Olivia Munn and Punishment for Sex Offenders

Mike Dwyer

Mike Dwyer is a former writer and contributor at Ordinary Times.

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56 Responses

  1. Road Scholar says:

    Good post, Mike. I think it’s legit to exclude someone like this actor from occupations or jobs like high school teacher or camp counselor, but a guy’s gotta make a living.

    Many years ago I had a gig as the manager at a brand new Radio Shack location. A big part of the job was hiring on the staff. My first hire was this older (to me at the time) black guy. He was a model employee; never missed a shift, would cheerfully come in early or stay late if asked, dressed well, etc. The store was adjacent to a predominantly black neighborhood, so a lot of our customers were black, he related to them well and was a good salesman. We quickly became friends as well as coworkers. But he had a past; he’d spent some time in prison for assault. He didn’t offer and I didn’t ask for details because it didn’t seem relevant. My district manager wanted me to can him because he thought he couldn’t be trusted. I held firm as I wasn’t going to fire my best employee.

    This same district manager had promoted a guy, standard suburban white guy to manage the flagship store in the local mall. It was later discovered that said superstar had embezzled about $100k from that store to feed a gambling addiction. He also had no problem with the hiring of the kid from my first store that was subsequently discovered copying credit card receipts and using the numbers to buy stereo gear that he was selling black market. That kid got fired of course, but no police report much less conviction. We later learned that he had taken a job working a self-serve gas station kiosk (before pumps had card readers on them). Oh goody.Report

    • Maribou in reply to Road Scholar says:

      @road-scholar

      A quick thought before I block myself from the site for a while, for everybody’s best interests: Would it be so awful to exclude him “from occupations or jobs like high school teacher or camp counselor” or *actor playing a sexually menacing harasser in a horror movie* in the full knowledge of his buddy the director, but not the knowledge of the having-experienced-sexual-abuse-herself actress he’s harassing on-camera in the deleted scene?

      Is that particular exclusion, and her subsequent public anger, really keeping the guy from being able to make any kind of a living??Report

      • Jim Wymore in reply to Maribou says:

        I missed something, the actor was not playing a sexually menacing harasser and a movie. The guy did his time and it was none of her business. No we do not have the right to know every last thing about every single person that comes near us because that person may have at some point in their life done something wrong. Personally I think he should sue her.Report

        • Maribou in reply to Jim Wymore says:

          @jim-wymore Yes, he was playing a sexually menacing harasser in a movie. Specifically he was playing someone who was harassing *her character* in the movie.

          Actors should have the right to know if someone who is playacting at menacing them, is, in fact, someone they would feel menaced by in real life.

          I wasn’t saying he should never work again. I was saying that was a bullshit thing for the director to do to Munn, and she had the right to be angry about it. Loudly and publicly.Report

  2. Maribou says:

    @mike-dwyer If you, or other folks, are interested in making these arguments for forgiving abusers in a way that is more respectful toward the effects your arguments have on many people who have experienced child sexual abuse, and on their desires for personal safety, I *strongly strongly* recommend the work of http://www.generationfive.org, especially their 68 page PDF, Ending Child Sexual Abuse: A Transformative Justice Handbook, which I just found tonight. Yes, because they’re coming out of the social justice movement, and the anti-carceral movement, you will have to deal with jargon that may be jarring, etc., but I would encourage any of the folks on the site who are strongly vested in making improvements on this issue – of which I know we have many, you included – to give it a thorough and open-hearted read, regardless of your general affinities for, or not, the context which it has grown out of.

    Of all the hundreds of treatments I have read on the topic, it is the wisest, the most compassionate toward everyone involved, including those who abuse children, and the canniest. Also, I suspect, the most practical.

    Unfortunately, I won’t be able to engage further on this topic after this one comment, as I will be taking a several-day hiatus from the site to avoid further pain for myself around this issue at the present time – I just have too many other balls in the air, too many other hard things going on in my life, to lose more than one night to insomnia and nightmares if I can avoid it.

    But having come across this really solid organization that might actually be able to improve things, it seemed uncharitable of me not to alert others to it.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    This seems like (yet) another failure of the system as it exists.

    Remember the Shitty Media Men list?

    There seems to be a number of failures in the entertainment industry an order of magnitude larger than the one in Media. #MeToo was a correction of sorts that got squashed (or, at least, it seems to have stalled out). If the reason it blossomed is not addressed, we’re going to find out that it will blossom again.

