Internal alarm…going off.
This morning I read a story about a national sex offender registry but decided to Google one for Illinois and sure enough, it was pretty easy to find.
The results, well…. “upsetting” would be kind of an understatement.
I found out that:
There are 19486 sex offenders in the State of Illinois
There are 4339 sex offenders in the City of Chicago
There are 63 in my zip code (60618)
There are 724 “Non-Compliant” or “Location Unknown”
There are more than I can count that are “Sexual Predators”
Frankly, I’m not comfortable with even giving “sexual predators” a second chance in society but there has to be a better way to track these people. Can we implant a microchip? or a bracelet that can’t taken off? Something? It’s hard to find much that feels “unethical” when dealnig with a sex offender. I guess I always knew that there are released sex offenders in society but now that I think about it a little more, I’m really NOT okay with this and I don’t even have little CP’s running around to worry about.
Due to all this talk of sex offenders, I feel that I would be remiss in not discussing the population I deal with: I work exclusively with juvenile sex offenders. From the research you did CP, you should not see any of the kids I work with (especially since you live so far north) but you won’t see all of their charges either. It is a very touchy subject, and I could go on at length about it–but I’m not sure people want the Chicago blog to get more hits for having information about juvenile sex offenders.
I have to admit that since seeing this post I have gotten very little work done. A mom of two girls, I’ve obsessively been clicking on every name in my zip code. It’s terrifying for me, and at the same time I’m seeing this as a mother and looking at face after face of someone’s son (and one daughter) thinking of how heartbreaking it must be for their mothers to see their family name on such a list. Or do they care?
Some care, some don’t. I’ve worked with mothers that will do whatever it takes to help their child (mostly sons; I believe the statistic is less than 5% of convicted SOs are female) and i’ve worked with kids whose mother’s want nothing to do with any of their kids…
Traditionally, the more familial support an SO has, the more successful they are. In this case, Familial support also means being incredibly strict with SO in question.
One last statistic: Less than 10% of all offenses are along the lines “Stranger Danger” or the kidnpapping type. I want to say less than 1%, but I’m not at my desk right now.
Anyway, any questions you can reach me via my email…or these comments.
Please keep in mind that the sex offender label also covers the naive 18 year old boys who have sex, or intend to have sex, with 16 year old girlfriends. This is an important statistic and unfortunately these boys are lumped in with pedophiles. This is an important issue that needs a resolution. When you’re searching the registries, you may be looking at a boy who really shouldn’t be there, but he’s fallen through the cracks of an imperfect system.