And Now You Say Something.

2/03/16

I am going to preface this by saying that this is not a position piece. My mind is not made up. This is me working through the issue that follows and also offering it up for discussion...


Earlier I was scrolling through facebook and along came a meme that said that congress had just voted to put a "scarlet letter" on passports for sex offenders.

1. I did not look to see if it was true or not.
2. My initial thought was "Oh, well sex offenders are bad, they are registered in this country if previously convicted. they are people that need to have an eye kept on."

But then I read a comment, that basically condemned the American criminal justice system and our political leaders for our reprehensible methods of addressing the rights of sex offenders. This intrigued me, so i read more comments. A few down was a quote that said "I can't be the only person in the world that thinks that "sex offenders" shouldn't be continuously punished after serving their sentence in jail/prison." 

Now this was something I have never thought about. I do think that overall, if we have set punishments for crimes, once those are met the matter needs to be over. But I had never thought about that pertaining to sex offenders. 

We forgive a lot of bed people for doing a lot of bad things, but we treat sex offenders very differently. From a purely liberal (small l not big L) perspective, the just solution would be the forgiveness or at least to not let that incident hinder the life of that person any longer, but as humans, we do treat crimes towards the invasion of ones body very seriously.

Rape and sexual assault are horrific crimes. But so is beating someone nearly to death, and leaving them severely physically and psychologically damaged, but for the most part, they are welcomed back into society with relative ease. 

Should we reconsider our treatment of sex offenders? Is it more of a severe crime than the punishment? So should the punishment be more severe, so that apprehended offenders have a much less likely or no chance at repeating, and maybe it deters would be offenders? Or should we accept the punishments we have as adequate, and work on finding ways to get them to get help that's needed, and become apart of mainstream society again?

It is not only a look at ourselves as people, and the system of justice and injustice we have created. Its also an opportunity to look at how we think about justice. Whether its punishment, or treatment that is needed. Maybe its a mix of both. Either way I do think it is a conversation worth having.