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pecuniumI come from Ohio. It's been many years, and lot of miles from then to now, and these days I count myself a Californian (and discovering that, was both saddening, and liberating), but I have a fondness for Ohio which abides.
So when I look at the news and see not one stupidity, but several; and those supidities indiciative of other trends I abhor, well it gets my dander up, because I think they should know better.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Simple, straightforward and seemingly uncontroversial. The accuser has to prove a case to get someone punished for a crime. The Fourth Amendment goes a little further saying that capital and infamous crimes require an indictment by grand jury (though the grand jury procss is stacked, unless one is in the military, but I digress), so that the state has to show cause to bring a charge, and then prove the crime.
So this shit pisses me off.
COLUMBUS - An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they've never been charged with a crime.
Never been charged. Read it again, just in case the finer points were lost,
Never Been Charged
I don't know what to say about this. I want to engage in all sorts of cheap rhetoric and combine this nonsense (and I mean that, it makes no sense) with other trends I see, but no matter how true I might think the links to be, I shall refrain.
My mind is agog; not even charged. It gets worse.
The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.
The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live.
Say what?
Never charged, and the person has to act as if he (I am using the grammatical default more because the vast majority of such offenders are male, and I don't see the public as up in arms when a woman does it. The outrage at female predators has a different dynamic, one which is about villifying the woman more than about, "protecting the children") had been convicted.
I have a problem with the registries. I think they are akin to scarlet letters and lynch mobs. It's not that the person has to register with police. I find that intrusive, and offensive, but I can see the interest of the state outwieghing the absolute liberties of those persons convicted of such behaviour. I say this because so many of them become repeat offenders, and the victims are those least likely to be able to see the risk, much less defend themselves.
But the public posting of such lists, with photos, addresses, descriptions and accounts of the offenses of which the person has been convicted... no. For the minor offender (the guy who was drunk and caught taking a piss in the dark at a park) the list is a nuisance; if it lists the specific offense, and the people scanning it read the details.
But mostly these things are used as a sort of lynching tool. A way to force people away; "to protect the children." Who wants to bet the people against whom no charges are filed get treated worse than those who are convicted? I think it likely. The old, "no smoke without a fire," idea, combined with anger that, "the bastard got away with it."
News flash, life is uncertain, and one can't coddle kids (or adults) from every risk. To go all George Will here, I think that desire; decried as the "nanny state" of the left is being used by many to erode our civil liberties; with the rallying cry, "No one has civil liberties when they are dead." Which is true, but no reason to remove those civil liberties from the living.
A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.
So, after six years one can petition to be removed from these rolls... if a judge believes the implicated (I can't even say accused, because no charges have to be filed...) person won't abuse again.
Ponder that, "and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again." That phrasing is conclusionary, and the conclusion is the person did commit a crime, and needs to be watched, lest he offend again, even though no charges were filed, no test of the facts made and no conviction obtained
I don't know how this is to be implemented, but it's implications are horrendous. The workload for cops goes up. The potential for harm goes up. We are becoming a nation of tattle-tales and finks. Some of this is laudable, but the trend is frightening. Driving the the freeways of Southern California I am exhhorted to call 911 to report drunk drivers. Ok. They pose a clear and present danger, and if I see someone behaving so erraticly that I am certain they are drunk, it's probably to the public good that I call it in. We have, in fact done just that. Two lane highway and the guy was weaving. Then he tossed a beer bottle out the window. We were convinced.
But what of the billboards telling me to call cars which have "too much smoke" coming from the exaust? Or Washington State where there are two separate tip-lines to call, one for litterbugs, one for carpool violators? Me, I like to see someone cruising solo in the carpool lane (or just cheating and using it to pass) get nailed, but call them in? Divert dispatchers and cops to chase them down? No.
And this? Oh, the abuse it could be used for, or the inadvertant harm; someone being better safe than sorry and screwing someone's life.
