I’m the mother of a young girl, and I want to know everything I can about where we are so that I can keep her safe. I know there is a free registry in North Carolina showing where registered sex offenders live. You type in an address, and you can see the locations of registered sex offenders living nearby. It’s very usable, if you are at your computer.
Offender Locator by ThinAir Wireless is an iPhone application that lets you see offenders’ locations wherever you are. The program will use the GPS location to show you a map of offenders’ addresses, or you can select an address from your contacts, or manually enter an address. You can also see pictures of the offenders and their offenses. It’s another tool to help protect the safety of your family.
Offender Locator costs $1.99 for iPhone. There is also a version of Offender Locator for Blackberry and Facebook.
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I’m actually against the sex offender database: It’s too easy to get on to. Highschoolers get on it for consensual sex among themselves, people get on it for walking around drunk, heck, in one instance some girls almost got on it for having pictures taken of them _without their consent._ (And only didn’t because one parent managed to make a national stink of the case.)
That’s aside from the whole ‘second class citizen’ thing: If they are a danger to society, put them it jail. If they aren’t, let them go. Don’t put them in a quasi-limbo for the rest of their lives.
I totally agree with you DStaal.
The registry is diluted with teens and others who have never hurt a child or in some cases there was no victim at all. The registry has not protected one single child. It didn’t help Jessica Lunsford in FL who lived across the street from an offender who did not register or the now famous Dugard case in CA. who lived under the so called watchful eyes of the sex offender unit for 18 years. Yet our state spend tens of millions of dollars to keep up with a registry that has much erroneous information. 95% of all new sex abuse is committed by people you know and are not on the registry. Protect your child by educating them and yourself about the signs of sexual abuse. In addition teach your children appropriate behavior. Your sons and daughters are not protected from being placed on the registry for a stupid mistake. Visit: reformsexoffenderlaws.org It will link you to alot of valuable information. If only I would have done the same, my son ( whose case has no victim) would not be on the registry today.
I’ll echo the rest of the people here by saying that there are good reasons to think that you are not protecting your daughter by using this app, which uses data with a high rate of false negatives and positives, and which vilifies people who have hurt nobody.
Most sexual assault is not the creepy old man on the street corner with candy, but the guy that your daughter goes out with without telling her friends where she’s going, the guy she dates and slips a few shots of vodka into her drink, or the guys in her college dorm who find her drunk and lead her to the bedroom.
None of these people are on the sex offender registry.
In my opinion, information is power. So the more you have, the more you are empowered. If you do an occassional search and only see teens listed in your area, it might give you some small piece of mind. But what if you do a search and there’s an adult listed on it that lives near your home. Wouldn’t you want to know more about that person? I would. The registry definitely is not your only weapon against predators, but it is one of them.
Relevant reports by Human Rights Watch: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0907webwcover.pdf
The vast majority of sex offenders are someone you know. An uncle, a father, a brother, a close family friend. People might feel safe with these databases around, but they are living a false sence of security. It’s those around you that you need to watch most closely. This is a fact, and a matter of public record.
As a Police Officer, I can attest that Sex Offender Registries are a great tool and should be utilized fully. I do agree that there are a few, not a considerable amount though, that probably shouldn’t be on there. But most of the list (at least in my state of Texas) is very good and properly utilized. However, I do agree with DStall we should keep the SOB’s in jail if they are a real threat to society, but too many groups such as the ACLU want to argue against that and defend the criminals, not the victims for some reason. Irregardless, these people are not simply “ill” or “sick” and can be cured, they cannot. If they are pedophiles, they will always be pedophiles and should be quickly and easily removed from society (anyone catch my drift?). But we cannot do that unfortunately and a registry is our only other tool. You cannot change their sexual desires anymore than we can change any of our sexual desires. The registry is the best we can do for now.
Sheer statistics will mean a list like that will have a large number of false-positives: There are relatively few severe crimes that would get you on the list, and severe crimes generally are committed less often.
Of course it’s useful: Anything with even a mild information content can be useful, in the right hands. The question is whether the use outweighs the harm. (And if it’s even remotely useful to have apps such as this which are designed to put the information into unqualified hands to be used.)
Oh, and for the ‘cannot change their sexual desires’: I’m not asking anyone too. I’m only saying that if they have been judged able to understand and follow the law enough to be released, release them. Until then, don’t. I’m sexually attracted to women. Lock me in a room with an attractive member of that gender and I’ll be enough of a civilized human being to restrain that attraction. Don’t play as if others are incapable of doing the same, just because they attracted to something different.
@ Daniel Staal
Your comparison is way off base. “Lock me in a room with an attractive member of that gender and I’ll be enough of a civilized human being to restrain that attraction.”
Yes, you can control your urges because what you like is socially acceptable and perfectly fine, besides that you can later satisfy your urges by having an encounter with a woman. However, the pedophiles do not legitimately have that outlet, nor should they. They are sexually attracted to children, they simply cannot suppress their urges until later because even later they’ll be victimizing a kid. What they desire is in no way acceptable or fine at all.
@Ferris
You can speculate and reason all you like (“once a pedophile, always a pedophile”, “most of the list is good, and properly utilised”), but have you checked the facts?
