A Price on Their Heads

Shirley Lowery
May 6, 2007

Immaturity, drugs and alcohol use impair judgment. Reckless driving, cheating on a spouse, robbing a convenience store, hurting the feelings of a loved one, causing physical pain to someone they hold dear or acting out in a sexual inappropriate way are a few examples of impaired judgment. Most of these actions result in a victim. What separates the sick and incurable from the ones who can move on with their lives?

It is well documented in Texas that the drug task forces were paid “per head” for arrests. Guilt or innocence was not a consideration. The federal government was footing the bill.The same thing is being done with sex offenders. Arrest a “sex offender” and the government check is larger.

Florida is one of the states that keep the deceased, the deported and the incarcerated on the registry. All states require visiting sex offenders to register. Many of the “missing” sex offenders simply went home but padding the registries is a game the states play with the feds.

The feds play their own games too. They hold states hostage by depriving them of 10% of their federal funding if any of them fail to meet federal mandates on sex offender registration. States are also encouraged to be creative and add their own tweaks to the mandates.

The federal government paid for a study on sex offender recidivism that no politician seems to be aware of. It plainly states that the recidivism rate for child molesters over a 3-year follow up period is 3.3%. Out of 1000 arrests for sex crimes an average of 33 will have a previous record. Why was nothing done to prevent the 967 new offences?

The BJS did another study in 2003 that involved all crimes. The percentage per thousand per person or household is as follows:

Rape/sexual assault- 0.8

Rape/attempted rape- 0.5

Attempted rape/assault- 0.2

Sexual assault- 0.3

This information is specific and shows 98.2% of crimes committed in this nation are of a non-sexual nature.

Sources: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

Bureau of Justice Statistics

filename: cv0301.csv

www.sosen.info

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