True story. Last May I was at Pismo Beach, shooting some pictures of idiot surfers riding the waves along the pier. I got a tap on the shoulder. It was an undercover cop (which was nice) who was responding to a complaint that I was taking pictures of children. We talked, he took my Buck (a small, folding, knife) away while he called my name in for wants and warrants, got told I was clean, gave me back my knife and he went away.
Not if this were the law. I'd be registered as a sex-offender, right then and there. What recourse would I have? Only to insist on being arrested, booked charged and tried. Otherwise the complaintant's accusation becomes proven fact; my silence would equal assent, no plea becomes no contest.
I can see it being used in other evil ways too. A lot of cops would look at the situation, decide there was no good reason for the compaint and send the poor sod on his merry way. Don't like a DA, or a police chief... just call in a bunch of nonssense complaints (in the sure and certain hope of them being, rightfully, ignored) and then look for the people to show up in the registry (and if one arranges for enough complaints the simple lack of any showing up in the right time frame is enough). When they aren't there, boom, instant campaign issue, "Chief "X" isn't protecting our children."
Those are the practical effects, but that's not what's wrong about this.
What's wrong about is that it undermines our core values. Liberty is hard, it has to be worked for, it is the best form of gov't not because it is easy, but becuse it allows the greatest expression of our humanity. It isn't "safe." Want to be safe? Go to psychiatric ward. Those people are safe. Nothing which might harm them is allowed. It's not a good way to live, but at least one is safe.
Not for me. I'll take liberty, with all the attendant risks (including that some one of my fellows might be inclined to harm me) because it's a better way to live. It's easier to live with risk, than to try and eliminate them all, because; unless we move to our own personal prisons, where anything not allowed is forbidden, we will never do it, and the attempt makes us more fearful, since having something we have been promised can't happen, happen, violates our sense of the social compact. That calls all the rest of the compact into question, and that makes the usual cautions of our lives (defensive driving, locking the doors, passwords on our computers, cell-phone charged) seem inadequate, and things which inspired simple caution, now induce terror.
And we are doing that to ourselves.
So when I look at the news and see not one stupidity, but several; and those supidities indiciative of other trends I abhor, well it gets my dander up, because I think they should know better.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Simple, straightforward and seemingly uncontroversial. The accuser has to prove a case to get someone punished for a crime. The Fourth Amendment goes a little further saying that capital and infamous crimes require an indictment by grand jury (though the grand jury procss is stacked, unless one is in the military, but I digress), so that the state has to show cause to bring a charge, and then prove the crime.
So this shit pisses me off.
COLUMBUS - An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they've never been charged with a crime.
Never been charged. Read it again, just in case the finer points were lost,
Never Been Charged
I don't know what to say about this. I want to engage in all sorts of cheap rhetoric and combine this nonsense (and I mean that, it makes no sense) with other trends I see, but no matter how true I might think the links to be, I shall refrain.
My mind is agog; not even charged. It gets worse.
The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.
The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live.
Say what?
Never charged, and the person has to act as if he (I am using the grammatical default more because the vast majority of such offenders are male, and I don't see the public as up in arms when a woman does it. The outrage at female predators has a different dynamic, one which is about villifying the woman more than about, "protecting the children") had been convicted.
I have a problem with the registries. I think they are akin to scarlet letters and lynch mobs. It's not that the person has to register with police. I find that intrusive, and offensive, but I can see the interest of the state outwieghing the absolute liberties of those persons convicted of such behaviour. I say this because so many of them become repeat offenders, and the victims are those least likely to be able to see the risk, much less defend themselves.
But the public posting of such lists, with photos, addresses, descriptions and accounts of the offenses of which the person has been convicted... no. For the minor offender (the guy who was drunk and caught taking a piss in the dark at a park) the list is a nuisance; if it lists the specific offense, and the people scanning it read the details.
