NY: State poised to institute sex-offender ban on mass transit
New York State is poised to enact a ban on some sex offenders in New York’s mass transit system, a move long sought by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and long dreaded by civil libertarians.
The state budget that leaders are now finalizing would allow judges to ban individuals convicted of some sex crimes in mass transit from using the system for up to three years.
“The MTA has pushed for the ban, arguing that those who commit sex crimes on the subway or bus do so again and again, creating a never-ending cat-and-mouse game for police and unnecessarily endangering customers.”
When we society accept that 95+% of sex crimes are committed by people with NO criminal past?
Of course nearly ALL “sex crimes” are done by people that the “victim” knows – not those on the registry. These laws are “feel good” laws and easy to pass and give the illusion of being positive when they do NOTHING except deceive the public into thinking that they are actually needed.
When has reality or facts ever stood in the way of a politician (such as Senator Lauren Book)?
Just easy targets for politicians and law enforcement and make great headlines for the media to exploit and sensationalize!
That’s why it’s only imposed on people who committed sex crimes IN TRANSIT, and only on some of them, and only for a limited time.
The MTA has pushed for the ban, arguing that those who commit sex crimes on the subway or bus do so again and again, creating a never-ending cat-and-mouse game for police and unnecessarily endangering customers
Ok, THAT’S a blatant lie!
Are armed robbers barred from ever using a bank or going into a store which has cash registers? Or accessing an ATM machine? Armed robbery as well as muggings happen again and again and many times by the same people.
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY????!!!!!!
And registered citizens are SCARED to march on Washington?? Hundreds of thousands of you are SCARED of getting arrested? Really? For fighting for your rights as the government still taxed any income you make? Taxes your property?
If people can congregate to wear “pussy hats” in protest of a president they don’t like, we can all march to say enough is enough! And make sure to involve the teens who have to register for taking nude photos of THEMSELVES! Show America what it’s so afraid of about registered citizens and stop being the ones afraid of your own shadows!!
Nothing in this bill affects persons currently required to register. It’s a release condition available to a judge to impose (for a limited time) on someone who is being sentenced for a crime in transit. Someone who, for example, “got on the train during rush and rub up on a pretty girl til we nutted,” as someone nicely put it above, and is now being held to account. Will such a person ALSO be required to register for such a thing? Yes, but that’s a separate issue. Absolutely armed robbers can be barred by their judge from going certain places, doing certain things, if their judge perceives a risk.
But Jacob, the problem is that the news media will announce this and the sheep (people) who listen/read it will come to the conclusion that ALL sex offenders will be barred from MTA. And if a registered person happens to be noticed for whatever reason inside of an MTA waiting for a train, whoever notices them will call the po-po and try to cause problems for the registrant.
This is not as easy as it sounds. We’ve got people on the registry for something they did as minors themselves with other minors. But the public looks at the current adult age of the registrant and lumps them in with everyone else who were adults when they committed their offenses.
People call the SOR the “pedophile list” for a reason – because they don’t know any better.
For new convictions of crimes committed in transit, just gives judges discretion.
For non-transit (most) sex crimes, plus past transit sex crimes already adjudicated, there is no effect. And even for new crimes committed in transit, it’s up to the judge to determine whether such a condition is appropriate. And there is a cap of three years.
This won’t win me many friends here but: I don’t see the big issue here. Am I misinterpreting the bill? Should judges be denied to discretion to bar certain convicts from the subway?
The issue I see is.. one things to another. Pass this bills and they’ll push the envelope to even tighter restrictions. History has proven this in the case of person’s forced to register.
I very much agree with you, Jacob. I believe the title above is misleading. This is not one of those one-size-fits-all solutions that helps a few and hurts everyone else. It is a narrowly-targeted and time-limited intervention to help handle a known, serious problem. No one will be subjected to lifelong humiliation under this policy. Think about it like classic probation. If you embezzle from a bank, it’s reasonable for a judge to tell you to do something else for a few years before going back and working for a bank again. People convicted of DUI regularly lose their driver’s license for six months or a year.
If anything, we should be supporting such measures, and work to get lifetime rules changed to time and scope-limited ones. Instead of lifetime internet identifier registration, require three-year registration for those who committed their crimes online. Instead of lifetime bars on “loitering”, impose them for limited times on those who committed their crimes through loitering, prowling, or stalking.
Judicial discretion seems WAY better than a mandate. Nearly all our complaints on this forum, are complaints about mandates.
I know it’s not PC to equate some of today’s legal actions with the days of the Nazi regime but come on now…how can you not?
Really? Really!
I was in prison with these guys, who would describe as if it was nothing: “when we were growing up, we would get on the train during rush and rub up on a pretty girl til we nutted.”
These folks should be banned.
Crimes that did not occur on the trains, should not.
I have been reading about this for months now — something Governor Cuomo has been pushing. It was intended only for REPEAT offenders but who knows what the actual legislation will say.
I will say this, though, that when I first started reading about the banning of repeat offenders, both articles that I read used horrible descriptive words in describing registrants, and this was by journalists. I, as well as other readers, complained to the papers about their inappropriate choice of words and since then I have not seen those particular words used again. Maybe people really are listening.
Keep educating ‘em, SarahF, on appropriate terminology. Ever notice how sometimes that alone changes the entire conversation? We all (including me) need to do more of that.
What has not been widely reported on yet is that they had also passed those new E-Stop rules as well. It’s basically the same details as a couple months ago (Assembly Bill 9505) but they had amended it this week with something really bad.
Basically [under eighteen years of age] is removed from #16 of the list of definitions. Long story short, it should make the entire internet where we make actual contact with another person of any age reportable. Reference People v Ellis YouTube video which caused this law to happen. The state’s lawyer basically said that they wanted us to report everything where we make contact with another person, as well as names of the websites we post on. Harsh! And it seems now that they have it. Then again, the new law is so confusingly worded in which it could mean several different things but ultimately I expect this is how it’ll end up being interputed until we win something in court to say otherwise.
Fortunately, my research has shown that that the state is after dating, gaming and plainly obvious social networking sites. You probably won’t loose your Reddit, Twitch, Skype, Google, Youtube, Amazon, etc. as they would have kicked you off years ago by now. Also if you look really deep into things, you will find sources that alludes to that the state wasn’t really all that successful into getting companies that they wanted into E-Stop. The state has even tried to shame companies into signing up by outing who they were, but it didn’t work. Reading in between the lines, no one really wants it other than perhaps Facebook, Cuomo and a few others.
Overall, I feel we’ll loose a couple more sites, probably new fangled ones like Tiktok and it’ll be status quo as always. Of course it is not something that should be ignored. I do wish some Civil Liberty Union will take this up but they’ve never really been all that interested in this until just recently. NYCLU actually filed a lawsuit for offenders on Parole/Probation being banned from using the internet entirely. (https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-sues-end-internet-and-social-media-bans-people-convicted-committing-sex) Sadly they are not interested in the E-Stop part of the law at all and said so in their filed lawsuit.
This post was posted elsewhere as well, so please excuse the cross posting.
What crimes would be included on that list of eligible offenses? Would any charge involving child molestation qualify?
Child molestation ON THE SUBWAY would apply, yes.