There’s been a sizable backlash against certain methods (largely seen as doing more harm than good) of controlling, or labelling, or watching “sex offenders” in the US recently. CNN has coverage of a “poster child” (perhaps literally) case: the saga of Ricky Blackman.

The summation: Ricky was 16, had sex with a girl he thought was 15 (they met at a teen club). Iowa’s age of consent is 14, one of the lowest in the nation, but their law doesn’t carry a “Romeo & Juliet” provision. Later, she ran away from home. Because the two were known to be dating, the police came to interview Ricky. It’s at this point that he didn’t heed certain very, very sound legal advice and admitted to the cops to having sex with the girl, who as it turned out was actually 13.

From there, the story goes downhill. He pled guilty to having sex with the girl when charged, because his mother believed “the truth will set him free.” The judge in his case agreed the case was unusual and that jail time was simply inappropriate, and set up the terms of conviction so that the Iowa courts would automatically expunge his record of the conviction if he completed probation and “sex offender treatment” (frankly, I find the second part of that to still be overkill, but whatever). Again, this is where “Romeo and Juliet” clauses come into play. Unfortunately, because there is no “common sense” clause in the Iowa “sex offender registry” law (or anywhere else in the country, from what I can tell), a kid barely old enough to shave was tossed onto the registry for having consensual sex with his girlfriend.

The secondary problem comes in when the family tried to move, to get a fresh start. They moved to Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s legislature, in a fit of retarded splendor, ignores the constitutional Full Faith and Credit clause and refuses to recognize the expungements of most criminal convictions done in other states (the law was only recently changed, and only for “certain” crimes). Between that, and the circumstances of “one size fits all sex offender lists” (which don’t tell you WHAT the offender was convicted of, just call them a “sex offender”) his family was harassed wherever they went. The larger question of how society deals with sex offenders post-incarceration is, and always will be, problematic. For those who are truly rehabilitated, sorry for what they did, and trying to rebuild their lives, some of the limitations can make life almost impossible. And we know to a certain extent that when people have difficulty in finding work and reentering society, one common reaction is to go back to the offending behavior.

Of course, the other side - the fact that true psychopaths simply do not respond to rehabilitative methods, and are more likely than the normal population to con their way into an early release - is what has led to these draconian “post-incarceration” controls in the first place. I’d say we need to have a prohibition on letting diagnosed psychopaths into the parole system entirely, or perhaps even a required medical screening for this behavior on anyone’s incarceration, but I’m sure someone would have an objection to that.

{To be clear: this is not an opening for a discussion of “why consent limits should be lowered.” If anything, Iowa’s is already one of the lowest in the nation and maybe that’s why their state legislature decided a “Romeo & Juliet” clause wasn’t necessary.