    And I imagine that those in power for whom it is most inconvenient will squash it again.Report

  4. Oscar Gordon says:

    Part of the problem is, as you note, that we are focused more on punishment than rehabilitation. We still have this idea that people are responsible for getting themselves alone right with the law (& with God, one assumes), even though they probably weren’t alone getting wrong.

    We know how to help people, just not enough yet really want to (especially police and corrections Unions).

    Report

    • Phaedros in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      As I remember it, there are six different theories of justice under which the punishment in a criminal case is determined.
      Which theory of justice is appropriate is properly an integral part of any serious conversation.Report

  5. LTL FTC says:

    There is a large contingent of people who are steadfastly against overincarceration and the prison-industrial complex and believe that it could be largely solved by letting out everyone locked up for small-scale drug offenses. This is a convenient misunderstanding: hard choices will have to be made if we want to make a real dent in the prison population.

    I’m not saying that this is Munn’s belief, or even that Munn has any interest in any criminal justice issue besides protecting herself from a nebulous, retroactive “safety” concern, but it does parallel the less useful corners of the debate.

    Sex offenders sleeping under overpasses because residency restrictions allow them nowhere else to go do not make anyone more safe. Nor does getting chased from job to job.

    People will have to work with sex offenders who have paid their dues. People will have to work with people who shot gas station attendants over $40. People will have to work with people who sold heroin to teenagers.

    Either that, or Munn & Co. should pick up shovels and start building more prisons to protect all the other folks who aren’t privileged enough to make headlines with a snap of their fingers.Report

    • InMD in reply to LTL FTC says:

      The failure to address trade-offs is the crux. Striegal’s harm to his victim was real. Any harm to Munn, or vague concerns about safety are as you say, nebulous, but these are the fears that keep the system working the way it does. Part of changing it involves accepting contact with people who have made some pretty bad mistakes. I shed no tears for the Harvey Weinsteins of the world or leaders in the Catholic Church but this is a good example of what happens when rules/expectations are set based on the really bad outliers. It’s a social parallel of criminal justice, where responses to a few monsters and truly horrific cases end up unleashing overkill on larger numbers of redeemable offenders.Report

      • LTL FTC in reply to InMD says:

        Unlike criminal justice, the courts can’t make this unpopular moves necessary to rationalize the nascent system of extralegal punishment by popular rich woman celebrity.

        Even if the courts were to strike down the sex offender registry laws tomorrow, the ease with which regular people can use search tools means that particular ship has sailed. The Munns of the world will keep doing stuff like this as long as there’s a market for it.

        Rulings like Miranda and Gideon would never be implemented by plebiscite. They’re also not perfect, but they both advanced the cause of justice in a way Munn did not.Report

  6. PD Shaw says:

    Personally, feels like Munn wants to mutilate a group project for no real purpose whatsoever, except do something.

    But I’ll push back on the recidivism stuff though. The FBI continuously publishes recidivism statistics for various crimes. The issue is that sex crimes are uniquely under-reported (particularly on behalf of youth or when the victim knows the perpetrator), and when charged, the conviction rate is low. So we basically know the re-conviction rate, but we have to model the re-offense rate. Different studies have come to different conclusions, but this survey concludes that “sexual recidivism rates range from 5 percent after three years to 24 percent after 15 years,” higher or lower for more specific offenses, such as a 23% rate for boy molesters after 5 years.

    For me, these are high numbers for convicted felons. If we were simply talking about stealing a sandwich it would be one thing, but the risk of permanent scars to children is part of the consideration. Maybe that doesn’t weight very heavily for a 14 year old, and I think the scope of the registries is far too broad. But I think the recidivism rate for some sexual offenses is a very serious issue.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to PD Shaw says:

      It still comes back to, are we even trying to rehabilitate sex offenders, or just lock them up for a while, then toss them back out with a scarlet letter and an admonishment to not do it again?

      Crimes like this have a deeper pathology* that isn’t really being addressed in a lot (I’d say even most) cases.

      *compared to the person stealing a sandwich, or a car, or getting into bar fights, etc.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        It still comes back to, are we even trying to rehabilitate sex offenders, or just lock them up for a while, then toss them back out with a scarlet letter and an admonishment to not do it again?

