Welcome To OperationAwareness.com
~TOP STORIES ~
February 18, 2010
With the current national and statewide fiscal crises, President Barrack Obama (D), has asked each state to go through their budgets, line by line, and remove programs which are wasteful and/or not cost effective.
Arizona Senator Jon Kyl (R), recently stood before a gathering at Arizona State University's West Campus and addressed the seriousness of Arizona's budget crisis. He stated that Arizona is currently experiencing its worst fiscal crisis ever and that revenue is not the problem, out of control spending is. According to Senator Kyl, if Arizona does not make some serious changes right away, Arizona taxpayers will be paying out billions of dollars each year by 2020, just to cover the interest on the deficit.
Vital jobs and programs statewide, such as law enforcement positions, school budgets, and programs that help needy children and families are all on the chopping block. Many cuts have already been made in these areas and many more are expected.
Lawmakers must work together to bring spending under control now and keep necessary jobs and programs in place. I think the cuts should be made using the process outlined by the president - by looking at every program line by line, then weeding out those which have proven to be ineffective or excessively expensive.
One area of wasteful spending that desperately needs the attention of Arizona lawmakers is in the area of the State's Sex Offender Registry. For too long, lawmakers with good intentions sought to look tough on crime, unfortunately looking tough on crime does not always equate to being smart on crime. Such is the case with the current system of sex offender registration in Arizona.
Arizona stands in the minority, one of only 17 states that require lifetime registration for sex offenders. Furthermore, Arizona requires life time registration for virtually all sex offenders regardless of the severity of offense or how much time the individual has lived in the community offense free.
Many states do not require those convicted of lesser offenses to register and nearly all states allow an offender to be relieved from the duty to register after a proscribed amount of time - except those who are designated as predatory or violent. Arizona treats all sex offenders the same and requires all to register for the duration of their lifetimes.
The result is a bloated and overburdened system filled with non-violent and non-dangerous offenders. Not only is this system, as it currently stands, a waste of money and resources, it is also costly in terms of public safety and social policy.
With so many non-dangerous and non-violent former offenders clogging up the registry system, it becomes difficult if not impossible for the public to sift through the data and try to figure out who is dangerous and who is not. Additionally, as we have seen time and again, those who are really dangerous are slipping through the cracks. The cost of that, tragically, is often the life of a small child these laws were designed to save.
Arizona is not alone in trying to fix some of the unworkable sex offender laws. In California, for example, the States Sex Offender Management Board recently released a report highly critical of the recent batch of sex offender laws that have made thousands of them homeless, bloated the roster of parolees and spawned numerous costly programs with little evidence that any of this has made residents safer. The board has recommended a number of changes to their current system including a specific recommedation limiting the time that low-level offenders spend on the State's Sex Offender Registry.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Republican Governor Charlie Crist has gone so far as pardoning sex offenders whose crimes were consensual in nature, realizing that those individuals are not the ones that new tougher sex offender laws should be targeting.
If we are going to start cutting law enforcement jobs, how will law enforcement keep up with an ever increasing database of registered sex offenders? Keeping everyone ever convicted of a sex crime on the Sex Offender Registry for life - particularly those convicted of a relatively minor offense or consensual sex - is neither a wise use of our limited resources nor an effective way of protecting citizens.
These laws also place a very heavy social and economic burden on the sex offender, their families and their loved ones. Lifelong ostracism and stigma affects all former offenders along with their innocent family members, no matter how serious or non-serious the crime was and no matter how many years and/or decades have passed since the crime occurred.
Perhaps now, due to both the local and national economic crises, it is finally time to re-examine our current sex offender laws, their over-breadth and reflect upon whether these laws have had their intended effect. It has been over fourteen years since Megan's Law was enacted and every study conducted to date has failed to yield any evidence to support that these laws have ever had their intended effect.
Finally, we must ask whether the millions of dollars that have already been spent and the millions more that will be spent if we continue on this same road with the existing and ever increasing laws, has ever or could ever be justified.
One thing seems undoubtedly clear and that is,- that it is time for our elected officials and each of us as individual citizens to pause and reflect on what we can do differently -and we must look beyond knee-jerk reactions. We must focus on education and prevention as well as seek to understand the causes of this type of offending.
Please See The Following External Links to Information Sources On These Topics:
http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/faq/recidivism.asp
http://legisweb.state.wy.us/PubResearch/2005/05RM078r.pdf
http://www.drc.state.oh.us/web/Reports/Ten_Year_Recidivism.pdf
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_14412670
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/09/11/no-easy-answers-0
http://www.sacbee. com/110/story/ 377462.html
Fair Use Doctrine Applies - external news sources are linked and/or posted where applicable. Linking to external sources and articles does not convey or purport affiliation, expressed or implied. The remainder of this entire website is the sole property of operationawareness.com. Copyright Protected -All Rights Reserved.
Uploaded by Jeff-Sherr on WiZiQ Tutorials
Uploaded by Jeff-Sherr on WiZiQ Tutorials
