unconscionable.
Another problem with these laws is that they are inconsistently enforced. In some states even different counties enforce state law differently. There are a variety of factors that cause this. One is ideological. Conservatives, who have held sway in the Federal government for many years, favor jail as "punishment" for this act. This is all tied up the the "Strong Father" movement and the "Purity" agenda, something that has some pretty creepy overtones of its own. The Supreme Court has been - or at least was before the empaneling of the Roberts Court - fairly clear that religious morality is not a sound basis for public law. The fact that some people consider premarital sex immoral is insufficient reason to destroy the lives of adolescent Americans.
And it was conservatives who pushed the "Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act" (Part of the Adam Walsh Act - are you as tired as I am of laws named after victims?) which required "offenders" as young as 14 to be listed on the registry, along with their photo, address and a notification on their driver's license. Now, again, there are reasons for the registry and with habitual offenders there is some potential for protection in the community from their predation. There are however significant constitutional questions about the act, the 9th Circuit Court has already struck down its retroactive notification section.
But what is the point of extending the registry to include 14 year-olds in the first place? A broad review of the available research on juvenile sexual offenders, edited in 2006 by Howard Barbee and William Marshall tied down several relevant facts about young sexual offenders. The first is that there are five groups of young offenders: 1) those who offend but stop at some point do not re-offend; 2) those that offend, are never caught and continue to offend in adulthood; 3) those who offend, are caught and never offend again;4) those who offend, are caught and treated and never offend again; and 5) those who offend, are caught and treated but continue to offend. This last group is the one included in most statistics about recidivism - but Barbee and Marshall's work demonstrates that recidivism rates are only about 15% for juvenile offenders. More important, what these categories tell us is that our laws intended to prevent re-offending have cast much too large a net. What we need are more effective techniques for addressing that 15%, not a mechanism that unnecessarily compromises the lives of the others.
Barbee and Marshall's work lists several risk factors that can be used to predict recidivism. Among them are whether or not the person has been arrested. One of the interesting bits of data from the book is that, although the recidivism rate for teen offenders is only 15% sexually, the recidivism rate for any crime (among the group of offenders) is over 50%. It may be that this statistic reveals a general level of sociopathy in these kids. It could also show the impact of integrating young offenders into the school of crime that is our current correctional system.
Another factor in recidivism however, is social isolation. The more socially isolated a kid is the more likely he is to re-offend. So here is the question. What could possibly increase social isolation more than having your name on a sexual offenders list and being prohibited by law from being in places where your peers congregate?
It is hard to read the stories of the damage done by the registry without becoming filled with rage. For me that rage focuses on the moralistic Americans who trumpet their religious values and believe that it is their job to protect us from our selves. But it is not just them.
We have come to a point in western culture that children are our most cherished possessions. We call them special, don't let them play the games we played when we grew up because they might have their little feelings hurt. We grow these cherished and special little ones into workers so spoiled that they cannot make it in the workplace. We will do anything to "protect" them from danger - real danger of course, but imagined danger as well. We are so mortified by what might happen "if", that we take no risks whatsoever.
Because of this, threats to children are often overblown because the media understands that it is fear of losing these cherished possessions - selfish fear for the most part - that drives us to the point of virtually imprisoning them in over-scheduled lives. And so we have Megan's law and Amber alerts and numerous other legislative palliatives that are designed to encapsulate children so their parents feel better. Extending the registry to 14 year olds is part of this trend.
The irony is that the actions we take to protect our own "special" children bring the cost of ruining the lives of other young people.
Nothing in what I am saying is intended to inhibit the reasonable execution of the laws of the land. The key word here is reasonable. It does not seem to me to be reasonable to throw young lives away in pursuit of goals better attained in other ways (please feel free to expand this argument to the "war on drugs", or the "war on terror" or hell, just war itself.) And the simple fact is that we do not know whether treatment works or why (note: that cite is from 2008, this one said the same thing in 1997.) While it may seem to some to reasonable to label adults as incorrigible, I can see no rationale for the application of that word to brains that are not finished developing.
I beg you please to go to this site and join the effort to get our laws to make sense. And while you're at it, let your kid climb that tree.
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