Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Steubenville rape

Recenetlly justice was service.  Two high school footballers were convicted of rape charges.  (Source)

Make no doubt about it, I believe they are guilty and I believe they should be punished.  They should go to jail and serve their term.  But I do wish to point out a few things about how they will be punished for the rest of their life far beyond a fair amount.


First, some facts of the case.  There was a party.  The boys and the girl got drunk.  The girl became basically unresponsive.  They stripped her and assaulted her body with their fingers.  Pictures were taken.  Those pictures were passed around.   Some were deleted.    But everyone in the kid's social network found about what was done.

The girl woke up naked in an unfamiliar house.  She had blacked out and does not remember anything from the night, but everyone has heard the stories. 

Some of them talked, two teenagers aged 17 and 16 were arrested, tried and convicted as they should be.  The older boy got a minimum of 2 years in Juvenile Jail, the younger got 1 year.  But most likely they will both remain in jail until the age of 21.   The girl was 16.

Also note, that more people are being investigated.   There were 16 people that refused to talk with the cops, so it could be as many as 16 more criminals.

Note the ages.  The girl was a minor.  These two boys have now been convicted of raping a minor.

They will be put on a sex offender list.  (source)  They count as Tier III, the worst kind, because it involved actual penetration.

  • They must register every 90 days for the rest of their lives.
  • They must provide their home, employment, enrollment in any school, any vehicles registered to them or that they might drive, their telephone numbers, emails, internet accounts, Facebook, etc.
  • The sheriff will notify all residents living within 1,000 feet of them, and the schools, and the day care providers, every time they move
  • They can not live within a 1000 ft of a school or child day care unit.

Thank God they don't live in California, Oklahmoa, Florida, or Texas.  There they would not be allowed to live near a park.   What's so bad about not living near a park?  Well there is no size restriction.  So if you have a sex offender living near you, you ask for a 'micro-park' to be built - the size of a single vacant lot - and boom they get kicked out .  The park companies even advertise about how this works.  (Source)

Using this technique, many cities can make it so there is NO legal place to live for sex offenders.  (Miami).  Some states have even made it illegal for sex offenders to live in the entire state.  

Please note that sex offenders are most likely to be these two young footballer kids, not old perverts.  The typical sex offense is not a young woman being violent kidnapped.  (source)

Most likely it happens:
  • At the victim's home (37.4% - next most common is friend's home - 19.2%)
  • By one person, known to the victim (73.5%)  Note this rises to 90% when we are talking about someone under 12.
  • By someone 29 or younger (58%)  (Most common 5 year age group is 20-24: 17.3% for forcible rape, 12.9 for other sex crimes)
  • About 1 in 8 victims are under 18 and when that happens 90% of the time so is the rapist.
  • 85.9% of the time the rapist is accused of raping only one person, general sexual assault that drops to 78.8%
  • 90% of the time the victim is female and the rapist is male.  But 8.7% they are both male.  (0.8% female on female, 0.2% female rapes a man - yes it does happen and yes the guy has to deal with people laughing at him on top of the trauma of rape)
  • 88% of the time the race is the same for the victim and the rapist.
  • 80% of the time no weapon is used.
Typical sentence is 292 months  (24 years) from a jury, 173 months (14.5 years) from a judge, or 139 months (11.5 years) from a plea bargain.  They tend to serve half of that.

Rapists are only 52% likely to be arrested for anything else, as compared with 60% of other violent crimes.  But' that's just arrest - the cops love to go after convicted rapists.  Convictions are 36% as compared to 42% for other violent crimes, and only 32% f the time are they re-incarcerated, as compared to 37% for other violent criminals.

In other words, convicted rapists are LESS likely to commit a crime than other violent criminals.

As for those that commit another sex crime, as opposed to simply being arrested that's a whopping 5.3%.  That's a decimal point in there, less than 6%, not fifty-three percent.  (source)


So what is going to happen to these Steubenville boys?  They will be stigmatized for life, prevented from going to college, prevented from getting a real job, and most likely forced into a life of crime and homelessness.

As for the micoparks  - will they protect your children?  No.  Because it is your strange uncle billy that is most likely going to sexually abuse your children, not these boys.  Unless you patrol them, Parks are great places for criminals to meet late at night.   Putting up a fence just makes them BETTER places for criminals to meet - a little privacy is something criminals like.

The park/school/temple system of preventing sex criminals from moving into your neighborhood only concentrates them in seedy neighborhoods and convinces them to lie about where they live.

Just like NYC had to break up the seedy sex store districts, because it encourages crime, we need to stop trying to concentrate the sex offenders and instead spread them out.  Because honestly, it does NOT make your kids safer, it just makes you less vigilant. 

You see, humans have a weakness.  We take ridiculous steps to avoid the unlikely but lurid fears, while casually accepting extremely likely risks.

We are afraid of airplanes, not cars (let alone motorcycles).
We insist on eating organic steaks, rather than pesticide covered vegetables.

And yes, we push all the sex offenders into a small tight area, screaming "SAVE MY KIDS FROM THE MONSTERS", when the monsters are people we know, standing right next to you.

You want to save your kid from sex offenders?  Let them play with strangers - but buy a nanny-cam and watch them like a hawk with people you know and trust.  Because playing with strangers is a lot less likely to get you kids hurt than trusting them with everyone you know.

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