        If being young, stupid, and having too many hormones plays a role, then that might actually work.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

          That works for Romeo & Juliet kinds of cases. Usually, however, the offender is old enough to know better, and old enough to be past the age of raging hormones.Report

          • Circling back to my comment about Catholic priests in the OP…there was a special on public radio, years ago and at the start of the priest abuse stuff, where they suggested that the problem was many young boys, often introverted and socially awkward, or gay…that would be taken into seminaries around the age they should have been starting high school. It was also theorized that many of them developed deviant habits while there because they were abused themselves by older priests within the seminaries. This is where the troublesome linkage between homosexuality and pedophilia comes in. They may or may not be gay, but if the theory holds true, for many of them the root cause was their own abuse, not their sexuality.Report

    • Tim Moore in reply to PD Shaw says:

      To use your figures, how do you justify punishing 75% of those of whom have completed their court order punishment and are being good citizens for the 25% your crystal ball says will re-offend? You are simply commodifying them based on some generalized measure, and ignoring individual differences. It is being done even though 9 out of 10 new sex offenses are committed by someone not on the registry, and there has been no proof the registry even deters crime. In fact the opposite is shown.Report

  7. Jesse says:

    Shockingly, there’s a wide berth of space between “Pushing him back to the margins” and “being given a role in a mainstream Hollywood movie.”

    I’m quite OK with the rule that if you’ve gone to jail for sexual abuse of a minor, you don’t get to be in major Hollywood films anymore and I’m perfectly OK with the anger Munn has shown.

    But, I guess she doesn’t understand how hard it is for guys out here in this post-MeToo world where flirting has been outlawed by the feminists.Report

    • Mike Dwyer in reply to Jesse says:

      @jesse

      Should we also differentiate between running a Home Depot and working the counter at a gas station?Report

      • LTL FTC in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

        It’s not worth arguing which jobs are and are not important for which type of ex-offender.

        The fact that he was removed from the movie after everyone had packed up and gone home should make it clear that it wasn’t about anyone’s safety. The fact that this was a bit part should make it clear that nobody was glorifying sex criminals.

        There is only one rule worth a damn: sex offenders can’t work near/with someone who has more than 100k Twitter followers and doesn’t mind being called “brave.”Report

        • Jesse in reply to LTL FTC says:

          “There is only one rule worth a damn: sex offenders can’t work near/with someone who has more than 100k Twitter followers and doesn’t mind being called “brave.””

          Yes, people with social power shouldn’t speak about things because as we all know, if a caterer or a assistant would’ve brought this up, she totally would’ve been listened too and we still wouldn’t still be having the same conversations about “MeToo going too far.”Report

          • LTL FTC in reply to Jesse says:

            So let’s say this guy gets a job as a caterer, he does his job quietly and uneventfully, then some other caterer finds out he has a sex offense on his record. What then?

            Do we offer unlimited veto, and if so, how does it make any sense for stability/public safety/rehabilitation to chase ex-offenders from gig to gig whenever someone googles?Report

      • John in reply to Mike Dwyer says:

        Mike Dwyer – Before you write another article in support or against what Olivia Munn has caused to this person employment for actions years past. You may find a more interesting topic if you were to google Law Professor Catherine Carpenter.Report

    • greginak in reply to Jesse says:

      The guy has 22 imdb credits stretching back 20 years. Many look like bit parts. Is he a star? It doesn’t seem like it. Seems more like a middle class/ struggling actor. He had one scene in this flick. Metoo is a positive thing. This situation is to use a popular term, interesectional. It crosses Metoo and punishment and the american punitive attitude, the last of which is problem.

      Report

      • Jesse in reply to greginak says:

        I don’t see what’s punitive about saying, “you no longer get bit parts in Hollywood movies because your buddies with a powerful director.” Also, like Maribou said above, how about at a minimum, being excluded from “occupations or jobs like high school teacher or camp counselor” or *actor playing a sexually menacing harasser in a horror movie.”Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jesse says:

          The punishment should fit the crime. If you assaulted a minor, then you don’t get to work with minors. That’s fair (-ish).

          But his crime had nothing to do with stalking adult women, sooooo…?Report

        • greginak in reply to Jesse says:

          I”m fine with people with histories of sexual assault being banned from jobs dealing with children. I’ve also been in the position of hiring a person with a history of weapons charges, addictions and drug charges at a homeless shelter. He was a great employee and you can bet i get some scrutiny for hiring him. The convictions were years before i had hired him, he served his time, had no new convictions and was sober.

