...The majority of the public believes that when an offender serves their time in jail or prison, he or she will ultimately be free to go. However, that is not always the case. Sex offenders are often viewed as being potential recidivists, therefore certain states and the federal government have put laws in place to keep these potential offenders in prison. More than half the population of sexual predators which includes, rapists, pedophiles, and other sex offenders are held past their sentence on a recidivism assessment which is almost impossible to challenge. Legal procedures known as civil commitment can be determined or assessed by the sole opinion of a psychologist or expert. The law implemented serves as the people’s obligation to protect...
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...COM/172 August 25, 2014 Charlotte Babb Children Sexually Abusing Children Parents not only have to worry about adult sexual predators, but also have to worry about adolescent social offenders-which is on the rise. The background has a lot to do with how a child turns out. The fact that both male and female juvenile sexual predators exist is horrifying by itself. The sexual behavior that leads to sexual abuse can start as young as six years old (Smith, B. 2007, September 19). The thought crosses the mind of all parents. How do they protect their child? Unless they plan on following their child everywhere they go, they can only teach them and watch for the signs of both child predators and their victims. Everyone has to wonder what could cause one child to abuse another child sexually, and if they even understand the consequences of their actions. What will happen to the juvenile offender, will they get off with therapy, or will they go to prison to pay for their crime? The younger offenders are getting therapy while the older predators are going to juvenile detention centers or even to prison. When a child relapses a second time, the child could be sent to a child detention center, jail, or a mental hospital for the safety of the public. Most people are not exactly sure what child on child sexual abuse consists of. The fact is that child on child sexual abuse is when a younger child is sexually abused by one or more older children without consent and without any adult involvement...
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...HEAD: Sexual Predators Sexual Predators Wm. Michael Barber Criminal Law & Procedure CRJ 306 Martin McAuliffe February 18, 2013 Sexual Predators The State of Pennsylvania like so many other states has passed laws the focus on the civil commitment of predators after their criminal commitment is finished. Our statute, like several other states, now calls for the involuntary civil commitment of sexual predators that have been determined to have a psychological or behavioral abnormality that makes these individuals engage or be predisposed to engage in some type of sexually deviant or predatory acts. This paper will focus on implementation and development of the Pennsylvania laws dealing with sexual predators and how the state is moving forward to cope with this issue. Civil confinement of violent sexual predators is very controversial in forensic psychology and psychiatry. Even with the controversy, lawmakers in many states have passed laws requiring the civil commitment of inmates that suffer from psychological and behavior abnormalities and a past of committing sexual offenses. Most states call for inpatient confinement in facilities that are secure. Pennsylvania would rather focus on a model that is designed for outpatients. Pennsylvania has a very tough approach on crimes that are determined to be sexual in nature. The state legislature went as far as to pass a law that called for the death penalty for those that are determined to be repeat offenders. Unfortunately...
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...Do female sexual abusers escape with lighter sentences just because they are females? I think the term "sex offender" is a very large term that makes a big deal of different types of crimes. For example, imagine a 18 year old college student while at a drunken party decides to have sexual relations with his 16 year old girlfriend who is also drunk, but "consented”, would be labelled a "sex offender" the next morning when her father finds out and the police press charges. That 18 year old is now a RAPIST and sex offender for life and on equal grounds with a 60 year old pedophile who spent 30 years in prison for actually raping a 9 year old girl! Are these two people "morally" equal? One is a sick pervert who raped a kid and the other is a kid who made a mistake in his youth and suffered the consequences from it. People don't consider these things when they see the term "sex offender". The common thinking is that if you've seen one sex offender, you've seen them all. Except when it comes to females. Going back to the party scenario, if boyfriend and girlfriend are both drunk and have sex, the male is always guilty of rape but the female for some reason isn't. After all, the male was drunk so technically he couldn't "consent" either right? So why is it that HE raped HER and not the other way around? Aren't they guilty of the same crime? The fact is, society doesn't take women seriously as sex offenders and we don't even...
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...crime of some sort than they should in retrospect be punished for such crime. Now imagine living in the suburbs of Long Island. Living in a beautiful quiet neighborhood with white picket fences. As you are waking from the chirping birds outside, you get ready for work or school for that day. You have a twelve years old little sister and she has plenty of neighborhood friends in her age group. While getting into your car driving to work, your little child walks to the bus stop at the corner of your house and waits for the school bus. Now watching the news later on that day, you hear a story on sex offenders. So with that said, you go on sexoffender.com, put in your zip code and finds out there’s is a convicted sex offender that lives right next to you! What do you do then? I believe chemical castration should be mandatory for every recidivist convicted sex offenders, that’s living in our...
