NY to create violent offender registry

Just what we need, another bullshit boutique law.

The NY State Senate is expected to pass a bill dubbed "Brittany's Law" requiring violent offenders to register for life in much the same way sex offenders are required to register. Offenders will be required to register where they live, and will have their profile posted in a public-access website. The bill is named for 12-year-old Brittany Passalacqua who was murdered in 2009, along with her mother Helen Buschel, by Buschel's live-in boyfriend John Brown. At the time of the double-murder, Brown was on parole after serving time in prison for shaking a baby.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not making the connection here. How would such a law have saved the lives of this woman and her child? Right off the bat we see that the mother was clearly not the best judge of men seeing that she and her daughter have different last names. So then this woman takes in a crack-smoking ex con. Now don't get me wrong, this Brown character is obviously a first class scumbag who should have fried for what he did. But I still don't see how some registry would have been of any help when clearly the mother was lacking in enough common sense to protect herself or her child from scumbags like that.

So how would it have helped her to know where this guy lived? She knew where he lived. In her place. She also knew he was a violent felon, but still chose to take him into her home.

This law is a waste of resources at best. If someone is a violent felon, that is already a matter of public record. This is just another way for the state to lock people up for petty reasons and sucker the taxpayer into paying for it. It's a scam, it's not going to save anybody. If someone is so dangerous that they need to be put on a registry, then maybe they should not be let out of prison in the first place. When they are let out of prison, they have paid their debt to society, their time is done. They should not have to check in with police for the rest of their lives because they got into some bar fight in their 20's.

I don't expect anyone to have any common sense on this though. No one is going to have the balls to stand up and say "hey, maybe we should not do this." After all, "it's for the women and children." The first person who stood up and actually said this law might be a bad idea would be committing political suicide and would be labeled as a lover of child killers. So once again, bullshit rhetoric and emotional appeal, rather than common sense, wins the day. The state just won't be happy until every last one of us is being tracked and monitored.

Here is a link to a brief in the Poughkeepsie Journal:

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110517/NEWS05/110517019/N-Y-would-create-registry-violent-felons