“Are We Citizen’s or are we all Offender’s?

Recently the President of Florida Action Committee (FAC) made a proposal that the name Offender be dropped and in place “Registered Citizens” be used. This calls for much debate so I decided to research the wording and term Sexual Offender and here are my findings.

First off the word “Offender” has been used in the United States dating back to when Organized Law Enforcement started. Anyone that so-called Offended another person and broke a law doing so could be considered a Offender of said Law. The Law being the Offense of whatever Crime it was they broke. So therefore if you were convicted of a crime against another person, then you could be titled a Offender along with Criminal, Thug, Gangster whatever the case may have been in whatever era you were in. But none-the-less a Offender has Offended someone.

Now the word Sexual as it pretains to already being called a Offender does not come into the picture until modern-day times although the term Sexual Psychopath was used in the 1930’s. Much of our historical knowledge behind the origins of current sex offender legislation can be found in one of two comprehensive historical books, “Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America” by Philip Jenkins (1998), and “Sex Fiends, Perverts, and Pedophile: Understanding Sex Crime Policy in America” by Chrysanthi S. Leon (2011). The former book traces the origins as far back as the late 1800s with the advent of psychiatry as a science, whereas the latter book begins its analysis with the sexual psychopath era of the 1930s. While both books come to different conclusions and theories, they both present a clear historical timeline that laid the foundation for current sex offender legislation.

Sex crime laws have existed as far back as biblical times, with a number of penalties ranging from fines to death for various sexual acts considered deviant at one time or another in society. Sex acts considered deviant at one time or another: exhibitionism, voyeurism, abortion, bestiality, masturbation, contraception, consensual sadomasochistic activity, interracial relationships, homosexuality, heterosexual relationships between those not legally married to each other, certain sexual positions or techniques, such as oral or anal sex, a.k.a. “Sodomy”

-Sexually appropriate behavior is indeed a cultural phenomenon-

So whom was it exactly that invented the term “Sex Offender? In 1990, the sensational trial of Earl K. Shriner led Washington State to pass a comprehensive “sexual predator” law. Washington’s legislature passed sex offender registry and community notification laws, and long-term indefinite sentences coupled with civil commitment laws. The view of the sex offender as an uncontrollable monster than cannot be cured but contained supported an “anything goes” approach to dealing with sex offenders. While this idea was not unique to this era, the unanimous support and widespread dissemination of laws are unique to the Containment Era. President William Jefferson Clinton placed himself at the head of the forefront of the anti-sex offender movement. Clinton discussed the Polly Klaas murder case in his 1994 State of the Union address, and later that year, he signed the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, which included some dramatic departures from centuries-old Anglo-Saxon principles of due process and foretold the degradation of the human rights of sex offenders as a degraded class. This bill expanded the tools for prosecutors in federal sex trials, allowing evidence of prior sex offenses by defendants, even if there was no conviction or even a charge related to the prior accusations; ironically it was the opposite of the “Rape Shield Laws” which prevented defendants from using the histories of the accused as evidence of dishonesty.

A number of “memorial” laws or laws named after murder victims became vogue; in 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Act passed on a national level, while New Jersey’s Megan’s Law (public registry) and Illinois’s Zachary’s Law (Internet Registry) were passed on a state level. Meanwhile, revised civil commitment by virtue of a lower standard of “mental abnormality/ personality disorder” was upheld by the US Supreme Court in Kansas v. Hendricks.

Registration and community notification laws made the public participants in the supervision of sex offenders. This is a very dangerous precedent. Sex offenders became targets of overt acts of vigilantism. Family members of those impacted by these laws and even victims were endangered by sex offender laws. These actions have been justified by the perceived extreme harm caused by offenders, their immunity to treatment and reform, and the danger posed to children.

In 2006, the federal government signed the Adam Walsh Act into law, which has heralded as a program that in theory would set a uniform standard for sex offender laws across the country. In practice, the Adam Walsh Act has made the laws more complex and created more unintended consequences. Courts have begun to see the dangers of current sex offender legislation in recent years, and a number of courts have limited or overturned these laws. A number of grassroots organizations like Reform Sex Offender Laws (RSOL), Sex Offender Solutions and Education Network (SOSEN) and even this site Florida Action Committee (FAC) have brought individuals together to address the problems of the current, unprecedented problems of sex offender research.

Whatever the case may be with your current status and even with the so-called degraded class, we all remain Citizens! Each wave of predator panic has held the same basic belief—the image of the sex offender as an “incurable” “monster” complete with ominous-sounding terms like “sex fiends”, “sexual psychopaths”, and “sexual predators”. The monster mantra justifies novel approaches to addressing sex crimes to isolate and contain the sex offender. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the wave of skepticism that follows a collapse of the monster paradigm. The pendulum swings between the sex offender as a nuisance or sick but treatable person and the incurable monster, though the pendulum tends to spend more time on the incurable monster side of the spectrum.

In conclusion I agree with the FAC President that we do indeed need a revised title, a legally binding term to replace Sexual Offender. It is often said those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the case of combatting sex offender legislation, historical trends provide us with a pattern of problems and solutions. We as Citizens convicted or not of Sexual Crimes must continue the fight for the safeguard of Society, the protection of Children from Violent Criminals while creating and maintaining Fair and Balanced laws for the accused and convicted Sexual Offender.