Consequences of being sex offender more than generally known

Sex offenders often end up poor and/or homeless

Carol Forsloff - An old man is killed while living alone in a trailer because he was listed on the sex offender registry.  The murderer thinks all things are equal and that the man deserved to be beaten to death with a baseball bat raising issues of rehabilitation vs punishment. What does that do to prison release programs, especially for those where the sex crimes may have been relatively minor. 

Hugh Edwards was that old man who was the victim of a brutal murder in Florida, an elderly man with no criminal history who lived alone in a trailer. In the mind of the alleged murderer, however, Edwards was a convicted sex offender who deserved what he got. 

The crime occurred nearly five years ago; the issues regarding the problems related to being a sex offender continues in 2015.

Some people believe that getting rid of sexual predators means committing crimes against them or even targeting their friends.  

According to a Center for Sex Offender Management publication in 2007, around 150,000 of the approximately 1.5 million criminals housed in federal and state prisons in the U.S. were convicted of sex-related crimes. Around 40 percent of these offenses included rape, while the other 60 percent consisted of other sexual acts, such as indecent exposure, fondling and lewdness with children. At any given time, convicted sexual predators may make up to 30 percent of prison populations across the nation.

Despite the fact that the majority of sex crimes are not rape or violent attack, sexual offenders once released find serious challenges in simply being able to adjust in society and getting back to some semblance of a normal life. 

This can happen, for example, to a 17-year-old who has had consensual sex with a 16-year-old, given the laws on statutory rape, which means a lot of teenagers, if the law is pushed enough, can find themselves exactly in the situation of going to jail and then facing a lifetime of harassment, threats or even death, as happened to Edwards. 

The general public has a very negative opinion about sex offenders because of the number of crime stories about children being kidnapped, raped and murdered.  These are, of course, heinous crimes.  Some of these crimes have been committed by sexual predators as repeat crimes, since there is a high rate of recidivism in this population.

But there are assumptions that there is absolutely no treatment that can change a sexual offender, in spite of the fact of that 60% that don't commit violent crimes.  Furthermore there are harsh limits put on where sex offenders, of any stripe, can live, work or travel in cities or neighborhoods.  The result is that sexual offenders are often forced into homelessness and unemployment, which increases their desperation and negative circumstances during periods where they are trying to get rehabilitation. 

Criminal defense attorneys and human rights advocates have looked at these issues, observing that many people fax a lifetime of a label that may have been acquired through an unhappy circumstance, or a single one of a minor degree, where the person ends up on national sex offender registries and is unable to find a sense of normalcy and move beyond the labels.

 The Center for Sex Offender Management suggests, people convicted of sex-related crimes need help and support, both from prison staff and from others in the criminal justice system, from the beginning of their incarceration. This will prepare them for smoother reentry into their communities and hopefully keep them from relapsing into sexual crimes.

The first step in the process is to correct some misconceptions, according to the Center for Sex Offender Management.  

Lawyers tell us that it is understandable that the public, the communities where sex offenders live, and even other offenders themselves, would find it difficult to know that a sexual predator lives among them. That's true even with maps that highlight where they live, as many people do not know that. While it is not surprising that many people have these feelings, once they are released from incarceration, further punishment or persecution is illegal. 

As the law explains,  sex offenders are still owed the rights guaranteed by the Constitution once they have served their prison sentences, as long as they do not reoffend. There are consequences when people harm others and violate laws, but when the vigilantism leads to murdering an innocent person because of false allegations, all people need to reevaluate where negative public opinions about certain groups leads society."