NO CANDY AT THIS RESIDENCE

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/15/pumpkin-marks-sex-offenders-homes/

copy from The Daily Beast:

Chilling read from The Washington Times about the lengths Maryland is going to contain sex offenders on Halloween. The state is requiring that its 1,200 violent and child-sex offenders hang a sign with an orange pumpkin reading “No candy at this residence” on their doors. This is in addition to a law that already prohibits sex offenders from leaving their homes on the holiday. “Halloween provides a rare opportunity for you to demonstrate to your neighbors that you are making a sincere effort to change the direction of your life,” a letter accompanying the signs states. Or, if you’ve already made said effort, to remind them that you were, you know, a sex offender.

i'm just gonna put it on my door even though i'm not a child molester, i mean the candy is for ME, kids.

NEW HALLOWEEN COSTUME IDEA OBTAINED

The sign does look like a really awesome mask.

http://media.washingtontimes.com/media/img/photos/2008/10/15/20081014-224243-pic-543593599.jpg

omg does anyone else want to go paper neighborhoods in Maryland with these signs on Halloween

Great idea.

In addition to posting the sign, the offenders must stay at home, turn off outside lights and not answer the door.

and not molest anybody.

and not get boners.

the sign does have a certain COCK GOES WHERE quality. imo.

In addition to posting the sign, the offenders must stay at home, turn off outside lights and not answer the door.

I was wondering about that, too; it seems that posting a sign warning people away, then make conditions around said sign such that you have to get up on top of it to read it, isn't necessarily the best way to keep kids away from the houses where the sex offenders are.

http://i34.tinypic.com/149zg1x.jpg

"and who are you supposed to be, little boy?"

"i'm my old daddy's house!"

Oh boy, this will be an megameme by next thursday, brace youself.

http://punchup.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/john_mccain.jpg

hahaha omg

http://i36.tinypic.com/n1pit5.jpg

Scowly McCain needs to be turned into Yes We Carve pumpkin.

Those signs are almost hypnotically terrifying. But would they not count as cruel and unusual punishment?

no candy at this residence, she's moved to a penthouse in century city

Can CafePress deliver a t-shirt before Halloween?

the t-shirt should have an arrow pointing down

BVDs.

By: Concerned Viewer

No candy in this house, but I have plenty in the van.

What a silly idea.
October 16, 2008 at 5:24 a.m. | Mark as Offensive

By: beezdotcom

So, only children of parents who can't read English will be molested?
October 16, 2008 at 3:01 a.m. | Mark as Offensive

By: mambobananapatch

MikeNC writes: "What's next, a Red 'A' for adulterers, the Star of David to label Jews, Crosses for Christians?"

Do you understand the difference between an adulterer/Jew/Christian and a man who violently rapes children? No? Then I can understand your concern, though I can't understand your inability to make that distinction.

Think of it like this: Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Think for a moment...think...think...

See the difference now?
October 16, 2008 at 10:16 a.m. | Mark as Offensive

That last comment is the gold standard.

NO KOSHER AT THIS RESIDENCE

disappointed that i didnt think of the candy in the van joke

NO CANDY IN THIS POCKET

would you let a jew babysit your child?

Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist? Would you let a Jew babysit your child? How about a convicted child rapist?

hahaa

Would you let a Jew babysit your convicted child rapist?

Would you let your child babysit a Jew? How about a convicted child rapist?

good ol' maryland

babies nom nom nom

would you let a tuomas babysit your child?

low blow

To put this into perspective: public urination is a "Fourth Degree Sex Offense" in the great state of MD.

i keep forgetting maryland is a state

public urination is not a violent or child sex offense though

so you would only put up a no candy pumpkin if you wanted to exaggerate how good of a sex offender you are

i keep forgetting maryland is a state

― 100 tons of hardrofl beyond zings (Just got offed), Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:35 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You ain't the only one.

http://www.maps4.com/maryland_map.gif

"There we go. Some nice attractive looking states."
"What about all this extra space in between them?"
"I dunno. See if the Papalists want it."

also i keep forgetting how near the coast washington dc is, i always imagine it about 400 miles inland or so

Guys you can sing it to the tune of "No Parking On The Dance Floor".

