Stricter Penalties for Pedophiles

Stricter Penalties for Pedophiles

Dear Representative

I am writing not only as a concerned American, but also as a concerned mother. I think that the issue of sexual abuse towards children has escalated to a tragic point. According to registeredoffenderslist.org, approximately 4% of the population has a sexual inclination towards children, and in 1994 there were over 93,000 reports of children who were sexually abused, and I am sure that in the subsequent 15 years the annual number has grown substantially. It is estimated that there are over 550,000 sex offenders in the United States, of which over 100,000 of their locations are unknown. It seems that the justice system's answer to this epidemic is to place this growing population in protective custody within the prison and to release these people, who they admit in public bulletins will most likely re-offend. Granted the government has put a registry in place so that the public is informed when a pedophile is released into their area, but this does little good when these people do not register and cannot be located. My outrage on this issue has continued to grow with every child's body that is found mutilated and sexually tortured; when is enough going to be enough? I think that it is about time to come up with stricter punishments and more enforced solutions to track the whereabouts of these people, and I have a proposal.
My proposal is in two parts:
1st - Make the release of people convicted of sexual crimes against children conditional on rehabilitation (no more level 3 sex offenders being released).
2nd - Place ankle monitors/ tracking devices on child predators that are released from prison for the duration of their probation.
In an effort to show you the severity of this problem I have included a story that will hopefully disgust and horrify you in the same way it did the nation, when we all learned about the serious flaws in the judicial system that would allow these events to transpire. This is the story of serial killer and sex-offender, Joseph Duncan III; I don’t know if you are familiar with this story, but Duncan at 15-years old raped a 9-year old boy at gunpoint and while in juvenile detention admitted to raping at least 13 other boys by the time he was 16. In 1980 he abducted and raped a 14 year old boy; he served 14 of his 20 year sentence for this crime. In April of 2005 he was arrested for molesting a 6 year old boy; and even though he had been convicted of child rape twice before, bail was set, he was released, and he skipped town. In May of 2005, while driving through the town of Coeur d’Alene, ID two children playing in a swimming pool (in their own front yard) caught his attention. He then proceeded to stake out the children and their family; eventually he broke into their house killed the mother, the mother’s boyfriend, and the 13 year old brother; he kidnapped the 8 year old girl (Shasta) and the 9 year old boy (Dylan). He took Shasta and Dylan into remote woods where he proceeded to rape and torture the both of them, and kill Dylan; he was later caught with Shasta. After his arrest he was linked to the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a boy in California (he was linked to this crime by a fingerprint that was found on the duct tape that bound the naked, mutilated body of 10 year old Michael Martinez); and he also confessed to the kidnap and murder of a 9 and 11 year old girls in Washington (Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias). Currently he has been sentenced with the death penalty in Idaho and has been extradited to California; and while at last justice has been served one has to question how many of these children he would have been able to kill if there were stricter penalties against sexual predators.

[Your name]