But mostly these things are used as a sort of lynching tool. A way to force people away; "to protect the children." Who wants to bet the people against whom no charges are filed get treated worse than those who are convicted? I think it likely. The old, "no smoke without a fire," idea, combined with anger that, "the bastard got away with it."
News flash, life is uncertain, and one can't coddle kids (or adults) from every risk. To go all George Will here, I think that desire; decried as the "nanny state" of the left is being used by many to erode our civil liberties; with the rallying cry, "No one has civil liberties when they are dead." Which is true, but no reason to remove those civil liberties from the living.
A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.
So, after six years one can petition to be removed from these rolls... if a judge believes the implicated (I can't even say accused, because no charges have to be filed...) person won't abuse again.
Ponder that, "and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again." That phrasing is conclusionary, and the conclusion is the person did commit a crime, and needs to be watched, lest he offend again, even though no charges were filed, no test of the facts made and no conviction obtained
I don't know how this is to be implemented, but it's implications are horrendous. The workload for cops goes up. The potential for harm goes up. We are becoming a nation of tattle-tales and finks. Some of this is laudable, but the trend is frightening. Driving the the freeways of Southern California I am exhhorted to call 911 to report drunk drivers. Ok. They pose a clear and present danger, and if I see someone behaving so erraticly that I am certain they are drunk, it's probably to the public good that I call it in. We have, in fact done just that. Two lane highway and the guy was weaving. Then he tossed a beer bottle out the window. We were convinced.
But what of the billboards telling me to call cars which have "too much smoke" coming from the exaust? Or Washington State where there are two separate tip-lines to call, one for litterbugs, one for carpool violators? Me, I like to see someone cruising solo in the carpool lane (or just cheating and using it to pass) get nailed, but call them in? Divert dispatchers and cops to chase them down? No.
And this? Oh, the abuse it could be used for, or the inadvertant harm; someone being better safe than sorry and screwing someone's life.
True story. Last May I was at Pismo Beach, shooting some pictures of idiot surfers riding the waves along the pier. I got a tap on the shoulder. It was an undercover cop (which was nice) who was responding to a complaint that I was taking pictures of children. We talked, he took my Buck (a small, folding, knife) away while he called my name in for wants and warrants, got told I was clean, gave me back my knife and he went away.
Not if this were the law. I'd be registered as a sex-offender, right then and there. What recourse would I have? Only to insist on being arrested, booked charged and tried. Otherwise the complaintant's accusation becomes proven fact; my silence would equal assent, no plea becomes no contest.
I can see it being used in other evil ways too. A lot of cops would look at the situation, decide there was no good reason for the compaint and send the poor sod on his merry way. Don't like a DA, or a police chief... just call in a bunch of nonssense complaints (in the sure and certain hope of them being, rightfully, ignored) and then look for the people to show up in the registry (and if one arranges for enough complaints the simple lack of any showing up in the right time frame is enough). When they aren't there, boom, instant campaign issue, "Chief "X" isn't protecting our children."
Those are the practical effects, but that's not what's wrong about this.
What's wrong about is that it undermines our core values. Liberty is hard, it has to be worked for, it is the best form of gov't not because it is easy, but becuse it allows the greatest expression of our humanity. It isn't "safe." Want to be safe? Go to psychiatric ward. Those people are safe. Nothing which might harm them is allowed. It's not a good way to live, but at least one is safe.
Not for me. I'll take liberty, with all the attendant risks (including that some one of my fellows might be inclined to harm me) because it's a better way to live. It's easier to live with risk, than to try and eliminate them all, because; unless we move to our own personal prisons, where anything not allowed is forbidden, we will never do it, and the attempt makes us more fearful, since having something we have been promised can't happen, happen, violates our sense of the social compact. That calls all the rest of the compact into question, and that makes the usual cautions of our lives (defensive driving, locking the doors, passwords on our computers, cell-phone charged) seem inadequate, and things which inspired simple caution, now induce terror.
And we are doing that to ourselves.