NO TOILET AT THIS RESIDENCE

CANDY CANDY CANDY
I can't let you in, sorry.

barf http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-14-2009/0005005426&EDATE=

NEW YORK, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The WatchOut! iPhone application, which enables consumers to search any given area for registered sex offenders based on location or specific name, officially launches today. Ten percent of profits from the WatchOut! application go to the Domestic Violence Crisis Center (www.dvccct.org).

The WatchOut! application features an easy-to-use interface that enables users to identify dangers around them by searching for registered sex offenders by zip code or by name. The program also allows the user to determine where the highest concentrations of offenders live by plotting the locations on a map. The WatchOut! application is perfect for parents of young children, people who are planning to move to a new area, those who are in the dating scene and anyone else who is interested in knowing who is nearby in order to be safer.

Does the pumpkin come up on the screen to warn you>?

lol no i just remembered this was the thread for ridiculous sex offender paranoia

actually it's not that great because you can already look them up on the internet but nuts walking around with iphone apps X(

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/sex-offenders-the-last-pariahs.html

this is a good overview of where we're at as a country wrt our treatment of sex offenders post-release & comes to a totally otm conclusion - this is one of those issues that reallllly bugs me, totally gonna add this guy's book to the queue

Newer laws go even further. At last count, 44 states have passed or are considering laws that would require some sex offenders to be monitored for life with electronic bracelets and global positioning devices. A 2006 federal law, the Adam Walsh Act, named for a Florida boy who was abducted and killed, allows prosecutors to apply tougher registration rules retroactively. New civil commitment procedures allow for the indefinite detention of sex offenders after the completion of their sentences. Such procedures suggest a catch-22: the accused is deemed mentally fit for trial and sentencing, but mentally unfit for release.

Laws in more than 20 states and hundreds of municipalities restrict where a sex offender can live, work or walk. California’s Proposition 83 prohibits all registered sex offenders (felony and misdemeanor alike) from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, effectively evicting them from the state’s cities and scattering them to isolated rural areas.

Digital scarlet letters, electronic tethering and practices of banishment have relegated a growing number of people to the logic of “social death,” a term introduced by the sociologist Orlando Patterson, in the context of slavery, to describe permanent dishonor and exclusion from the wider moral community. The creation of a pariah class of unemployable, uprooted criminal outcasts has drawn attention from human rights activists; even The Economist has decried our sex offender laws as harsh and ineffective.

this shit makes me so sad

i'll have to read united states v. comstock to see how narrow that ruling was - i'm assuming it's terrible and scalia is gonna be otm. harbl?

I think I'm if not nearest to you on the civil liberties front on this board, then 2nd or 3rd nearest to you, but having worked with kids who survived sexual abuse & with their abusers for a number of years, I can't share your outrage here. some stuff merits pariah-dom. sexual abuse of children is one of them. it's pretty easy to not attain said pariah status. just get it in your head early on that no matter what's going on with you, you won't sexually abuse children. society is within its rights to take even the most draconian lengths in protecting its children from people who want to fuck them up for life.

