Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Human Rights for all or Just for some?

In the LA times on September 18th an article was posted by Jaime Fellner, she states that the right of being able to live in an environment free of sexual violence is detrimental to public safety. In addition to this she also states that California in particular does a poor job of implementing laws that prevent sex offenders from committing crimes that endanger many children in our country. There is a law that applies to anyone that has committed any kind of sex-related offense, which can include anyone from streakers to teenagers having consensual sex. At the same time juveniles as young as 10 years of age are subject to this law. Laws like this are not clear enough for such a serious topic as sexual violence. Proposition 83 also known as Jessica’s Law (named for Jessica Lunsford a victim of sexual violence, who was also murdered) states that sex offenders who have just been released from prison are forbidden to live no closer than 2,000 feet from any school or park to prevent any type of threat to children that play at the parks or go to the schools. “The evidence shows that family members, friends or acquaintances are responsible for more than 90% of sexual abuse cases involving children. As for repeat offenses, most convicted sex offenders do not have a lengthy history of repeating the crime. The U.S. Department of Justice reported a recidivism rate of 3% to 5% three years after release. A longer study found that three out of four did not re-offend within 15 years. These laws offer no protection against first-time offenders, who are responsible for 87% of reported sex crimes against children.”(Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2007)
So with that said human rights for sex offenders are not being considered. Having these laws in place actually make it difficult for sex offender to re-adapt to society. Jessica’s Law prevents sex offenders from living in cities and forces them to live far from accessibility to jobs, family, and society. Moreover the general idea of prison is to rehabilitate criminals, but instead of rehabilitating these sex offenders we are in fact isolating them, which can only make matters worse not better. Yes, isolating sex offenders with the use of the internet websites and etc. does decrease the chances that a child will be sexually assaulted, but at the same time using isolation as a means of punishment for all offenders which only 3 to 5 percent of them actually repeat the crime. In my opinion this seems perhaps a little harsh for the crime after serving there time. Does this isolation mean that there are human rights for some and not for all? Or does this suggest that there are human rights for the “Good” and not the “Evil?”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with the comments that you posted on my blog about the sex offender and the association to the registry. I hope that someday this can be changed in someway or form. I am not optimistic though that sex offenders will ever have human rights in the US.

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