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April 23, 2006

Go go status quo

Last week, investigators said they hadn't yet found a "link" between Cape Bretoner Stephen Marshall and the two men he allegedly murdered in Maine, which suggested they might believe there's more to the story. Or it might suggest that they're desperately searching for more to the story, lest their bosses get their proverbial pants sued off.

It's obviously no coincidence that Marshall looked his victims up on Maine's sex offender registry before he set out to kill them, and so it's clear, assuming he's guilty, that the registry and the legislators in Augusta who created it facilitated those murders. Investigators now seem eager to bring convicted child molester Clark Gerwulf into the picture. Gerwulf lived near Marshall eight years ago in Idaho, see, so he might have abused him. I have no idea how that would shed any light on this case.

Ontario MPP Gerry Martiniuk wants to put the Canadian offender registry on the internet (and Peter Kormos of all people agrees with him). Says Martiniuk:

You go on a website and say "who is within three kilometers of me." That way parents can take care of their children and feel secure.

But thousands of convicted murderers and manslaughterers walk American and Canadian streets more or less freely. You can't look any of them up on any registry that I'm aware of, nor have I heard any proposals to make it so. Politicians apparently believe people would rather be murdered than sexually assaulted. I'm not sure they're wrong, but I'm sure it doesn't make any sense. Of course, William Elliott didn't really assault anyone — at 19 (20 by some reports) he had consensual sex with a nearly 16-year-old girl, and now he's dead because Marshall looked him up on a state-run website and gunned him down in front of his girlfriend.

But I'm splitting hairs. One must think of the children. I know — I'll check out that website that tells me whether any chronic drunk drivers live within three kilometres of me. Wait. There isn't one. Is that guy in 32A really a bank robber? Did that sketchy guy across the street really punch four people's lights out for no reason? No way to know. I am only entitled to know if someone in my neighbourhood did something wrong if he did it with his penis.

The reason most often cited for sex offender registries — to protect children from predators — is pretty much a complete sham. Only a tiny number of sexual assaults on children are perpetrated by strangers, same as I imagine it is with murders, and anyone who's never been caught before isn't going to show up on that website. Presently in Canada, the police notify residents when a particularly dangerous individual is being released into a neighbourhood — that is, one who would prey on random children. Absent some way to rehabilitate these offenders, this strikes me as the best approach. Jim Stephenson, one of the most reasonable victims' rights advocates you're ever going to come across, is of like mind:

"I think the only people who should access to the registry are the police," Stephenson said. "I don't think that the public should have access to it."

He said police should keep the right to warn the public, in extreme cases. However, he said an online registry could make otherwise law-abiding people violent.

"I think you'd just get too emotional with it, and do something that you'd regret, and you'd have to stand before a judge with a charge," Stephenson said.

I think it's more basic than that, though. The vast majority of people on these registries aren't dangerous, and the vast majority of people who search them online are only doing so to satisfy their own morbid curiosities. At least five Canadians have forwarded me a link in recent months to a website that gives Americans a graphical representation of where the nasties live in their neighbourhoods. I don't begrudge someone getting a sick laugh out of it, but the provision of sick laughs is not part of the justice system's mandate. We should either give the public access to a registry of all dangerous people, or we should trust the police to do their job.

[UPDATE April 24: Marshall knocked on four other registered sex offenders' doors on the day in question and found no one home. Hearings tomorrow in the Maine state legislature on the topic of whether they might have a teensy problem on their hands.]

[UPDATE not much later: "Firehead", one of the blokes who sent me the link, objects to my not begrudging him his sick laughs:

And it's not even the judgment that irks me. It's the "I don't begrudge" part of the whole thing. The whole paragraph, from "morbid curiosities" to "sick laugh" is filled with begrudgement, as I'm sure he would begrudgingly agree.

Yeah, well put, and I can't really argue with that. But I have morbid curiosities and a sick sense of humour too. I wasn't trying to claim otherwise.]

Posted by Chris Selley at April 23, 2006 04:23 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Jason at April 24, 2006 10:05 AM

Posted by: Mark at April 24, 2006 04:38 PM

Posted by: Firehead at April 24, 2006 10:59 PM

Posted by: Kyle at April 25, 2006 08:27 PM