Developed by John Walsh from Americas Most Wanted.
When you visit this site you can enter your address and a map will pop up with your house as the small icon of a house and red, blue, green, dots surrounding your entire neighborhood. When you click on these dots a picture of a person will appear with an address and the description of the crime he or she had committed. The best thing is that you can show your children pictures and see how close these people live to your home or school. This site was developed by John Walsh from Americas Most Wanted. Another tool to help us keep our kids safe.
I don't know if anyone has already posted this on AP. If so, Sorry!
Posts: 5724 | Location: u.s.a, south Florida | Registered: 06-03-02
What was really cool is that there are no offenders in my small town! There are, however, 6 in my zip code; I live in a small enough place (under 2000 residents) that we share a post office with several surrounding communities.
Posts: 7492 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
What was really cool is that there are no offenders in my small town!
I agree that sites like these can be reassuring, Fuse. However, what isn't taken into consideration here, is the number of individuals that haven't been convicted, and use the internet to strike up relationships with children. In a small town like your own, and actually it's the same size as my own town, there might any number of predators using the net to arrange meetings with our children. It goes without saying, that people living outside your town can use the net to contact anyone they choose within your community too. So while I agree, that the site is a help in knowing who is living in the community, people that have been convicted are at least being monitored. A sex offender site should not be considered an alternative to teaching children about internet safety, and for parents supervising use of the computer.
You have to be careful with this type of site as well because you don't know what they were convicted of, or when, or the circumstances surrounding their crime. A 40-year-old man who is a registered sex offender for having had sex with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, when he was seventeen, is not likely to be a threat to you or your children.
Dance girl has a good point, too, because I know that there is a man on my street who had an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl, but since he was not tried and convicted, he will not appear on this map.
Posts: 4314 | Location: Rochester, NY, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
I don't know what people do with such a list, Fred. It would seem to be a good idea not to hire a sex offender to babysit with your children. The information might also be valuable if your children normally walk by an offender's house on a regular route to a friend's house, a playground, or a school bus stop. A woman who jogs through a neighborhood might choose to avoid a rapist's street. Wouldn't it also make sense to check out the sex offender list before purchasing a home? These are a few that immediately come to mind.
Posts: 7492 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
If I spend too much time keeping the convicted neighbor under surveillance, I run the risk of overlooking the activities of the as-yet- unaprehended boy scoutmaster, parish priest, or family in-law .
If I spend too much time keeping the convicted neighbor under surveillance, I run the risk of overlooking the activities of the as-yet- unaprehended boy scoutmaster, parish priest, or family in-law .
Exactly. 80-90% of sex crimes against children are committed by someone the victim already knows.
I can't recall having looked at a sex offender site before this thread. Several others I looked at out of interest had the same message frank and dg are providing.
Posts: 7492 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
Originally posted by coldfuse: I can't recall having looked at a sex offender site before this thread. Several others I looked at out of interest had the same message frank and dg are providing.
Well, I think you are all paranoid, but there you go.We don't have such lists over here, because any supposed benefit (practically nil) was far outweighed by problems in reality.What we do have is complete criminal record bureau checks on every individual who may work with children, that is, whose work brings them into contact with children. That's a legal requirement and these checks are completed on every applicant for such employ.It produces inconvenience; a volunteer grandparent who goes to work with schoolchildren has to undergo this 'crb' check; but we expect it to work better than some list showing where some sex offender was living when last known.
What would you say if you were working for the prosecution? Honestly.
Pretty sure that crime wise, America is worst than England or France, or both together, I don't know, but knowing that your neighbor is a child molestor gives you certainly an edge over. Here they call that "intelligence" not paranoia.
Posts: 5724 | Location: u.s.a, south Florida | Registered: 06-03-02
Originally posted by FredPuli: We don't have such lists over here, because any supposed benefit (practically nil) was far outweighed by problems in reality.What we do have is complete criminal record bureau checks on every individual who may work with children, that is, whose work brings them into contact with children. That's a legal requirement and these checks are completed on every applicant for such employ.
You do have lists in the UK, but they aren't available to the public.
