Miami Sex Offenders Live on Train Tracks Thanks to Draconian Restrictions

[tallrick]

When you elect lawyers to run your government, all you get is more laws, more government and less security. I am against using prison as a punishment and instead support restitution. Every criminal record should be available online along with all details of the case. If someone is labeled a sex offender because he took a leak on the side of the road it is different from someone who raped 20 women. The average person should be familiar with personality types and basic self defense, as well as knowing firearms. Common sense and observant people would do more than Big Brother's police state and black lists.

[hurricaneMan1992]

I always wonder how many of these evil sex offenders were booked for consensual relations with someone who was 16 or 17 and got in a bar with a fake id. It would seem that by effectively forcing these individuals to homelessness, we create more problems as a society than we solve.

[Wild Style]

Originally Posted by hurricaneMan1992

I always wonder how many of these evil sex offenders were booked for consensual relations with someone who was 16 or 17 and got in a bar with a fake id. It would seem that by effectively forcing these individuals to homelessness, we create more problems as a society than we solve.

someone sounds guilty


Nah im kidding. Sometimes though, its a 18 year old guy who graduated, had a high school girlfriend (they were together while both enrolled in school), something goes wrong and the boy ends up in jail. It happens, the laws are a bit weird in my opinion. For example you have the 16 yr kid a few years back in Palm beach I think, who shot and killed his teacher. Tried as a adult. Then you had the girl in Broward I think, who had a baby, put it in a book bag and threw the baby in a canal and killed it. She was 16, yet the judge said she was too young to know what she was doing. Then you have kids who are 16/18 who have a relationship, something happens and the 18 yr old ends up in jail.

[faeryedark]

Originally Posted by Greatman

Jesus, these residency rules are sure going to make the women and children safer (sarcasm intended) I think that Florida needs to come up with some universal sex offender residency restrictions for the whole state and forbid localities from enacting stricter ordinances. Homeless sex offenders are much harder to track, coming up with 2,500 foot residency restrictions is going to be horrible for registry compliance, and if a sex offender fells life is no better in the free world than in the imprisoned world they're only going to be more likely to reoffend.

Per the Miami New Times

Darkness has swallowed the train tracks. It won't be long until the men arrive. At 9:50 p.m., the first pair of headlights punches through the black, and a white Ford pickup rolls into the parking lot of a large warehouse sitting among the nameless structures dominating the Miami-Hialeah border.

"Is this what the system is all about? Not helping anyone, by banning him from his family?"
Within minutes, more men approach on foot, on bicycle, and by car. With a downtrodden but urgent gait, they stride into the parking lot. They hate it here. They wish they could be anywhere else, in another country, or back in prison, perhaps even dead. But they have no choice. It's almost 10 p.m. This is Miami-Dade County. And these 57 men are sex offenders.

***MOD CUT***
Miami Sex Offenders Live on Train Tracks Thanks to Draconian Restrictions - - News - Miami - Miami New Times

I live in state where there are no residency restrictions or access restricitions and we seem to have less trouble than Floriduh....maybe that's cos the majority of sex crimes are done by people not on a registry.

[Greatman]

Originally Posted by hurricaneMan1992

I always wonder how many of these evil sex offenders were booked for consensual relations with someone who was 16 or 17 and got in a bar with a fake id. It would seem that by effectively forcing these individuals to homelessness, we create more problems as a society than we solve.

Yeah, that's a very good point- some of the sex offenders may be on the registry for those types of things. The age of consent in Florida is 18 and a 16-17 year old in Florida can have sex with somebody under the age of 24, but anybody under 16 can not have sex with anybody. If a person 16 years 0 days has sex with a person 15 years 364 days in Florida, the 16 year old could get charged with statutory rape for having a girlfriend a day younger. Technically, two 15 year olds in Florida that have sex can both be charged with statutory rape against each other.

In 2007, Florida passed a law that a slightly older (less than 48 months older) person who was convicted of statutory rape of a 14 or 15 year old could be exempted from the sex offender registry. But that law is not retroactive- a 16 year old who was convicted of statutory rape of their 15 year old girlfriend prior to July 2007 is still required to register as a sex offender in Fla. It's odd how they always retroactive anything making the sex offender registry tougher but don't retroactivate a law exempting people from the registry. I wonder if any people on the railroad tracks have older statutory rape convictions that wouldn't even mandate sex offender registration if the crime occurred today.

In any case, forcing these guys into homelessness is only going to make them more likely to reoffend, regardless of how heinous their crimes were. If you want to think about it this way, being homeless is no better than being imprisoned, so forcing the guys to be homeless will make the thought of going back to prison a lot less threatening.

[Greatman]

On a side note, I wonder if very many juries would convict a guy of statutory rape for having sex with a 16-17 year old that had a fake ID or lied about their age. It's illegal to have sex with a 16-17 yr old if you're 24 or older in Fla. If you give beer to a 20 year old with a fake ID, you can't be arrested. However, very few statutory rape laws have a "mistake to age" defense- you usually are considered guilty of the crime even if the "victim" had a fake driver's license. There's always jury nullification though, and maybe you could get lucky with that.

[Greatman]

Here is a study from Minnesota proving that sex offender living restrictions don't work. The study came to the conclusion that 0 out of 226 sex offender recividism cases would have been prevented by residency restrictions. http://www.csom.org/pubs/MN%20Reside...imity%20MN.pdf There were a small number of recividism cases where a stranger attacked near a school or park, but in all of those cases the sex offender lived at least a mile away and drove to commit the offense. That's one of the main flaws of the residency restrictions- the sex offenders can still drive to a school to attack a schoolchild. There's even some arguement the residency restrictions (by making it harder to find housing and reintegrate into society) could increase recividism.