CANADA: Opinion: Quick-fix laws following horrific crimes are seldom effective
On Sept. 17, 2021, Mchale Busch, 24, and her son, Noah were tragically confirmed dead. The accused, Robert Keith Major, 53, is facing two charges of first-degree murder and two counts of indignity to human remains. In response, Cody McConnell, Busch’s partner and Noah’s father, and his family are calling for changes to Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act to allow a landlord the ability to ask for consent to collect personal information. This would allow tenants to know if there is a registered sex offender in their building. McConnell is advocating for the database to be publicly accessible and wants these changes in his son’s name, thus “Noah’s Law.”
The pattern of policy emerging from panic is not uncommon, but it is often ineffective. These tragic, rare cases incite fear and anger, and people mobilize to enact change. Prior research suggests media coverage of cases involving strangers killing children can contribute to the perception that all people who offended are bound to reoffend and are a danger to society, despite efforts to rehabilitate them. Scholars note once legislators become aware of the public’s outrage, they often adopt “knee-jerk” legislative responses to appear as though they are “doing something.”
Research on sex-offender registration and community notifications concludes such policies have little, or no impact on tendency to reoffend. A study on registries and community notification, and reoffending among those who offended sexually, found extremely low sexual reoffending, and general reoffending was largely unaffected. Canadian victimization data found that in cases involving sexual assault, most often, offenders were a friend, acquaintance or neighbour, and least often were a stranger.
Canadians are sooooooo much smarter than Americans
I was just thinking similar. Seems that Canada expresses more freedom ideology that the so-called “Land of the free,” USA.
We work for years to move one baby step, then one idiot does something and the rest pay for it with stricter laws, rules, ordinances, and statues. This is basically how the registry was started.
Reminds me of the stories of towns chasing people down with fire and pitch forks without any trial or evidence other than one person’s word.
The article says that the landlord can ask for consent, if the law is passed. What happens if I don’t consent? Does that merit exclusion from rental?
In this sex registry many times whether in Canada or not a person can be railroaded or forced to registry as Will Allen and many others use FTR in much of this registry interrogation/ intimidation type evaluation and that right their is unjust punishment or undue punishment and one has to look at it that way.
Yes they considered my texting bad enough to classify me as a tier 3 but the public attorney and the evaluation part was to incriminate me more in and of itself in registry game. I know a public attorney is for ones best interest but mine dropped out of the case and he knew I wanted to go to trail.
Sure I have a letter from the Public Defender saying I am not violent but what is violent today when justice strives to castrate. but at the same time they government, state or federal are castrating themselves in this blind justice ordeal called the sex registry in many of these issues. Truth will finely come out in much of this registry.
Saddles
My Lawyer ran me out of money. I wanted to go to trial but neither my lawyer nor the judge told me I could have a public defender. When I tried to appeal after that, I was told “Too much time had passed”.
CherokeeJack
That’s similar to my case. My court appointed lawyer during a preliminary meeting with the judge started cursing so the judge almost threw him out. So the judge was obviously already decided what to do when it came before him. So I demanded a jury trial. The prosecution didn’t want that so they kept postponing the trial date . Every time I would take off work get everything ready go to trial just to find out it would be postponed again and again. Every time it would cost me more money for attorney fees. Till I couldn’t afford it any longer so agreed to a plea deal just to get it over with.Even though everything they were charging me with was false. My attorney told me that 20% of convictions are innocent and it’s no different than a traffic ticket. So dumb me to believe an attorney,I went along with it. Almost a year from the incident to the plea deal. Never had heard of a sex offender registry. That was 1997 , they had just started it.
By the way. What does being on the sex offender registry or increasing its availability have to do with murder and trying to hide the bodies??? Just say it like it is ,This guy was a no good felon and a murderer. A sex offender had nothing to do with it. Stop trying to turn apples into watermelons.
Although it is possible being on the registry and being shunned and picked on by society may have caused him to snap and do something crazy.
DavidM
What’s missing from this article is that the accused murderer is a registrant, yet it wasn’t mentioned unlike if it happened in the states. Will a law be passed if your house emits certain odors the cops can enter without a warrant? Today we got an alert of high bleach concentration, so we have to make sure you don’t have dead bodies around.
Canada you may be smaller in popular compared to the United States; yet Canadians have more freedom than Americans. Stay away from the logic of American lawmakers by passing knee jerk laws based on emotions.