If we want to keep our neighbors and children safe, we are going to have to learn to have a discerning eye and forgiving heart to those who have committed sexual crimes but pose little to no future threat not only so they can get on with their lives, but so society can devote its resources to watching those who are truly dangerous. The chest-thumping over “being tough on crime” has to calm down so we can look at policies and punishments that really work rather than sound tough and produce discouraging and dangerous results.

I would love to hear your comments, and again, check out the full article.

• Every American state keeps a register of sex offenders. California has had one since 1947, but most states started theirs in the 1990s. Many people assume that anyone listed on a sex-offender registry must be a rapist or a child molester. But most states spread the net much more widely. A report by Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch, a pressure group, found that at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers.

• America‚Äôs registers keep swelling, not least because in 17 states, registration is for life.

• The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous.

• So laws get harsher and harsher. But that does not necessarily mean they get better. If there are thousands of offenders on a registry, it is harder to keep track of the most dangerous ones.

• A study of nearly 10,000 male sex offenders in 15 American states found that 5% were rearrested for a sex crime within three years. A meta-analysis of 29,000 sex offenders in Canada, Britain and America found that 24% had reoffended after 15 years.

• A meta-analysis of 23 studies by Karl Hanson of Canada‚Äôs department of public safety found that psychological therapy was associated with a 43% drop in recidivism.

• Publicising sex offenders‚Äô addresses makes them vulnerable to vigilantism. In April 2006, for example, a vigilante shot and killed two sex offenders in Maine after finding their addresses on the registry. One of the victims had been convicted of having consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend when he was 19.

• In Washington state in 2005 a man posed as an FBI agent to enter the home of two sex offenders, warning them that they were on a ‚Äúhit list‚Äù on the internet. Then he killed them.

• Jill Levenson, of Lynn University in Florida, says half of registered sex offenders have trouble finding jobs. From 20% to 40% say they have had to move house because a landlord or neighbour realised they were sex offenders.

There are heinous crimes for which I would have a hard time arguing against the death penalty (I doubt you will ever find me arguing for it in any situation). That isn’t the issue. The issue is we have a predictably flawed (all juries are imperfect) system that does not always convict the correct person of their actual crimes.

As a taxpayer, I would far rather pay for the care and appeals during the lifetime sentence of all death-row inmates than continue to be part of society that is killing innocent men and women. As quoted in the article above, former Illinois governor George Ryan stated he could no longer support a system that has “come so close to the ultimate nightmare-the state’s taking of innocent life.

This all reminds me of an amazing book I read ~2 years ago. It was one of those reads I truly could not put down, reading in during all the 5 minute breaks between periods at school, on lunch, and late into the night. It is the memoirs of Rev. Carroll Pickett, a minister who was asked to assist at his local prison when executions were resumed after the 1972 stay. He starts his journey in favor of the death penalty and over time watches as the truly guilty, but also the mentally retarded and truly innocent are put to death:

You can view the full documentary online for $3.99 at Amazon and find his book here.

I remember sitting across from one girl who had scars up her all up and down the inside of arm from her cutting. My friend asked me what I would come to know as her typical introduce-the-new-person question: “Tell us some little-known fact about you.” It just so happened I had let my sister Liz paint my toesnails at her baby shower a couple weekend before and I had never gotten around to taking it off, so the girls in the class were delighted to see the formally dressed MTC teacher take off his shoes and show them his cracked toenail polish.

I fell in love with the State Hospital, I quit the MTC mid semester (let’s just say I burned a bridge at a job many clammer for) and started working as an aide in my friend’s classroom. In time I was a substitute in the younger (7-9th grade) girls’ classroom, and than was the teacher for 11 months in the 9-12th grade boys’ classroom.

I loved my time there, I love my students, and I for the most part respected the school and hospital staff I worked with. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that even with all of our good intentions and programs, these youth learned very negative behavior spending 24/7 around each other. Now, in this case they had behavior stemming from mental illness as well as, at times, “juvielle delinquent” type behavior likely unconnected to mental illness. But when one clinically depressed student arrives who has never cut before, and they are around someone who has cut or even does cut at the hospital, it not hard to imagine they at least try the behavior.

A recent Newsweek article talked about this phenomenon, s tudy that controlled for family income, single-parent homes, and early behavior problems, they found these startling facts:

*Compared with other kids with a similar history of bad behavior, those who entered the juvenile-justice system were nearly seven times more likely to be arrested for crimes as adults

*Further, those who ended up being sentenced to juvenile prison were 37 times more likely to be arrested again as adults, compared with similarly misbehaved kids who were either not caught or not put into the system.

