Truestory:
When I was 14, I was told that my views on Free Speech were extreme. Why? Because I thought putting "warning" labels on records was a knee-jerk reaction. When I was 17, I was called an extremist because I thought the most part of my Catholic high school was laughably hypocritical. When I was 19, I was called extremist for supporting the idea of medicinal marijuana--and recreational use hadn't become a factor in that particular exchange yet.
Now I'm extremist because I don't want a society of vigilantes running around, arbitrarily exacting justice when the laws--approved either directly or by proxy by the people--fail a group of individuals' expectations.
We come again, in your example, to the language of the criminals' sentence. If there is no provision restricting his contact with minors, it's the fault of the law. If there is such a provision--and I have been led to believe that there is not--then I have no quarrel with police action to deter further crimes.
What recidivism studies look at, simply, is how many convicts commit another crime within their prior mode. What they do not look at is reasons why. So, yes, recidivism studies are mere factoids.
Now perhaps we read different newspapers. Since my first recollection of the issue, sometime in my teens, the one constant regarding the debate of public release of convict addreses, such as we're discussing here, is that entire communities have risen up to agitate the situation. Demonstrators, provocateurs, assailants ... and all of these are the "good" people. There is a Hap Kliban cartoon entitled "For Years, God Made Carl Wear a Lime Popsicle Around His Neck." It is simply that ... a picture of a man with a lime popsicle around his neck. If that's all there was to it, then fine. But the people in the communities I live in are just itching for the chance to beat a man with his own lime popsicle.
I've seen the gamut of knee-jerk laws around my corner of the US which were dedicated to protecting children. Remember the couple in Florida that got evicted from their apartment back about '92 for "indecent exposure"? Sure, they were having sex in a bathtub, but the little boy whose innocence was so offended actually had to stack lawn furniture in order to peer into their windows. Some of the laws you're referring to would follow these two adults for the rest of their lives. After all, they're sex offenders.
And as far as the Thought Police argument goes ... I expect parents to want violence in certain cases. However, I'm not going to arrest them for considering a violent crime in the manner that you would have the offenders arrested.
And something I've been trying to avoid here .... American society, for all of its excesses, is schizophrenically Puritan when it comes to sexuality. Destigmatize sexuality a little, and some of the pressures that push bent psyches over the edge disappear, too. Can you imagine being afraid that God is going to kill you every time your twelve year-old body decides to have an erection? Can you imagine being told you're wicked and sinful every time you try to figure out what your body is doing to you? I can't say, in the end, what causes this person or that to become a child molester. But I can say that the unresolved issues pointed to by the psychologists who feed the police the data regarding recidivism indicate that most child molesters are acting on issues surrounding their parents and their own sexuality. I wish I could say that if we destigmatize sex we get rid of molesters, but it's not true. But I can't recall any community ever really having the patience to try.
Do factors like poverty, racial discrimination, or family status have any bearing, say, on armed robbery? Seems to be. Now: Do any factors contribute to pedophilia? What are they? My own readings seem to point toward weird, fluffy psychobabble: Oedipus complex, latent homosexuality, absent father ... whatever. I can't say they're right, but I'm sick and tired of nobody really trying. Rather, it's fine if nobody wants to figure this out, but in the meantime, I'm left shaking my head when people ask, "Why did this happen?" Address these issues, somehow. We know that education and economy reduce certain types of violent crime. What things can we examine to reduce the number of molesters? We could just scare the hell out of children; in this case, telling them about the Demons and Devils is a good idea; but wouldn't it be better if the Demons and Devils never showed up in the first place? Or, more realistically, if there were only about a tenth or a hundredth?
You're right, we do choose our priorities. I would set a thousand murderers free in order to avoid accidentally putting an innocent man to death. Justice might be errant, but I'd rather it err toward the merciful or patient. It's not a far cry from your brand of vigilante to violent anarchy.
I'm sorry if Justice has disappointed you. However, I cannot support a form of Justice based on vengeance. If the "good" people really were capable of warning their children and leaving it as such, then yes, I could support the idea of annunciation as such. But it's not so much a trend toward inappropriate responses by the community that dismays me. Rather, I'm waiting for an exception to the rule ... I'm waiting for a community to go ahead and release these names, and then conduct itself appropriately. It'll be a while before that happens.
Simply put: Crime, arrest, investigation, trial, conviction, sentence. Sentence up? Go home. At that point the law treats the convict the same as it treats you. What you take from him, you take from yourself. Period.
Tiassa
PS--You're the one who's apparently disturbed about the current laws. What the heck is your excuse?