Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/01/sex-offenders-banned-from-poke.html
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Oh, so that’s where this came from.
Gaming Safety FTW: The Pokémon In Pokémon Go Will Now Scream When A Player Is Within A Mile Of A Registered Sex Offender [ClickHole]
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Of course, this doesn’t just ban pedophiles. It also bans the guy who had sex with the woman who he is now married to, but had to cop a plea because she was 15 and he was 17.
There’s a town in Texas that has tiny, completely useless “parks”, usually just a tiny greenspace with maybe a bench, every couple of blocks. I never thought much about them, until a resident told me they’re called “pedi-parks”, and exist solely to legally prevent anyone on a sex offender list from being able to live there. You can’t outright ban someone from living in a town, but you can ban them from living too close to a park, school or church. So, you just sprinkle these “parks” all over town, and you’ve created a de facto city ban.
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Not only that. Most sex offenders are not pedophiles. Many just want to hurt adult women. A few are on the list for public urination.
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IANAL, obviously, but how can the conditions of someone release be retroactively changed unilaterlally like this? How is that legal? Anyone? That is a huge class of games that they are now banned from.
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Even leaving aside all of the other issues already mentioned above and assuming that all sex offenders are pedophiles (which we’ve established isn’t correct), surely if a child sex offender is actively attempting to lure children into vulnerable situations they aren’t fit for release in the first place? If you trust them to be in society and not seek out children in other ways, why wouldn’t you trust them to play a video game that happens to occur in the real world? If you’re going to ban them from playing Pokemon Go, why not just ban them from using smartphones at all, since there will be thousands of games (and soon to be more than a few alternate augmented reality games to boot) in which they could interact with children in some way, not to mention the traditional routes using online chat and telecommunications. Banning a specific game seems both unnecessary and, even if you do assume that it is beneficial, oddly specific.
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And some are women charged with prostitution, and “crimes against nature” aka oral sex.
Edit:
Looks like this abuse in New Orleans fiinally got overturned in 2013.
“40 percent of registered sex offenders in Orleans Parish were on the registry as a result of such a conviction; 76 percent of these were women and 80 percent were African American.”
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Wow. Thought that couldn’t possibly be a real thing, but evidently, they’re doing that in a lot of places, including LA. “Pocket parks”, created with the intent of keep sexual offenders out, or make them move away if they’re already there.
Wonderful! That will cause them to move to the poor side of town where they can’t do any real harm, I guess? Or out to the country, where there’s limited support and rehabilitation programs? Or maybe just out in the street?
Oh, and let’s take away their games too while we’re at it! This new one has the scary word “Lure” in it so it should be easy to generate some click-bait–and anything “Pokemon” will get tons of publicity these days. Those New York politicians are sure on the ball when it comes to topical fear mongering!
I guess they know you don’t win elections by pushing for real, proven measures that prevent recidivism and actually protect the public. You win by making a show of ensuring past offenders are as bitter and alienated as possible – and then when they predictably re-offend, throw them in private prisons whose owners contribute to your campaigns.
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