New FL law requires GPS tracking of sex offenders,what do you guys think?

[White Horseradish]

So, what exactly will this monitoring thing do? Is it going to set off an alarm when one of these guys is too close to a kid? Unless it does that, it won't save any lives. But to do that the system must know where the kids are. Are we going to tag kids, too?

 

[Alex45ACP]

Are we going to tag kids, too?

Eventually, they'll tag everyone :banghead:

 

[ravinraven]

"There are likely cases where such a sentence is just, but severe mandatory sentences damage our society by removing reasonable discretion based on the circumstances."

Amen.

As we slide along down the slope to totalitarianism {Where are we going and what are we doing in this handbasket?} more and more excuses are used to take discretion out of the local population--teachers, principals, judges, juries, etc.--and place important decisions in the hands of remote people who don't even know the locals or care how they are treated as long as they are docile sheep.

As someone pointed out, we'll someday have eternal monitoring for dead beat dads and chronic jay-walkers. Especially as the tracking technology gets better.

Now I'm sure some poor soul is going to take from this post that I adore child molesters. I don't. I adore liberty. I fully support efforts to curb and punish creeps who molest kids. But what is used in that effort should remain there and not be used finally as an excuse to track the rest of us.

If you point out that you love liberty, or realize what an anti-liberty entity the gov't has become, there is a great excuse to monitor you. Who knows what you're going to do? "Take his gun. He is honest and therefore a threat to the govennment. Monitor him. He is honest and is onto our game."

Well, at least this hand basket ain't moving so fast they can't get my social security check to me. Yet. So WTH.

rr

 

[CleverName]

I don't know what the solution to child molestation is, but I know that the GPS devices isn't it, and set a very dangerous precedent. I can't be the only one thinking of Battle Royale right now - for those of you unfamiliar, it's a Japanese movie about a 9th grade class forced to kill one another on an island. They have explosive GPS collars on, so if they are in certain areas of the island, nobody dies, they attempt to remove the collar, etc. they die.

And yes, I believe child molesters are scum. If they truly are molesters, harsh sentances are justified. But therein lies the problem - a 17 year old, 2 hours short of his 18th birthday, cannot give consent legally. So his 18 year old girlfriend is a child molester if they have sex. Or a father in a nasty divorce case is accused of molesting his 3 year old, which he did not. In CA, he would have his DNA in a database (new law mandates a DNA database for ALL felony arrests. Not convictions, just arrests. Thank you Ah-nold, you idiot, for endorsing this bill, and thank you my fellow Californians for electing this muscle-bound actor. I was still 17 during the recall.) In FL, they'd be fitting him for the GPS.

 

[c_yeager]

I dont have a problem with putting tracking devices in sex offenders. In fact i dont have a problem with pretty much anything that could be done to sex offenders. Of course thats sort of the problem. We have here a group that is as bad as it gets and it is REAL easy to pass any amount of extreme laws to controll them because noone really wants to object to them. Of course each time one of these laws passes it becomes that much easier to broaden their scope. The danger is that once an invasion of civil liberties like this gets into the works it becomes MUCH easier to start applying them to other 'dangerous people' that maybe didnt get full due process (gun owners anyone?).

I certainly wish we could trust our government to use whatever power we give them in a reasonable fashion, but we cannot. Once we give them the authority to circumvent due process and invade privacy they will use it as much as the possibly can, against as many people as they possibly can. Consider for a moment that, based on many state laws, a LOT of us could technically be convicted of victomless sex-offenses. I seem to recall at least one state that inadvertantly outlawed sex in general. Unfortunatly it seems that these laws, while attractive on their face, are simply too dangerous to use.

 

[beerslurpy]

All I can say is that I hope I never accidentally have sex with a 17 year old who lies about her age.