I don't know that the British system is without it's flaws either though. Take the case of Ian Huntley, a caretaker (custodian) at a local school. He was convicted of murdering two 10 year old girls in 2003:
After Huntley was convicted, it was revealed that he had been investigated in the past for sexual offences and burglary but had still been allowed to work in a school. Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered an inquiry into these failings, chaired by Sir Michael Bichard, and later ordered the suspension of David Westwood, Chief of Humberside Police. The inquiry criticised Humberside Police for deleting information relating to previous allegations against Huntley and criticised Cambridgeshire Police for not following vetting guidelines. An added complication in the vetting procedures was the fact that Huntley had applied for the caretaker's job under the name of Ian Nixon. It is believed that Humberside Police either did not check under the name Huntley on the police computer - if they had then they would have discovered a burglary charge left on file - or did not check at all.
That's just one case, and I think that eventually in the UK, the public will have access to details of the wherabouts of convicted sex offenders. I think the public will demand it, because of the outrage there will be when a child is eventually molested by somebody in their neighborhood, that parents had no reason to think was a danger, but who the police already knew about. As you well know, it only takes one case to do this. And what about the the potential for a civil action against the authorities in such a case? I suspect that this is one of the reasons citizens in the US and Canada have access to this information.
Of what use are such lists? As I said, I think the possibility of a child falling victim to someone on one of these lists is significantly smaller than their being molested and murdered by someone they know. However, in my opinion, that doesn't negate a parent's right to access that information.
Huntley/Nixon as you may see from the link above, was not a convicted sex offender, nor had he been cautioned formally as to his conduct without being prosecuted in connection with a sex offence,in fact he'd got no convictions for anything at all, so he wouldn't have been on any list.
Do Americans keep records, for the public, of the whereabouts of people with no criminal convictions at all?
The police here do keep their own ,of all associates of criminals and for others who have, in the jargon, 'come to notice' for their behaviour,places they frequent, people they mix with etc, though the person has no convictions.That's part of criminal intelligence work.
Had Huntley been convicted,or formally cautioned without being prosecuted, in the past he'd fail the CRB [Criminal Records Bureau] check which the school would have to have made before employing him in a job where he would encounter children. Every conviction, whatever it is,for whatever offence, however long ago, is on CRB checks.In fact, the school would not have employed him, seeing the CRB,had he been convicted of a burglary (an old charge that had not been proceeded with ).
We don't divulge this information directly because it's of absolutely no use to the public.
It won't happen here . Why not? Because we know the problems with it. Pandering to the ill considered beliefs of the public about protecting citizens is no way to proceed.We trust police and others with expertise to know better than nervous women or parents, or thuggish men.
So we have the 'sex offenders register'.A person goes on the register even if they've only been formally cautioned, not prosecuted, for a sexual offence. We have CRB checks for everyone who might come into contact with children in the course of their employ or activities, even if they are utterly respectable grandfathers volunteering to help at a school sports day.
It was proposed. One tabloid newspaper decided to publish some. That was before a whole load of mobs turned up on the streets, attacking the houses of innocent people (one,reportedly,was a doctor who was a paediatrician not a paedophile but there's no accounting for ignorance and 'Chinese whispers' ) and succeeding only in driving true sex offenders elsewhere and into hiding, where nobody knew where they were and whence they could, later, start offending were they so minded.
It's naive to think that publishing such details protects anyone. What are you supposed to do? Say to yourselves " Hey, there's a sex offender in my district, I'd best move house?" Think " I'm not entering that area, there's a convicted sex offender there? " How do you think sex offenders operate? Like trapdoor spiders, waiting to pounce on someone walking past there door? What do you do, cross over to the other side and scurry past ?
Better by far that the police and social services know where they are, that they are required to say when they move and where to and so on,be registered wherever they are and that they will be detected if they try to get themselves into contact with children. Indeed, they, in common with other convicts and those cautioned for an offence, come to notice on CRB checks in many jobs which have nothing to do with children, but where a CRB check is required.
Excellent post, Fred. As dancegirl pointed out, the vast majority of these acts are committed by someone already known to the victim, which seems to imply that at least one parent also knows the perpetrator.
Posts: 16164 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
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Honestly.