States such as Vermont and Minnesota have responsible public sex offender databases, in which a very small minority of registered sex offenders are actually placed on the website, which are those deemed to pose a real risk in communities in which they live.
There are good ways to maintain responsible disclosure of sex offender registration, requiring pro-active notification by law enforcement and restricting public register access to a need-to-know basis would prevent public humiliation of nonviolent sex offenders while informing people in a community when a member of the community poses a real threat.
30% of convictions for sexual assault resulting in a person being required to register as a sex offender are non-violent acts, not against children.
76% of people convicted for sexual offences do not commit any further offence.
5.6% of violent sexual assaults are committed by people who had never previously been required to register as a sex offender.
People children know and trust are responsible for 90% of all sexual violence against children.
4% of youth required to register as a sex offender committed another sexual offence, and 90% of all sex offenders did not commit a sex offence while under 18. This isn’t a minority of sex offenders, 25% of those required to register as sex offenders are required to do so because of a crime they committed while under 18. 47% of offences against children under 6, and 39% of offences against children between 6 and 12 were committed by children who were themselves under 18. In terms of predictive power, the number of contacts with police for all reasons was twice as good a predictor as a single sexual offence of committing a further sexual offence.
There is significant evidence that the hardship imposed on those required to register as sex offenders increases recidivism in some cases, and makes tracking difficult (there are very few places in some states that registered sex offenders can live, so what do they put as their address?). Sex offenders are least likely to re-offend if they live with their families, have a stable job, and a place to live. Sex offender registration takes away all of these, by causing frequent public vilification causing employment dismissal, by imposing residency restrictions that prevent sex offenders from living with their families, preventing them from attending church services or receiving treatment and help for their condition.
Sex offender registration has, in several cases resulted in vigilante murders of people whose offences causing their registration as sex offenders were neither violent nor predatory, in many cases being streaking and public urination. This isn’t isolated, one third to one half of registered sex offenders lose their home, job or family. 16% of registered sex offenders are physically assaulted as a result of registration. Typical assault and harassment includes physical threats, ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night and leaving, leaving feces and garbage on the offender’s doorstep, up to being beaten or stabbed. In some cases, shots have been fired into registered sex offenders’ homes, injuring their family members.
Requiring sex offender registration for large classes of nonviolent misdemeanours has caused states such as California to literally lose track of 44% of its registered sex offenders.
Life registration is unnecessary and overly onerous, as recidivism rates decrease to 12%, 9% and 4% after five, ten and fifteen years of remaining offence-free respectively.
Contrary to what you might think, treatment is a solid method of reducing recidivism, reducing recidivism by 41% when modern methods are applied properly.
Community notification and online databases, according to a report by the Washington Department of State, have little to no impact on either the rate or location of recidivism, indicating that the online databases neither prevent recidivism, nor force it to go elsewhere.
Despite what you say about Texas specifically, Texan law requires anybody committed of any offence even tenuously sexual or violent to be registered as a sex offender, for life.
So while I don’t oppose sex offender registration entirely (it can be done responsibly and with an evidence-based approach), its implementation in the United States is nothing but the product of a moral panic, which does not achieve its stated aims, and is based on received wisdom rather than empirical evidence.
@ Andrew Garrett
You obviously have never talked with pedophiles and dealt with them one on one on a daily basis. You can state your statistics all you want, I speak from experience gained from working the streets, talking with pedophiles, helping their victims, keeping them in jail, and trying to keep my community safe. Most pedophiles will readily tell you that they cannot be “cured” and that they will not “heal”. It is a strong desire from deep within that many of them hardly can control. As far as your statistics, I believe it was Mark who said “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics!”
Mark Twain said that quote, sorry I seemed to have left his last name off.
Why not just use an ounce of common sense and actually read the charge that put the person in the db in the first place? There are plenty in my area that are probably just “18 year old having sex0rz with a 16 year old girl!! OMGWTFBBQ!”… and then there’s the grandpa convicted of lewd acts with a child under the age of 8. Hmmm, which one should I worry about?
But the vigilante element and obvious misuse of these databases is a problem. This app is one such misuse. Two wrongs never made a right. Maybe the time spent using such an application would be better spent educating our kids? Just sayin…
Honestly, more information is better than no information. All those people who speak on statistics or non-believer must not have kids or younger children and you just simply don’t care about your child’s safety. Honestly, no body can just based on the Sex registry it’s self we and the children have to be watch out for our surroundings.
One thing to note though..All these developers that makes these software are in for profits, which I don’t blame them. However California does not allow money being made on sex registry, and their free trial version is so limited it’s worth less. I wish they can release a free version for just California.
Ferris209,
You don’t know what the hell you are talking about. I have dealt with hundreds of sex offenders, and they don’t tell you that. They can control thinking, and most of them that are treated never re-offend. Those are the facts.
ferris209 i hope u are aware as u can be held up in court and in some cases sued for your wide choice of threating and skandering words-also nkown as beating around the bush in wich they can be toookin out of context in many different ways so be carful with the choice of words u dont wanna make your precint look bad do ya!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!