{"id":422,"date":"2004-08-06T10:13:08","date_gmt":"2004-08-06T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/08\/06\/karl-gets-political-once-again\/"},"modified":"2004-08-06T10:13:08","modified_gmt":"2004-08-06T14:13:08","slug":"karl-gets-political-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/08\/06\/karl-gets-political-once-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Gets Political Once Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the same court that legalized gay marriage) has recently ruled that the state can post photos and address information of Level 3 Sex Offenders. I’m not sure what I think about this.<\/P>
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I checked out the website (apparently, a lot of people have because the Boston Globe reports that the server has been overwhelmed and the site was very slow when I tried) and I couldn’t find a clear definition of Level 3 versus Level 1 or Level 2 (aside from the simple “low risk”, “moderate risk” and “high risk” labels). My assumption is that Level 1 is a person that got caught masturbating in the woods or fooling around with another person at a rest area (which I personally don’t consider a sexual offense…but I digress). And I would assume that a Level 3 sex offender is a person with severe mental health issues leading him\/her to rape adults and\/or children.<\/P>
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There are a few things about this whole website business that worry me:<\/P>
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First, if these sex offenders are considered such a high risk…why are they out in the first place? I mean, if they are so risky to the general public that the state feels it needs to warn (actually, advertise) to neighbors that a predator is in their midst, shouldn’t the person be some place else getting rehabilitated instead? I don’t know enough about prescriptions\/psychiatry, but it seems to be me that these predators have a psychological problem. After prison, couldn’t there be some sort of post-prison\/pre-societal half-way house where they could live? They could work normal jobs during the day, but receive psychiatric help at night and have professionals on-site to manage and adjust medications? I mean, I know people with OCD or other behavioral issues that take prescriptions to put those urges under control. Aren’t their medications that could be assigned to reduce libido or re-assign such urges?<\/P>
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Second, this is too reminiscent of the Witch Hunts in 1692. I mean, people are going to abuse this knowledge (that a sex offender lives in their neighborhood). Some day, we’re going to hear reports of people throwing eggs at his\/her house, people vandalizing his car and calling him\/her names at the local store or on the street. Neighbors will run the other way and give no eye contract…meanwhile, chances are that this sex offender is probably wanting to get on with his\/her life. And if this predator is still unable to control his urges, I refer to my first suggstion and don’t release him\/her to the public.<\/P>
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Third, if advertising sexual predators is the wave of the future, why are only sexual offenders being targeted? Why aren’t gay bashers being posted? How about violent racists? I mean, I’d like to know if my next-door neighbor has attacked a gay man, and I’m sure an African-American (or Asian, or Middle-eastern, or Latino, or American Indian) would like to know if there is somebody on their block with a history of violence.<\/P>
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Don’t get me wrong. I am 100% for protecting people from sexual assault and think the state\/government and community-at-large should do all it can to to protect each other. I’m just not so sure this is the best way.<\/P>
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On a lighter note, it’s nice and cool out there today (and I wore shorts).<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the same court that legalized gay marriage) has recently ruled that the state can post photos and address information of Level 3 Sex Offenders. I’m not sure what I think about this. I checked out the website (apparently, a lot of people have because the Boston Globe reports that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}