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Bill To "Fix" Maine's Registry
Bill To "Fix" Maine's Registry
POB 240
Manchester, ME 04351
207/626-0594
www.moodyreport.wordpress.com
Prison Reform, Sex Offender Registry, Department of Corrections, Criminal Justice, bill-to-“fix”-
Maine’s-leper-colony-registry, www.scribd.com/stanmoody, www.moodyreport.wordpress.com
As it stands, the sex registry has pictures, names, addresses, places of work
or school and a legal description of the crime for which convicted.
Diamond’s bill is certainly well intentioned. Yet, it does not address the
problem with the list. What began as 39 categories of sex offenses under the Adam
Walsh Act has blossomed to 189, including urinating in public, streaking and on-
line sex chat, all unpleasant activities to us more refined folk but hardly worthy of
a scarlet letter for the rest of your life or even for 10 years.
The legislature is very much aware that federal grant moneys to law
enforcement agencies are tied to the registry. The federal Byrne funds that are used
by police departments to purchase radios and cruisers will be cut, for example, if
states fail to follow the federal guidelines.
One of those federal guidelines is automatically to impose lifetime
registrations for those over 14 convicted of any one of the 189 offenses. The trend
for state legislatures will be to tweak the list, get the funds and leave ruination in
the wake.
The public needs to know who are the “creeps” in their communities. There
is a sea difference, however, between the 45 year-old male who has molested an 8
year-old child and the 20 year-old male who was in a consensual relationship with
a 15 year-old girl. Neither would likely be welcome at a neighborhood barbeque,
but common sense ought to prevail.
Adam Walsh’s dad, John, who devoted his life to lobbying Congress for the
registry, had this to say about the list: “The registry is not being used as it was
intended, so let’s get rid of it and focus on the 10,000 violent offenders and track
them.”
To indicate the scale of how huge a change that would be, there are 720,000
registered sex offenders in the US. To cut it down to 10,000 would be a reduction
of 98.6%.
The registry is escalating; the costs of maintaining it are rising; lives are in
despair, and a puritanical public mistakenly assumes that our criminal justice
system is keeping us safe.
Meanwhile, we recoil at the very thought of all such violations, while we
revel in sexually- oriented advertising at every level of life in America.
Stan Moody of Manchester, ME, former Maine State Representative and most recently a Chaplain at
Maine State Prison in Warren, is an advocate for prison reform…A prolific and published writer, Dr.
Moody is pastor of the Meeting House Church in Manchester, board member of Solitary Watch and has
been a speaker on human rights issues around the nation…His articles may be read at
http://www.scribd.com/stanmoody and https://moodyreport.wordpress.com/.
Prison Reform, Sex Offender Registry, Department of Corrections, Criminal Justice, bill-to-“fix”-
Maine’s-leper-colony-registry, www.scribd.com/stanmoody, www.moodyreport.wordpress.com