Sensible Sentencing not so sensible
The Sensible Sentencing Lynch Mob might need deep pockets after it was revealed this morning that their on-line name and shame list of sex offenders actually has innocent people listed on it. In one case in britain a pediatrician was listed because the first three letters of his job matched the first three letters of the word pedophile. Sensible Sentencing, not so sensible.
posted by Bomber @ 7:33 am
15 comments
15 Comments:
One would imagine that the Sensible Sentencing Trust has few if any assets. Accordingly any litigation will probably achieve nothing. If they were to be closed down it would be relatively easy to set up a new trust and new website :)
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TJ as usual I'm glad you missed the point, note everyone how TJ isn't concerned innocent people are being listed on a sex offender website, just that it will contine proudly (with the little smirk at the end just for good measure) :)
Bomber bomber bomber - i too watched breakfast tv this am. The pediatrician mistake was not the SST but rather occured in britain. I think you are being somewhat misleading.
I also note that in one instance a mother took in a border, who she was able to leave with her children to babysit, when she learned that he was actually a sex offender.
Of course innocent people shouldnt be named, nobody argues tha.
Lol :D
Can I add to an earler post about Israel and the Hamas, that I WAS RIGHT!
Doom laden whiners please queue to the left to apologise.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH – After delivering a speech laden with messages of peace and regional cooperation, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was satisfied on his way back from the from the Sharm el-Sheik summit.
“Within eight days Olmert has managed to turn the downfall of Fatah in the Gaza Strip into an opportunity for peace. He’s got the backing of the United States, the Quartet and now the moderate Arab states as well,” said a senior aide to the prime minister after the summit.
Despite the declarations of satisfaction however, it should be noted that no tangible agreements emerged from the summit, no solution to combat the increasing Hamas-driven terrorism in Gaza.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3417507,00.html
ha ha bomber caught out putting his own spin on tjings..AGAIN! great journalism , really thorough!
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Always happy to be corrected here, no pretense of god like powers of right or wrong - i leave that to the Herald and TVNZ, but the issue of a self appointed pressure group for harsher sentencing putting on-line details regarding sex offenders that are wrong hasn't really been addressed.
Sex offenders should not have the opportunity to have their names mentioned, unless it is in the obitury column of the Herald and reads along the lines of "Sex offender gets his just desserts,while being stoned to death by the family of the person he offended against. No that would be justice.
It could be shown live on TV as a reality show. But then that wouldnt be PC.
The silence of the SST over the Liam Ashley case is rather deafening.
Given that their desire is to see our prison system handed to Chubb, it is hardly suprising.
Cheers,
Brendon "Millsy" Mills
You have misreported the British case. It was a fair few years ago, rather before the days of the mass web site, and the doctor involved was a woman. It is interesting that after all these years it is still the favourite case people recite. It is a story that has been around so long the true facts have been lost to spin, it is now an urban myth to be (mis)reported as and when required.
Probably one of the main problems with lists is that most sexual perverts are never reported or charged let alone convicted, they just quietly go about their bizarre, cruel and highly damaging behaviours for a lifetime.
Ian Huntly had a long history of sexual perversion and was well known to the authorities, who did little or nothing to protect the community and his victims. Tragically it took the murder of two young girls for him to become well known to the rest of us. All crime is bad but double murder might be considered a little bit worse than a wrongful listing, that can be put right, dead girls are slightly harder to bring back. If Huntly had been on a public list (or even one only available to schools and other places who look after children) he would never have got the job at the school.
Lists are always susceptible to errors and need to be open to scrutiny, look at Baycorp. I did a credit check on someone and it came back with all sorts of stuff so I contacted the person and told him. Turned out to be someone else with the same name and birth date. Of course it wasn’t very nice for the person but it was sorted out and nobody died. At least if a list is public it can be checked and corrected, better that than rumour and gossip which can be far more damaging.
The laws of probability tells us that innocent people go to jail, just as guilty people walk free or are never charged, we regularly hear of sexual perverts getting access to children (Ian Huntly is just one an example of that) so what is the answer. How do we protect children and their families from criminals.
On a related note were the adult women of Christchurch protected from Dr. Morgan Fahey or was he the one who was looked after. Without that secret filming he would still be doing it. Is he just one isolated case or just the tip of a massive iceberg. Most of the victims of these criminals are children and women, adult men have little to fear, unless they like and care about children and women it does not worry them.
There are many groups set up to look after, fight for and protect criminals, they make many mistakes, like supporting and recommending people into parole and release only for them to seriously offend again. A group whose focus is victims and their families makes mistakes but I hope they also provide some comfort for the forgotten victims of crime. Many of us remember the names of high profile criminals but how many of us can name their victims. People write books about criminals but I don’t think I have seen many about their victims who are simply extras and bit players in the main story.
Once someone is convicted of Liam Ashley's murder I daresay they will be listed on the web site being discused.
They have listed the police officer convicted of rape but can not list the ones who were aquited.
It is interesting that of all the people murdered in NZ the only name I see regularly mentioned here is Liam Ashley, am appaling crime but what about all the other appling crimes.
Have I missed the concern for the others or don't they matter.
You can't hide from a libel suit behind an incorporated society or anything else. Whoever was involved in putting the names in question up will be liable. Hopefully they'll lose their houses.
Paedophile.
TJ is correct in saying that the Trust does not have much in the way of assets, and that setting up a new Trust and site would be easy. Repackaging the databases for a new site and organisation would be easy, as it is just a matter of stripping the headers off and replacing them with new ones and writing a new css file.
Liam Ashley's murderer is already listed; http://www.safenz.org.nz/Data/bakergeorge.htm
There was also a Press Release on the matter at the time;
http://www.safenz.org.nz/Press/2006threestrikes.htm
Anonymous in post 10 makes excellent points. As for innocent persons listed on the databases, the Trust The person who accused the Trust on the recent TV One Breakfast show of listing innocent persons has not as yet appraised the Trust of the names of anyone who has puportedly been acquitted or not found guilty in the first place. I happen to have some inside knowledge of this matter.
I am not saying the Trust is infallible, and no such claim is made on the site or elsewhere. Best efforts are made however to verify data as far as possible before it is placed online. The one incorrect listing found to date was as a result of incorrect information published in no less than four different media channels, including two major newspapers. It was withdrawn promptly and an apology put on the site.
Ultimately it would better if the Government was to publish such data online directly for serious offending of this sort, rather than non-profit organisations having to reverse engineer the "Wanganui computer" as the Justice department criminal records database used to be known, thus eliminating the possibility of human error
Regards
Peter
I am sure most newspapers, blogs, tv and radio shows etc. have at some time mistakenly identified someone, it is a realty, do they get sent bankrupt for these often very hurtful and damaging errors. What I think annoys some of their ‘victims’ is not the initial mistake but that their retractions and apologies (if they can get them) are half-hearted, insincere and easily missed,
Why single out this trust for such vitriol, they are subject to making mistakes like anyone else. I think fairer ways to judge them is – are the errors deliberate or genuine human error, how do they deal with errors once they become known.
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