Culpability and harm vary greatly in these offenses. Some would not be classified as criminal under European laws, which set lower ages of consent than do American laws. And because sex crimes are broadly defined and closely monitored, the number of people listed in public sex offender registries is growing rapidly: 740,000 at latest count, more than the population of Boston or Seattle. The registration and notification rules — the result of efforts by victims’ rights advocates, crusading journalists and tough-on-crime politicians — violate basic legal principles and amount to an excessive and enduring form of punishment.

key

yeah it's a difficult issue, man, and i hesitate to be so resolute in my empathy for their plight for fear of minimizing the monstrous things they've done and the effects on innocent lives they've wrought. and i've worked with kids at a JCC part-time for the past few years now and i've worked with kids who've been abused, i've worked with kids who would literally cry to me telling me they're afraid to go home because they think their dad is going to kill their mom, lots of awful and heart-breaking shit that makes me get really eaten up on both sides of this issue. but really what's done to these people is not right, either (imo) legally or morally - these are human beings who for sure have done awful, awful things but deserve a shot at redemption, but that's the last vestiges of my catholicism talking. and i don't think it's as easy as you say to avoid, lots of these people aren't playing with a full deck upstairs man, and i mean you look at the well-documented path many people take from being the abused to being the abuser, it doesn't excuse what they do but it does partially explain it and help to humanize them - i mean that's the thing, these people are so thoroughly dehumanized and cast out from any meaningful role in society - like these people have to live under bridges because they're either prohibited from living anywhere near a school or a park (everywhere) or the few places they're actually allowed to live, they won't be rented to. think about the misery these people must endure - no home, no job, likely no access to even primary health care. and if they're lucky enough to find a decent place to live their chances of successfully reintegrating into society are limited thanks to all of this scarlet letter bullshit they have to put up with, i mean think of the humiliation and sense of worthlessness they must feel - & THAT'S if they even are lucky enough to be released from prison and not be detained past their scheduled sentence without any meaningful due process. and data show that recidivism rates for these crimes are low by an large and that these draconian laws do little to actually protect children, so it seems like it's done mostly to punish and suck the humanity from people rather than actually benefit society. i'm kinda rambling now but basic point being that while i feel strongly for the victims of abuse i empathize also with people living under bridges who probably just wanna kill themselves

these are human beings who for sure have done awful, awful things but deserve a shot at redemption, but that's the last vestiges of my catholicism talking. and i don't think it's as easy as you say to avoid, lots of these people aren't playing with a full deck upstairs man, and i mean you look at the well-documented path many people take from being the abused to being the abuser, it doesn't excuse what they do but it does partially explain it and help to humanize them

I mean I agree with this. I don't believe in saying to anyone, "because of what you have done, you will always be scum to us." but absolutely every bit of research, every bit of evidence, suggests that once you cross that line into sexually victimizing children, you can't uncross it. pedophiles are pretty honest about it - they are what they are. what made them that way is a horror beyond all reasoning and they are human beings, too, and effort should be taken to find a space for them to live satisfying lives - it'd be awesome if sympathy could be awakened for them, if the cycle of abuse were understood by all so that when we talked about pedophiles we'd be talking about people who'd been permanently damaged when they were innocent children which as far as I know is always the case. but it's like - poison is not morally culpable for its effects on my body. but I still have to keep poison the fuck out of my body, or it will kill me. and pedophiles are human beings, too, and don't deserve to be so completely cast out from society that their common humanity with all of us is discounted. but they must be kept the fuck away from children, because most of what I know suggests that no amount of self-interest and no threat of reprisal will stand between them and preying on children, and if push comes to shove, which is what we're talking about, it's better to protect the vulnerable - if we have dueling vulnerabilities, then the one who's never hurt anybody has to take precedence. imo.

What pisses me off are those cases where a 16 year-old has sex with his 15 year-old girlfriend, consensually, then the parents of one or the other freak out and the kid is labelled a sex offender for life. In no world should that crime be treated the same as a 55 year-old man that repeatedly molests 6 year olds.

kind of a broad brush you're painting all molesters with there, aero. i don't mean to denigrate an otherwise thoughtful argument but i mean you're basically arguing a slippery slope into child fucking when (like anything) there's a lot of granularity i'm sure in the rather gross and varied field of kiddy-fiddling.

