"Texans will not tolerate criminals who prey on our children..."

But we will tolerate cocaine-snorting, drunk-driving, AWOL-coward residents who become prezident!

Lets not all show our pink undies now, ok?

LMAO. I hereby nominate you both for posts No.1 & No.2 of the year.

No.1, I order you to go take a No.2!

Those seven caught musta been real morons...

lmao..

Duh? They're mentally deficient criminals. What did you expect?

Yeah, i kinda feel like an even worse moron for pointing out the obvious.

I can think of only a few reasons a convicted sex offender would want with myspace. let's face it if your a convicted sex offender your life is over, might as well kill yourself. It's proven that once you do this, you are 80 percent likely to do it again, even after jail time. Imagine how many sex offenders are on myspace and all the other social sites there are, I mean the fact they use their real name just shows how stupid they really are.

I think there should be a death penalty or life imprisonment for men and women who do this. They are mentally ill, I mean they have to register for crying out loud. The kids they do this too will be f'd up for the rest of their lives, they should never be given the chance to do it again.

And also for murder, i favor laws passed by some states, which permit continued incarceration if perp is likely to reincede / is not rehabilitated.

Might want to double check your statistics.....

There is a perception that the vast majority of sex offenders will repeat their crimes. Research studies by the US Dept. of Justice and the Canadian Government have found, however, that sexual offense recidivism rates are much lower than commonly believed, averaging between 14 and 20% over 5-year follow-up periods. Studies that have tracked sex offenders over longer follow-up periods have found that pedophiles who molest boys, and rapists of adult women, were the types of offenders most likely to recidivate at rates of 52% and 39% respectively. Repeat offenders are more likely to reoffend than first-time offenders. Those who comply with probation and treatment have lower reoffense rates that those who violate the conditions of their release. Sex offenders who target strangers are more dangerous than those with victims inside their own family. Despite myths of stranger danger, the vast majority of sexually abused children (80-90%) are molested by family members and close friends or acquaintances.

One of my friends is a registered sex offender in Florida. He was 18 at the time he broke up with his 17 year old girlfriend, and in the heat of the moment of the break-up he "popped one last feel." Unfortunately for him, her dad was a police officer and knew where to look up the law. Sure enough, it was a sex crime. She didn't say no to him, but a week afterwards "it left her uncomfortable." While the truth is she just wanted to get back at him for breaking her heart, and since he was 18 and she was a minor, he went to jail. Oh the irony of the 'ol saying "jail bait" eh?

So as you can imagine, just meeting friends through MySpace is nearly impossible for my friend, let alone the struggle of getting a creditable job. He didn't molest a four year old, he didn't rape a single mother, he just made a poor decision out of distaste that has ruined his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender

Quite often, once the facts are established, you find that there are many, many situations very much like what you just described. Likewise, you'll find ones where someone, intoxicated and using very poor judgment, urinates in a public place and ends up with the same offense registration.

The greatest number of these cases, by far, involve family members and not total strangers. Federal crime statistics and specialists who work in this field support that fact regularly. Likewise, many offenders are ones who fall into an authority figure category, such as teachers, youth group leaders, religious ministers and the like, who have some relationship with the victims. Those stalking parks and cyberspace are actually quite the minority.

Then too, you have people with a conviction, perhaps twenty or thirty years ago....having never had a brush with the law before, nor since....and have completed legitimate treatment programs.

Sadly, because of media hysteria, all offenders are lumped into a single category...dangerous....which is far from the truth.

If people really wanted to protect children, they would look more and placing these people into risk categories, so the ones who required close monitoring would get it. In fact, the federal government is currently dealing with legislation to require states to establish risk categories, just for this purpose. Use the available resources to monitor the high risk offenders.

Like it or not, a great number of registered sex offenders have families, family support and must make their way through daily life in society. Many made a mistake long ago and have dealt with the situation and made the appropriate changes to their lives.

Unfortunately, hysterical "statistics" and distorted media coverage sells to the public.

I would agree with that. We are dealing with human beings, therefore each and every one is different. You just can't stick every human being in a nice neat category and make them fit.

Many people, convicted of crimes which really are mental disorders, probably should be sent to mental health facilities, rather than prisons, where they can be observed, treated and evaluated as to the level of "dangerousness" they would present if returned to society. I think that would be a much better means of measurement and serve to better protect society.

Urinating in the street gets you a sex-offender's record in the UK, BTW.

Well, I don't know whether that should count as SEX-offense but I'm certainly glad that it IS an offense. Now if only spitting on the sidewalk (or path) was also an offense!

Actually you are wrong. Re-offense rate for sexual offenses is only 5.5% via a government study. An independent study shows that it's 17% for an untreated offender. Sexual re-offending has the LOWEST re-offense rate (next to murder) of all other crimes. Other crimes carry 60% or higher re-offense rate.

Watching news broadcast to educate yourself isn't a good idea, they sell entertainment, you want the truth do the research.

I can't say this is a bad idea, if they are using a filter to sort the accounts and snag these sick people. Though it might be effective at the moment, criminals will always take steps to try to avoid detection.