News Mar 10, 2013 at 8:35 am

Comments

1
If we build parks next to every catholic church, will that make the churches go away? Or just the priests?
2
RE: Pushing out sex offenders with tiny parks.

Wow. If I ever forget how stupidly short-sighted and willfully ignorant human beings are, I'll re-read that article.

By pushing out sex offenders, they're increasing the chances of repeat offending. But if it gives them a sense of false security, they don't give a shit about reality.

And all the officials with actual responsiblity are so lazy they'd rather pass the buck than try to convince these NIMBY retards that they're only hurting themselves.

Christ. It's like they WANT to be raped.
3
Urgutha- the problem is that sex offenders will repeat offend whether you push them to trailer parks or not. The highest recidivism rate of any class of felonies is why people dread having sex offender neighbors. How would you respond to their rational fears? Other than by insulting them, I mean. Not wanting to have your kids raped is kind of different than letting your neighbor's property go condo.
5
Someone really ought to note that the Executive Director who loves Vega$ apparently responded yesterday.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Comme…
6
@3&4: In addition, most sexual offender cases are because of child porn convictions - not physical rape.
7
@6 that's cool. I didn't know.

It's great that finally sex offenders are getting the support they've always lacked. They are a
persecuted class and I think it's great that the stranger and its commenters are so supportive of their struggles.

Can't we finally get rid of the sex offender stigma?!

8
@3,
From the article:
research shows that once sex offenders lose stable housing, they become not only harder to track but also more likely to commit another crime
About 3.5 percent of paroled sex offenders commit a new sex crime before the end of their three-year parole period, according to a 2008 Sex Offender Management Board report.
keeping paroled sex offenders together in transitional housing actually kept the community safer because it places controls on them even after they leave prison.

The doors are locked by keypads so that officers can regularly check on the parolees, he said. Residents are under strict curfews and are not allowed to drink, use drugs or view pornography while living in the apartments. If they violate those rules, parole officers can send them back into custody.

“People come out of jail, and they just become homeless,” the landlord said. “They have no food, no money, no anything. What’s the possibility then that they’re going to reoffend? They can add all the parks they want, but they still have to go somewhere.”

I think people feel in their gut that they'll be safer if sex offenders are far, far away from families, but research seems to show otherwise.

Also, the lack of responsibility on the part of the officials in charge of this is cruel:
Another camp in Miami, where a dozen offenders slept on the sidewalk, was dispersed last year when Marc Sarnoff, a city commissioner, had three pocket parks built in the neighborhood.

Mr. Sarnoff said he did not know where the offenders ended up.

“There has to be a strategy in place so they don’t just live on the sidewalk,” Mr. Sarnoff said. “We need more resources in place so these guys don’t reoffend. But that’s beyond the city’s resources. It has to be at the state level.”


People need to be educated about the real vs. imagined dangers of sex offenders housed nearby. Instead, they make knee-jerk, NIMBY reactions that probably result in MORE crimes commited, rather than less crime.
9
Isn't lovely how these folks are just foisting their problem onto someone else in another neighborhood?
But hey, better someone else than themselves, right?
10
8,

then why do priests (who have stable housing) re-offend all the time?

Listen, folks, i get that we all hate CP and child molestors. I hate them too. And if you want to eradicate this problem, you need to look at where the highest concentration of child abuse exists in all the world: religious institutions. Whether it's an Orthodox Brit milah complete with metzitzah, where a rabbi sucks the foreskin off an infant boy who's just had it hacked away from his penis, or female genital mutilation at the hands of some imam, or the actual rape of children committed by a priest in "Holy" Orders, or the cover up of the same by bishops, cardinals and popes, we see that the single worst threat to childhood is the very institution we have been duped into thinking is what's best for them.

Do you really want to protect your children from abuse? The real threat wears robes and burns incense. Build a pocket park next to a church, synagogue or mosque today, and then slap the monsters inside with injunctions to vacate the premises.
11
NIMBY makes sense when there is an actual threat posed, such as a nuclear reactor or a house full of sex offenders (!). Where are these people from and why can't they return to their own communities? It's pretty easy to say people's fears are unfounded when you are an adult male. Sure you may decrease the recidivism rate overall by having halfway houses, but what do I care that the rate is lower in buttfuck Spokane because all the sex offenders live in my backyard?
14

I got my tax refund in exactly one week after I e-filed!

Who says Government is inefficient?

15
#6

Just last month, there was a high school coach here in Kent who texted a 16 year old female student several times. He got a week in jail and has to register as a sex offender.
16
#13

Only three stocks in the DOW are leading this "record high".

The other 27 stocks are treading water.

17
"Unexpectedly discharged"? It's a fucking gun, it's supposed to "discharge" i.e. shoot bullets at people. Discharging is what guns are designed to do and it is their only function. It would be unexpected if it didn't discharge.
18
@17: True in terms of ballistics, but 'unexpected' is still accurate in regard to humans.
19
The Embalmed Leaders would be a good band name... Either that, or you all can join up to be the crew of "embalmed leaders" this Halloween? I call Lenin!
20
join up *with me* ;)
21
10, the answer to your question is because they have a large organization behind them that protects them, sometimes setting up orphanages specifically so they can operate them. There is no corollary to that among the sex offenders we're discussing, so your comparison has no value.

Also, you casually toss in Judaism & Islam in your pitch-fork post, which again are very different. There is no monolithic church hierarchy as in Roman Catholicism, and there is no organized set up that protects child rapists among Rabbis and Imans. Hollywood producers have more protection than they do. So again, apples & oranges.

Dealing with pedophiles is a difficult prospect. The first reaction most people get (and I include myself in this) is to simply shoot them & be done w/ it. Or something equally pointless like the LA council's attempt. But, as has been pointed out, none of that works. Actually dealing with them as human beings (surprise!) in need of healing is the most effective way.
22

Someone wake up, Goldy.

Robert Reich proposes 2% asset tax (calls it surcharge):

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/robert_r…
23
Ugh, my stoner uncle posted the thing about the mites. Same exact link. That write-up is shit and you should all feel ashamed for linking to it.
We've known for quite some time that evolution isn't unidirectional, and there are some pretty cool examples of it. Some skinks (lizards) have lost, regained, and relost their legs a couple times. Some stick insects have done the same with their wings. Malarial parasites are descended from photosynthetic algae-type organisms!
DICKS.
24
@23 Your passion for the science is commendable, and without it we would have never known.
25
@23, I too noticed that it did not read very well, AT ALL.
"Ashamed" is a bit strong. It looked like a cooky/stupid/conspiratorial article which I suspected was intelligent design-inspired. I went there to understand, man. And also to fight, if need be.
Yeah, evolution can do anything, really. As long as there's a gene to be acted on and a selective pressure, parts and processes in a population can be minimized or amplified depending on the environment.

Too bad the original study isn't cited (nice reporting), since I'm getting very little useful information from this awkward article.
I think it's cute that mites have fingerprint-skin.

The Bee thing was poorly written/presented as well.


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