in the -- i'm sure -- rather gross and varied field of kiddy-fiddling

What pisses me off are those cases where a 16 year-old has sex with his 15 year-old girlfriend, consensually, then the parents of one or the other freak out and the kid is labelled a sex offender for life. In no world should that crime be treated the same as a 55 year-old man that repeatedly molests 6 year olds.

agree utterly with this. "adults and children" however is a different field, and not a blurry line or anything. everyone knows what a child is. there are people who are attracted to post-pubescent adolescents - they creep me the fuck out & I hope they do time if they cross the line but they are different from adults who assault pre-pubescent children. this latter category is a population for whom I feel profound pity, because again, God didn't make them that way: the people who raped them when they were children did. but society is justified, again, in going to profound extremes to keep such people away from children; their pathology can't be addressed, as far as anybody knows. only the behavior can.

yeah we're speaking the same language here, totally. but i'm not sure how to reconcile your assertion that but absolutely every bit of research, every bit of evidence, suggests that once you cross that line into sexually victimizing children, you can't uncross it. pedophiles are pretty honest about it - they are what they are., which seems true, with

Advocates for laws to register, publicize and monitor sex offenders after their release from custody typically assert that those convicted of sex crimes pose a high risk of sex crime recidivism. But studies by the Justice Department and other organizations show that recidivism rates are significantly lower for convicted sex offenders than for burglars, robbers, thieves, drug offenders and other convicts.

Only a tiny proportion of sex crimes are committed by repeat offenders, which suggests that current laws are misdirected and ineffective. Indeed, a federally financed study of New Jersey’s registration and notification procedures found that sex offense rates were already falling before the implementation of Megan’s Law. The study also found no discernible impact on recidivism and concluded that the growing costs of the program might not be justifiable.

because i haven't actually seen this literature, although i'm willing to take this academic at his word. i guess there's a difference between being a pedophile and being a "practicing" pedophile, as far as relapse goes, post-incarceration? all that i've read seems to regard it as a sort of pathology, so (terrible analogy time) i see it as kind of like alcoholism, as far as what you were saying, "once a pedophile, always a pedophile", goes?

xp to aero's reply to me

agree utterly with this. "adults and children" however is a different field, and not a blurry line or anything. everyone knows what a child is.

Oh yeah, I agree with this totally. However, in certain cases, it doesn't seem like the legal system is able to differentiate between the two and view them as independent cases. Trust me, I'm as 100% behind you wrt to no sympathy for child molesters, but I'm also scared about courts using a one-size-fits-all "Sex Offender" stamp to cover all possible bases.

but society is justified, again, in going to profound extremes to keep such people away from children; their pathology can't be addressed, as far as anybody knows. only the behavior can.

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:36 PM (1 minute ago)

yeah i mean...society should do something. to me this is kind of unhelpfully black-and-white tho, & an example of that classic fallacy - "something has to be done - what's being done is 'something' - what's being done is right" - the question is whether we're dealing with things the best way, whether this registration and limits on people's liberties as currently is being done is benefitting society or is just needlessly cruel & good/easy politics. the evidence seems to suggest it's the latter

i feel kev's compassion in this, as i did with the death penalty discussions- but tbh the catch 22 sitch of 'mentally fit for trial but not for release' is maybe not the worst of solutions to this. Though criminal trial is probably the wrong avenue in the first place.

Also v much with aero on 'there are some things that *ought* to bring social pariah status' and that warring rights ought to be decided in favour of caution for protection of possible future victims.

I'm not sure how much can be done to ever prevent first time offences, though, the majority of which occur in the home anyway iirc.

^^^

Also v much with aero on 'there are some things that *ought* to bring social pariah status' and that warring rights ought to be decided in favour of caution for protection of possible future victims.

again though, as the article states, only a tiny proportion of offenses are committed by repeat offenders - the measures being taken are protecting victims from, statistically speaking, a largely imagined threat

and yeah re: the catch-22 i couldn't disagree with you more but that could be due to me being lol american - due process is pretty important to me

due process vs undue process

My gf worked in an nhs unit specifically dealing with sexual offenders, istr her saying that it was effectively life detention for most cases as the docs wouldn't ever sign for them to be released.