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...The questions given are thus: should a convicted sexual offender be able to consent to surgical castration as a means of avoiding incarceration? Could a judge require this before a sexual offender is paroled? What are the ethics in these cases? The answer to the first question can be nothing but an outright no. While it has been the case before, we have no reason to allow criminals to trade body parts for the punishment and sentencing they have shown themselves to deserve. This is especially true when the amputation involved is actually no real guarantee that the offender will repeat their crime. While seeming like an extreme scenario (and it is), removal of such an offender’s testicles is not necessarily going to eliminate his capacity to assault or molest a child, minor, or even adult. In a similar case, a man convicted of sexual battery on a minor and lewd and lascivious behavior had requested surgical castration as a means of avoiding what would be an almost certain life-sentence. This man was arrested for performing oral sex on an eleven-year-old1 . He did not need his penis or testicles for this heinous act. One might argue that with the loss of the testicles, sex-drive is decreased very much. This is true, but with hormone therapy it can resurface, and while it would not necessarily be easy for a convicted sex offender to get ahold of testosterone injections, it would not, by any means, be impossible. Even the drop in ability to maintain an erection would not necessarily...
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...Sex Offender Registries and Community Notification Laws: An Ethical Dilemma by Amy Thorson NW 62-OM OM 4803 - Organizational Ethics John Brown University June 2009 Situation Definition Introduction of the Facts Sex offenders in American society are often seen as repulsive, violent individuals that deserve to be feared and punished to the fullest extent of the law. Their crimes are deemed the worst kind of violation of another human being. In fact, “the vehemence of the hatred for sex offenders is unmatched by attitudes to any other offenders” (Logan, 1999). Many state and federal laws have been passed in an effort to protect the public from these predatory sex offenders. The laws are aimed specifically at registering sex offenders, documenting sex crimes, and disseminating this information to the general public. The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act of 1994 requires that all states create registries for individuals convicted of sex crimes against children or any other sexually violent offense (Scholle, 2000). In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed Megan’s Law, which allows each state the discretion to establish criteria for registry disclosure, “but compels them to make private and personal information on registered sex offenders available to the public” (Klaas, 2008). Because many states depend on the federal government for funding of law enforcement programs, non-compliance with these requirements...
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...Sexual Predation and Pedophilia Smith Aja Professor Chuck Russo RC507 American Military University Introduction Childhood is supposed to be a time of discovery and play, not abuse. Sexual predators have been lurking this planet for decades; now they're being marked for life because of there actions. Neighbors and the home towns of sexual predators are being alerted of their crimes and whereabouts by local police. Such towns have responded by putting up signs in their town, "CHILD MOLESTER TWO DOORS DOWN" (Popkin, pg 73). Others responded by burning or flooding their new neighbors out (Popkin). What did these convicted criminals do to deserve such punishment? They violated the most precious living creature on this planet, a child. Communities definitely have a right to know that a dangerous child molester is moving to their town. Child molesters have been convicted, charged and sentenced for their crimes for many years. Do people really know the people they live by so well, that they would leave their own child with them? Also, if they had a legal right to, would they check out their neighbor's history at the police office, or trust them? In the summer of 1994, seven-year-old Megan Kanka was kidnapped, raped, and then killed by convicted child molester Jesse Timmendequas. The outraged community was never informed that Timmendequas and two other convicted child abusers had moved in across...
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...Sex offending against minors is still a problem within the Criminal Justice system even with all the laws and policies made to prevent it. The perspective of these laws are based off of two purposes first being to limit the sex offenders’ access to their potential victims, and second to empower the communities to prevent future victimization of a minor (Grady, 2009). These purposes stated above helped create a wide array of effective and also some ineffective policies, but the main focus was to protect minors from being victimized. After the policy and lawmakers look at all the statistics of where, why, how, and who the sex offenders’ target that will help them try and create effective policies to protect the minors. The policies that are enforced...
