The Society We Live In
A few days ago I posted an entry entitled, What To Do With Sex Offenders. Well, it appears that Florida has found a solution to the problem. In Miami, they can stay under a rat infested bridge with no running water, power, or utilities.
I received this story from a friend. He sent it to me because of a previous posting about this. It’s quite an unbelievable story.
The sparkling blue waters off Miami’s Julia Tuttle Causeway look as if they were taken from a postcard. But the causeway’s only inhabitants see little paradise in their surroundings.
Five men -- all registered sex offenders convicted of abusing children -- live along the causeway because there is a housing shortage for Miami’s least welcome residents.
“I got nowhere I can go!” says sex offender Rene Matamoros, who lives with his dog on the shore where Biscayne Bay meets the causeway.
The Florida Department of Corrections says there are fewer and fewer places in Miami-Dade County where sex offenders can live because the county has some of the strongest restrictions against this kind of criminal in the country.
Florida’s solution: house the convicted felons under a bridge that forms one part of the causeway. [...]
With nowhere to put these men, the Department of Corrections moved them under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. With the roar of cars passing overhead, convicted sex offender Kevin Morales sleeps in a chair to keep the rats off him.
“The rodents come up next to you, you could be sleeping the whole night and they could be nibbling on you,” he said. [...]
The convicted felons may not be locked up anymore, but they say it’s not much of an improvement.
“Jail is anytime much better than this, than the life than I’m living here now,” Morales said. “[In jail] I can sleep better. I get fed three times a day. I can shower anytime that I want to.”
Morales said that harsher laws and living conditions for sex offenders may have unintended consequences.
“The tougher they’re making these laws unfortunately it’s scaring offenders and they’re saying, ‘You know what, the best thing for me to do is run,’” Morales said.
A Miami Herald investigation two years ago found that 1,800 sex offenders in Florida were unaccounted for after violating probation. (source)
I want to make something very very clear before I say anything else about this story. And that is, I support the need for all children to be in a safe environment without fear of having sexual predators around. If you think that I support these predators and what they’ve done, you are misreading what I’m saying.
The people we are talking about have served time for their crime. Some of them have been incarcerated for years. Sexual predators don’t have the same rights that someone who commits a murder has. Murderers go to prison as well. Later, they get out, and are on parole. They have to see a parole officer for as long as the court deems necessary. But, that is never for the rest of their lives.
With sexual predators, this is a life sentence. They will be on a predator watch list, which is usually on the Internet, for all to see, and for all time. I don’t have a problem with most of them being on this list. I do have a problem with the guys that have been out for the last 25 years ago, who the police say pose no further problem, with no legal way at their disposal to have their names removed from the list. That seems wrong to me.
Some may live in a place that is acceptable. Some may have their homes paid for and are minding their own business. Then, the city makes plans to build a school a thousand feet from the home they’ve had for the last 30 years. Now, they have to sell their home and move for something that happened half a lifetime ago. That seems wrong to me.
Having laws on the books that make it virtually impossible for these people to live anywhere than under a bridge seems wrong and inhumane to me. Surely we can do better than this. Honestly, I would rather they be put in jail than be subjected to the elements like this. It’s really a form of prolonged torture.
Many will criticize me for saying these things. That’s fine. I would simply say that if you want these people to pay for the rest of their lives for what they did, we should at least be a little more honest about it, and make it a life sentence. It’s fair that they should be kept some distance from a school, but they should have the right to own a home at least. They could be forced to wear an ankle bracelet to keep tabs on them.
I believe these laws are out of control. No civilized society would do this.
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I think of Jeffrey Dahmer who killed all those kids and stored them around his home. Now that was someone who, in my mind, had to be totally insane. He should have been placed on death row (if they could prove that he wasn't insane, somehow), or placed in an insane asylum for the rest of his life.
Instead, he was put into prison among the general population. Within weeks, he was savagely and slowly beaten to death to the point of not being recognizable. And everyone pretended at the time that it was saddening that something like that would happen. What did they expect?