*Kids who entered the juvenile-justice system even briefly — for example, being sentenced to community service or other penance, with limited exposure to other troubled kids — were twice as likely to be arrested as adults, compared with kids with the same behavior problems who remained outside the system.

*Being put on probation, which involves more contact with misbehaving peers, in counseling groups or even in waiting rooms at probation offices, raised teens’ odds of adult arrest by a factor of 14.

Again, in our desire to crack down out what is truly dangerous or socially unacceptable behavior in a manner than mimics the adult prison system (parole, lock down, etc.) we inadvertently fuel the fire.

What can we do? In the words of the article:

In a 1995 study conducted by Dishion involving 158 high-risk families in Oregon, researchers compared the impact on teens’ behavior of four interventions: parenting groups focused on effective discipline, social-skills-training groups for teens, both the parent- and teen-focused group interventions, or no group treatment at all. Overall, the parent-focused group was most effective, leading to reductions in teen smoking and misbehavior at school. The teen-focused group, by contrast, significantly increased participants’ rate of aggressive behavior and smoking; in the combination group, kids showed no improvement, presumably because the exposure to other teens canceled out the positive effect of the parents.

A recent Newsweek article talks about Ron Book and his daughter Lauren who was sexually and physically abused by a nannie for years before divulging what evils were being perpetrated upon her. Ron spent years channelling his anger into lobbying for tighter laws, such as increased prison time for sexual convicts who contact their victims, and HIV testing of convicts if victims request it.

One particular ordinance he got passed prevented sexual ex-convicts from living 2500 ft from schools, daycares, etc. This made much of the city inaccessible at night (as this restriction was only during evening/nighttime hours) to these ex-convicts, driving them to the next city, until the next city passed a similar ordinance, which drove them from one city to the next as such ordinances were passed.

The video below shows a shanty town that many of these ex-convicts in Florida have created beneath a freeway because there is no where else for them to live.

Now, I will be checking the sex offender list if we have to a nannie/babysitter, or place Ben in daycare. I’m grateful I have access to those records. But to drive these people out and away, when our penal system says they have paid their debt to society to both unChristian and dangerous. As the article states:

“This very-well-intended policy is making the public less safe,” says Susan Brown-McBride, chair of the California Sex Offender Management Board. It “destabilizes [offenders] by making them homeless.”

“If an offender ends up with no residence, that shouldn’t make any of us feel safer,” says Patty Wetterling, whose son’s abduction prompted the creation of the first federal sex-offender registry in 1994. “What they need is stability, support, counseling, and treatment.”

The New Testament says:

15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.
16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with ^apublicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are ^awhole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Perhaps we need to take Christ at his word when he suggests there is something to be gained by ministering to sinners. It makes not just Christian-sense, but, as it was stated in the article, social-safety sense to minister to these people. If we let our revenge and anger blind us we will punish ourselves by making our society less safe rather than guiding these souls into healing and growth.

As an LDS missionary we tracted into a man who confided in us was convicted decades before as a sexual predator. He couldn’t read and lived in poverty. He told us he wanted a clean start to his life. My father sent him the Book or Mormon on cassette and he listened to it.

After he was interviewed for baptism by another missionary, the mission president talked to me on the phone. He said, “How many years do we make this man wait before he gets to start again? Does he have to wait 20 years? 30 years? 40 years? I think he deserves another chance, Elder Thatcher, don’t you?”

I know my words right now might be very different if I had been the victim of sexual abuse, but after meeting, teaching, and baptizing this man (who, by the way, I hear is one of the only people still active from the ranks of those I saw baptized) I can’t help but wonder how many souls are lost and communities are made less safe because we refuse to minister to the sinners among us.

* Season: Winter claimed the most homeless deaths with 27% of the total deaths, followed by Summer [25%]; Spring [24%] and Fall [23%].

(I find it surprising the winter doesn’t claim a much higher percentage than the other seasons. This tells us we need to help not in the cold, but all year.)

* Lives cut short: The 2,815 homeless people in our study were expected to live 211,878 years based on the average life expectancy of their gender and ethnicity. They only survived 135,528 of those expected years. In other words, their lives were cut short by 76,350 years. On average a homeless person’s life is 36% shorter than a housed person’s life. For homeless Latina females, their lives were 49% shorter than expected.