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...street for about a year, invited her over to pet his new puppy. When she followed him inside, he led her to an upstairs bedroom. That would become the last thing that she was free to do. For at that moment, Jesse stole her innocence. After he strangled her unconscious with his belt, he raped her and smothered her to death with a plastic bag. Timmendequas then placed Megan's body in a toolbox, drove to a soccer field a few miles from his house and dumped her body in some bushes. "Megan had a big heart; she was a great, great little girl," says her mother, Maureen Kanka, her voice rising in anger. "And he discarded her like she was a piece of trash” (Jerome). If only they were aware of his previous record as a sex offender. If only they knew a child sexual predator was living across the street. When we think of these awful things, we always think of what could have been done differently. Being a parent myself, I always hope for the best for my child, but fear the worst....
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...Datelines, "To Catch a Predator" has been on television for the past decade. It shows how law enforcement uses the internet to catch sexual predators, but predators are getting smarter. The internet is being used more and more as a dating place, instead of an information source. After meeting someone, they exchange emails or begin to talk in a chat room. Sometimes they are trying to find a soul mate, but there are individuals out in the world that are preying on someone's emotions and desires. The article I chose discusses how Channel 10 in Pinellas County Investigates their local area law enforcement agencies, and their ethical or unethical approach to catching predators. Channel 10 states that Pinellas County Sheriff's Office is posting...
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...Betty Waltermire Critical Issues in Criminal Justice JUS-250 April 10, 2014 Cruel and Unusual Punishment or Effective Control of Sex Crimes In the Bill of Rights we look to the Eighth Amendment to read; Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Excessive or disproportionate to the offense committed. A male who has been charged with and convicted of multiple sexual crimes, is going to do his time, get out of prison and offend again. To impose upon him to be chemically or surgically castrated would this procedure stop or prevent the sexual crimes from occurring. In China and the ancient world the rulers kept many wives and concubines so they would have an heir. To protect them from being impregnated by another male they used eunuchs to guard the wives and concubines. They were appointed to guard the royal household and through daily contact with the family they gained immense power (Chinese Eunuchs). According to legend castration has been used to improve the effectiveness of soldiers. The rulers would castrate the men by removing the penis and leaving the testicles. This would cause them enormous sexual frustration and they would become violent and aggressive, which was perfect for the battlefield. Chemical castration is done by injection of the FDA approved birth control drug Depo Provera to lower the testosterone levels in men, thereby reducing...
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...innocent and need to be protected from horrendous crimes such as, sexual assault. While looking this policy, it was clear where it was lacking. I am writing you in hopes that you will take some of my constructive criticism to help improve this policy or create a new policy that will be able to protect the public from violent sex offender. Sex crimes are an awful and affect a lot of Americans each year. The concept of having a database of all sex...
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...dad standing in the doorway with a strange look in his eye. In the moments to come, the innocence of a precious child will be destroyed forever. Studies show that two out of ten girls and one out of ten boys will be sexually abused before their fourteenth birthday, and children that are abused are much more likely to be abused by a family member or close friend not a stranger off the street. While child molestation is a common phrase used by the media and public when discussing sexual abuse of children, the actual crime is called child sexual assault. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect defines child sexual assault as “contacts or interactions between a child and an adult when the child is being used for sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or another person when the perpetrator or another person is in a position of power or control over the victim.” These “contacts or interactions” include inappropriate physical contact, forcing a child to view pornography or people performing sexual acts, using a child in making pornography, and exposing an adult’s genitals to a child. When referring to a child, it is generally considered anyone under the age of 14. Children in their teens are less likely to be sexually abused, and the age of consent starts to come in to play in some situations. The crime rates for child molestation are hard to determine. The definition used to...
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...cannot come back from. The juvenile sex offender’s registry and notification laws are controversial and proponents of these laws feel they act as deterrents to future offending even though there is no evidence to support this claim. In many cases recidivism has decreased with the proper assessment and treatment. Our country has an overzealous sex crime legislation dating back to the 1880s. In the United States there are three types of legislation dealing with sex crimes. The first was pre-World War II when offenders were subjected to indefinite institutionalization and sterilization. These policies were jointly influenced by the fields of sexology and eugenics (Ordover, 2003). Sexologists promoted the view that minor forms of sexual misbehavior would predict future sexual violence and homicide (Jenkins, 1998), whereas eugenicists promoted the view that criminal behavior was genetically determined (Ordover, 2003). Both of these fields developed the view that sexual offending was considered intractable, resistant to change and escalating, therefore, new legislation was established to enact extreme interventions by institutionalization offenders. In order to keep society safe from future exposure and danger from an offender’s offspring thus forced sterilization (Letourneau, 2013). This method has large economic costs to our government in funding for the physical care and procedure costs, which outweigh the benefits for this treatment. The offender and his family had to endure his...
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