I don't like what he did anymore than anyone else, but, if that should have been his fate, that should have been his sentence. "You are sentenced to San Quintin prison for the rest of your life. You will be placed in the general population, where, you will be able to live out your life, unless the inmates decide your fate themselves."
If that's really what we want our justice system to be, I believe that we should be brutally honest about that and that should be part of his sentence and read aloud in court for the record.
But then, if we do that, are we really any better than Syria?
You make a good point, Bill, and in fact I thought of that as I wrote it, so I guess it is contradictory in principle. I do have to admit I get pretty worked up when thinking about a child being hurt, but that doesn't justify the brutality of placing the perpetrator in harm's way.
I agree with you Jeff, with the possible exception of putting them in with the general population. You might as well just execute them because they are either going to be killed in a very savage way, or, they are going to be continuously raped and victimized themselves. And, like you said, what if they didn't do it, as in the case you pointed out?
I saw this story in our local paper yesterday, and I also thought that it was wrong to make it near impossible for these people to live anywhere else other than under a bridge.
I am not sure because I haven't studied the laws regarding sexual predation to any great extent, but I honestly wonder how many people are labeled a child molester, or sexual predator when the facts of what they did could show otherwise. For instance, what exactly constitutes a "lewd and lascivious act"? It seems to me if some poor drunkard decided to relieve himself within eyeshot of a schoolyard he could be arrested, tried, and convicted under some state's definition of a "lewd and lascivious act" with a minor.
Not to mention the wrongly accused. I knew a man who was on the Megan's Law website for quite a long while, but recently it was discovered that the person who originally accused him of molesting them, (a relative,) had actually LIED in court because they were mad at the man! The poor guy's reputation was ruined, and he had to suffer the indignity of being publicly labeled a child molester.
I have absolutely no compassion for those who do molest children. I feel they should be placed in with the general population in prison, and let them take their chances. But there are degrees to everything, and some people simply do not meet the criteria of being a child molester.
The man I spoke of earlier was able to finally get his picture taken off the Megan's Law website, but the hell he had to go through was as bad as the original accusation.
I suppose you are right Buck. I did feel the need to qualify my compassion for these people, I think because I could see the hate mail coming my way for my "approval" of what they had done to kids, or that people couldn't believe that I didn't feel that they deserve whatever they get.
Children have rights and should be protected to the fullest extent of the law. And those who violate children should be held to whatever the law dishes out according to sentencing guidelines.
BUT, when your sentence and probation is done, it's done. This holding a sign over someones head for the rest of their lives is simply inhumane.
It's a sad commentary on our state of spiritual progression when one must begin such a post with an apology for having compassion for ALL human beings. How sad that vengeange and revenge are the watchwords of American Society. Compassion is such a foreign concept, especially to the self-proclaimed "Christians". And yet was it not Christ who said: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." and even more importantly for them: "What you do to the least of these you do to me." ?
There is never a need to apologize for compassion. If you are called down for it just remember that Blessed is he who is persecuted for my name's sake. And that name is TRUTH.
True compassion goes for all parties, those who are right and those who are wrong. To wish harm to another being or rejoice in that harm diminishes a person in spirit. Sadly, that is a normal state of affairs for the falsely righteous.
Agreed. But you know, so many of OUR civil rights are now gone. People just don't realize it yet. The people I write about in this article are the easy targets because they are what we consider the dregs of society. My only point is, dregs of society or not, they should at least be treated humanely. Forcing them to live under a rat infested bridge is not humane.
As for the rest of us, it's still hard to know what our own government is up to. They will do "whatever is necessary to protect the nation", and that means, illegal wire taps, warrent-less searches, etc. And no one seems to be concerned about this. But then I guess that gets back to my point about us not being that civilized.
You're operating under the (now demonstrably false, pre-9/11) assumption that we ARE living in a civilized society. I think this is proof that we are not.