communicative punishment of non-criminal "sex offenders"

Ohio is establishing a registry of sex offenders who weren’t criminally convicted of sex offenses.  The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, reported:

A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.

The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio’s so-called Megan’s Law.

The person’s name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where [the person] could live.

Especially with the Internet, the government declaring a person to be a sex offender is a potent communicative punishment.  Most persons consider sex offenders to have committed some of the most vile crimes imaginable.  Ohio’s electronic sex offender registration and notification system communicates detailed, immediate information about sex offenders’ movements to interested parties.  “Visitors to the {Ohio sex offender Internet site} can register to have an e-mail message sent directly to them any time a registered sex offender moves within a mile of any specified address.”

The political incentives to impose such communicative punishments are relatively strong.  The first sex offender registry was established in New Jersey in 1994 (Megan’s Law).  Within a decade, sex offender registries were established across the U.S.. Such a registery is now under consideration in the U.K. (Sarah’s Law).  The story of a young girl viciously raped and killed easily attracts public attention.  Protecting children is a propitious basis for legislation.  Even better, legislation that imposes communicative punishments don’t cost much public expenditure. Communicative punishment is much cheaper than imprisonment.

Given these circumstances, communicative punishments merit strict scrutiny for due process.  What about “the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury; to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel in his defense”?  Forget about those rights.  A declaratory judgment, based on the preponderance of the evidence, is all that is necessary for the government to communicate powerfully that a person has joined the heinous category of sex offenders {see Sec. 2721.21 of the Act}.

Ohio’s civil communicative punishment of sex offenders seems to have been the product of a sordid deliberative failure. The Blade reported:

The concept was offered by Roman Catholic bishops as an alternative to opening a one-time window for the filing of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse that occurred as long as 35 years ago.

The Ohio Supreme Court a few months earlier issued a ruling affirming a time limit for filing abuse cases.  This matter is more awful than the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk.  It’s more awful because priest have in fact awfully abused children.  I would guess that was also true in the early nineteenth century.  From 1950 to 2002, however, about $650 million has changed hands in judgments against Catholic churches and religious communities concerning sex abuse. This new legal development provides new motivation to address the serious problem of sex abuse.  The solution that the Roman Catholic bishops proposed in Ohio shows that the problem concerns everyone.

Protection of civil liberties are central to the rule of law.  But perhaps the only deliberative fate worse than being an accused sex offender is being accused of defending accused sex offenders.  The Blade reported:

No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules {concerning civil denunciations of a person as a sex offender} submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro’s office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.

In fact, you can find right in the New Jersey State Constitution this text:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution and irrespective of any right or interest in maintaining confidentiality, it shall be lawful for the Legislature to authorize by law the disclosure to the general public of information pertaining to the identity, specific and general whereabouts, physical characteristics and criminal history of persons found to have committed a sex offense. {NJ Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. VII, para. 12, added Dec., 7, 2000}

This text essentially states that the rest of the Constitution does not apply to persons “found to have committed a sex offense.”  And what does it take to make such a finding? In Ohio, it’s a civil declaratory judgment based on preponderance of the evidence.  Liberty under law, including liberty from personally damaging government communication, should be more secure than this.

carnival of the bureaucrats #2

Featured this month as Bureaucrat-of-the-Month is Funtwo. That’s not Fun2.0, but Funtwo. Bureaucrats have no need of superfluous precision.

You can see Mr. Funtwo working intensely in front of his desk in the video below (or here). With characteristic bureaucratic modesty, he appears faceless.

Mr. Fun continues in the tradition of bureaucrats that have made Korea a world broadband leader. I predict a great future for this young man in the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication.

The fruits of his work are for all to hear. Sweet child o’ mine, purple haze envelopes purple motes, free bird flying on a stairway to heaven, all along the watchtower, watch this! Bureaucrats rock!!!

Other submissions:

The Obvious? laments:

As I get to see more and more organisations I sometimes get overwhelmed by a feeling I can only describe as melancholy at the number of clever, well meaning people in business who spend their working lives making it harder to get things done.

Cheer up, sir. That’s called private-sector job creation.

Pope Benedict XVI offers St. Gregory the Great as a model for public administrators. But why aspire to be just a servant of the servants of the public? I’ve already achieved several bureaucratic levels lower than that! Additional insight for old media leaders: Gregory the Great, by reaching out to the so-called “Barbarian” peoples, fostered the development of a new civilization.

Generative Transformation reviews Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience. Thoreau’s 1849 essay begins:

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto,—”That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Under Rule 6, submissions to the carnival of the bureaucrats may not include the phrase “‘mindless bureaucrats,’ or any other similar terms.” The sentence “That government is best which governs not at all” does not directly use the phrase “mindless bureaucrats.” However, it has connotations similar to that of “mindless bureaucrats” except if the former phrase is interpreted to mean that conscientious bureaucrats will do nothing. But that interpretation is not tenable, because most bureaucrats in fact work hard. Based on the preceding analysis, this particular submission is rejected by us as not meeting the requirements of the applicable regulations, which do not necessary preclude future submissions concerning civil disobedience, which we recognize has served the public interest in certain circumstances, which will not be described herein by us.

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.