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I've been doing some considerable research lately, and it strikes me that the terminology "sex offender" is essentially meaningless in the way it is applied in our criminal justice system, as well as in the media. It is applied to wide array of individuals who have committed a wide array of crimes that are related to (and, in some cases, only tangentially so) sexuality.
You can draw a useful analogy in any other area of criminal activity. Take drugs. People who commit drug offenses are similarly diverse and committed a wide variety of different crimes. A 'drug offender' moniker could be honestly applied from a person who grew marijuana for his or her own usage to a Columbian drug lord who smuggles cocaine into Florida. Obviously these two individuals have widely different intentions and motivations for their illicit activities. The person who is growing marijuana probably believes that it's not that big of a deal and simply wants to use the drugs for his or herself recreationally. The Columbian drug lord, on the other hand, is mercenary in both intention and motivation.
"So what?" you might be thinking. It seems to me that the lack of differentiation in terminology by necessarily grouping everyone who has committed a sex offense under the same umbrella term has several unintended consequences, largely due to a combination of a lack of public (and institutional) understanding regarding sex offenses as well as several high-profile sex offense cases in which the victim is murdered. That combination, taken together with the fact that the term "sex offender" encompasses a wide variety of illicit activity, has led to a public perception that all sex offenders are extremely dangerous and are likely to re-offend.
Perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of this usage, and public perception, is that it serves as a detriment to public safety. This is because the net is so widely cast, that attention and resources must be divided over a greater number of individuals when it can quite reasonably be asserted that certain individuals pose no threat to society. For example, cases in which two underage teenagers engage in consensual sex can result in convictions and the application of the sex offender label. It can reasonably be asserted that such individuals do not pose a threat to society, but yet still face monitoring, residency restrictions, and are at risk for vigilante activity. Resources devoted to such individuals necessarily detract from resources devoted to other individuals who, quite arguably, are more deserving of them (i.e. individuals who have shown a propensity for violence and/or committed contact offenses with adults or children). Being that there is less of an explicit focus on the individuals who are truly dangerous, they have a bit more breathing room. The end result is that law enforcement agencies, which manage things like the sex offender registry, must track offenders an order of magnitude greater than if there were greater specificity in the criminal justice system as well as in the media resulting in less attention and resources being devoted to individuals who actually pose the greatest risk for committing another crime - hence being a detriment to public safety.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not intending to assert that people convicted of "lesser" crimes have not done wrong or do not deserve some type of punishment and/or corrective action. What I am claiming is that the hysteria of public perception is actually creating a much more dangerous situation than if the subject were approached with a level-head.
Just my .02.
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