Trick or treat, give me something good to eat.
Unless you’re a sex offender, in which case you’re going to jail.
There’s a law in New Jersey that forbids sex offenders from giving out candy on Halloween. That means Lester down the street won’t giving out chocolate yum-yums this year.
Don’t think this law is only going to affect a small number of people. Did you know there are 2,200 sexual crime offenders registered in the state of New Jersey?
It makes you think though, how many of these sex offenders used candy to lure children? Did any of them poison food or candy and then give it to them? Did they somehow put some sort of date rape drug in candy or food?
It seems the main goal is to prevent the contact between children and sex crime offenders. It’s a very reasonable concern. Most parents are already wary of their children coming into close contact with strangers, now add the fact that these strangers are convicted sex offenders and that concern raises to another level. People nowadays are scared to let their children out alone and if they know a convicted sex offender is out there then they’re even more scared.
Do sex crime offenders commit their crimes again? If they’ve paid their dues to society shouldn’t they have the same rights as everyone else?
Let’s get some facts. The term for repeat offenders is recidivism and the rate of repeating the crime is recidivism rate. The problem with getting accurate numbers here is that the rate for actual reporting sex crimes is very low. Victims of sex crimes are twice as likely to tell friends and family than they are to go to authorities, like the police. And then we look at the actual sex offenders. A study performed lie detector tests (polygraph) on sex offenders in prison who had committed their crimes on less than two known victims. The researchers discovered that these offenders actually averaged 110 victims and 318 offenses. So there is a major problem with under-reporting sex crime offenses.
How are they going to keep tabs on these sex crime offenders to make sure they aren’t giving out candy?
There will be at least sixty parole officers and members of the 12 district officers patrolling and checking on the offenders. Sixty officers versus 2,200 sex offenders? Hmm, seems like there’s a number disparity here. But with police departments already stretched so thin, it’s a tough situation for police departments. Officers have to be patrolling other areas where public safety may be at risk also.
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