These were extreme cases, tbf

I rowed back on fully endorsing that catch-22 in the very next line, tbf. I'm not arguing it's a perfect system, or anything close to it. What else have you got, though? You're quoting statistics showing low instances of re-offence. Imo, that's a good thing, iyo it's an argument for slackening these measures.

the article says the recidivism incidence was declining before these laws were put into place, though.

fair enough, point recused

http://m.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/03/steubenville-rapist-appeal/63290/

so how do we feel about this?

i'd be shocked if anyone is willing to buy that, but i've been shocked by legal decisions before. have we had a thread on the steubenville thing? most of the comment abt it I've heard has been coming from facebook.

there are a lot more complex, not digestible by average cnn viewers, legitimate arguments you can make on appeal re: lifetime sex offender registration for juveniles. whether their brains are fully developed is part of the discussion of how kids should be dealt with by the criminal justice system. i don't think how he's presenting it (or is able to present it) in this format is how it would be argued in court. i would hope.

i don't think this blogger's commentary is doing the discussion any favors, he doesn't seem to have any expertise other than in acting shocked and going lol, lawyers

<3 this thread title.

btw, there was this last fall

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/federal_judge_blocks_law_requiring_sex_offenders_to_post_no_candy_signs

i think it would be cool if people would protest these kinds of requirements by printing out their own sign and hanging it on the door each halloween. nothing is stopping non-sex offenders from confusing the cops. i'm not volunteering though.

NO RANDY AT THIS CESIDENCE

this reminds me of the NO ANDY IN THE POOL sign at the local public pool we go to. which I figured was a missprint until one of the workers told me there actually was a guy named Andy who was not allowed in the pool (the pool is used for a lot of physical therapy, by developmentally disabled folks etc.)

lollll

I was like "damn, that sign must really bum Andy out"

see someone could organize a day when 1,000 guys named andy jump into the pool all at once

if i lived in maryland i would totally do this, maybe replace the pumpkin jpg with a comedy mustache

they've actually done away with the pumpkin and now it's just NO CANDY in times new roman caps as big as possible. so anyone can make it at home.

The ephebophile down the street did not have a sign up, that I could discern, but also did not have lights on or even appear to be home.

maybe he's in virginia enjoying the world's funnest halloween party http://www.wavy.com/news/local/va-beach/sex-offenders-summoned-during-halloween

One of the houses we went to had lights on and decorations but no one answered the door. There was a sign with a ghost that said YOUVE BEEN BOOED and I thought it was something someone had stuck there as a protest for not getting candy. But my wife says it's some kind of Halloween chain letter thing? idgi

I kind of think the people who just leave a bowl of candy outside are worse than the people who don't give out treats at all.

http://www.beenbooed.com

i forgot there were going to be kids out tonight and drove through the first half of my neighborhood probably too fast. i didn't come close to hitting anybody, i just looked like an asshole.

i mean i wasn't speeding or anything. i just drove the normal speed limit whereas i'm pretty sure i was supposed to be going at a crawl.

oh boy

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, April 15, 2009 11:08 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thats what the pedophile said!

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Wednesday, April 15, 2009 11:10 AM (4 years ago)

I think the law only requires that you don't squash any children. Going at a crawl might be a good idea in some spots, especially with kids right there milling around, but the speed limit be perfectly ok in other places if there's good visibility and no kids in sight.

http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/region/anne_arundel_county_/no-halloween-for-some-sex-offenders

There were 84 sex offenders in Anne Arundel County who could not participate in Halloween.

There are 467 registered sex offenders in Anne Arundel County. So restrictions must have been loosened.

"Over the shirt stuff only."

lol

"whoa, this chocolate is anatomically correct!"

Operation Porch Lights Out

day of the paed