Editorial Note: In no way do I want to minimize the issue of violence against women or children. Rape is clearly a crime of violence, and must be dealt with appropriately.
Pedophile predation is abhorrant, and must also be dealt with sternly and appropriately. But I think the issue has become β what actually is appropriate for dealing with the range of sex offenses, and in some cases , have we gone too far; and what does this mean for the wrongfully convicted?
It begs the age old question β does the punishment fit the crime? This will be a little bit lengthy. Over the last few decades, states have been steadily rewriting their sex offense laws to become more and more draconian. The primary driver for this was the McMartin preschool case in which accusations were made in All charges were dropped in , after the lives of all defendants involved were completely ruined.
Because sex crimes, particularly those involving children, scrape a particularly sensitive region in the human psyche, it makes a great issue for politicians to campaign on. Your heart has to go out to the them. They have suffered unspeakable tragedy. Sadly, the legislative responses have proven to be the classically inefficient and expediency-driven political solutions that treat the symptom and not the disease. The key here is lack of research and the absence of statistically valid data.
This law was enacted by the New Jersey General Assembly in in response to the rape and murder of seven year old Megan Kanka. Since then, the law has been enacted in some form by every state, and has also resulted in a federal FBI sex offender registry.
