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Tag: Michigan Sex Offender Registration Act

Homeless Offenders

By Kevin Rex Heine, Section News
Posted on Thu Sep 06, 2012 at 04:14:58 PM EST
Tags: Michigan Supreme Court, 2012 vacancy nomination, Jane Markey, Court of Appeals, trust but verify . . . always, People v Dowdy, MCL 28.722(p), unintended consequences of the law, Michigan Sex Offender Registration Act (all tags)

Laws which are passed in a "knee jerk" reaction to a "preventable" tragedy often are not particularly well thought through, are insufficiently deliberated before passage, tend to overreact, and are particularly notorious for two things: (1) they tend to expand government reach into places the Founding Fathers would have never tolerated, and (2) they tend to be later found to have gaps that result from lack of foresight, and are only discovered in a post-legislation lawsuit.

The Patriot Act is a classic example of such a law. And I do find myself chuckling just a little when an Amber Alert mentions a missing 14-year-old girl, last seen headed out of town with a 19-year-old man . . . yeah, you know what's probably really happening. Also on this list are the various elements of sex offender registration. Between Megan's Law, the Wetterling Act, and the Adam Walsh Act we have I don't know how many different ways to permanently screw up other people's lives over nothing, for no other reason than because we as a society lack the testicular fortitude to deal with bona fide sex offenders according to their crime.

An example in my mind is a high school kid here in Kentwood a couple of years back who streaked across the football field during the final home game of the season . . . not even out of high school, and an overreactive law has already thrown out the rest of his productive life. (Back in my day, the only LEO involvement in such an incident would be to escort the student in question home and turn him over to the parents for disciplinary action.) I mean seriously, in Michigan you can land on the sex offender registry for nothing more offensive than cussing in public, which is a real concern for a career sailor such as myself.

And then there are other shortfalls.