          Working in movies is a job. I don’t’ see why we are singling out that job as a no go for someone with that guys past. It doesn’t keep anyone safe, doesn’t protect anyone from a predator. This guy isn’t someone who had never had consequences for his behavior.Report

          • InMD in reply to greginak says:

            This guy isn’t someone who had never had consequences for his behavior.

            To me this is a critical aspect. Like… have we decided that some debts are never repaid? I’m not saying the position would be indefensible (despite my disagreement with it) but there seems to be a real lack of ownership.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to InMD says:

              have we decided that some debts are never repaid?

              Yes. There are people who have proven they’re so dangerous and untrustworthy that I’d be insane to trust them. “Irredeemably evil” is the phrase that comes to mind. That’s irrespective of what the law says or does.

              The problem is that’s me judging someone(s) whose situation I know well, i.e. the personal. Can I extend that to everyone who created the same situation? Everyone on that offender list?

              It seems like the legal system was created to prevent unlimited mob “justice”, to oppose the instincts which scream for ropes and trees.Report

  8. Chip Daniels says:

    That line from Law & Order SVU springs to mind: “Sex based offenses are especially heinous…”

    Why?
    I think it is because sex, unlike robbery or violence, is something that we all engage in, are familiar with, and we, the law abiding, share a large overlap with perpetrators. When something that we all engage in and find sacred is violated, it feels more heinous than when something we are detached from (like property) is violated.

    If a space alien were to come to earth, they would note that the most popular form of porn is barely legal teens; and the most heinous form of crime is ex with not-yet-legal teens. They might conclude that sex with young people is both the most alluring and most revolting thing humans can imagine.

    And they would be right.
    Our attitudes towards sex crimes reflect our own conflicts and desires. Our grasp over our own sexuality is tenuous at best; The line between a healthy marriage and a toxic one, between a life affirming sexual relationship and and exploitative one is blurry and subject to interpretation.

    Report

  9. Pinky says:

    OK, I don’t want to do this, but I have to. There are some topics worth taking seriously, and that means challenging public misperceptions. This article said,

    “I would also note here that the linkage between gay men and pedophilia, something that has been thoroughly debunked, is also one of the most onerous defenses of the Catholic Church scandal.”

    I haven’t heard anyone cite this claimed linkage as a defense of the Catholic Church. Some people have claimed that there is a linkage, and while it may not be true across all cases, there certainly appears to be a linkage within the cases involving Catholic Church. Former Cardinal McCarrick apparently favored people in their mid-teens to early twenties, and I haven’t found a single accusation against him by a female. The John Jay report found 81% of the cases involving males. I haven’t read the whole Pennsylvania grand jury report, but it seems like a lot of the cases involved males.

    If a series of crimes targeted the elderly disproportionately, we’d investigate it as such. If a community produced a high number of arsonists, we wouldn’t ignore it because it didn’t match national averages. All indications are that the activity of sex abuse in the Catholic Church overlaps with the activity of serial homosexual activity among priests.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

      The reason people keep trying to make this linkage, is in the mistaken idea that by eliminating homosexuals, you can eliminate sexual abuse.

      What we know for a fact, is that in the secular world men who have sex with young boys are often heterosexual, married and enjoying relationships with women. They don’t love men, they don’t want to marry men, they fixate on boys for reasons entirely different than homosexuality.

      What these secular men and priests have is not homosexual desires, but toxic conflicted views of sex in general.Report

      • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        “The reason people keep trying to make this linkage, is in the mistaken idea that by eliminating homosexuals, you can eliminate sexual abuse.”

        I understand why you think that, but you’re running the risk of spreading a false narrative on the basis of your assessment of others’ motivations. If we get this wrong, seriously bad stuff happens.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

          What is the true narrative?

          Report

          • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            I don’t know yet. I suspect that the trend is away from younger male and female child victims and toward older male child victims, but the aggregated reports don’t show the data in time series. There could also be effects of different demographic cohorts, where abusers from an earlier generation act differently than abusers from a younger generation, but the difference doesn’t show up dramatically because their periods of abuse overlap.
            There’s also a risk in profiling a current behaviour and biasing yourself to not notice a change in behaviour. People adapt.Report

            • Sam Wilkinson in reply to Pinky says:

              The trend is offense against those that the offender has access to.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

              The common thread is the same, that of a power imbalance of shepherds abusing the flock.
              Whether it is nuns physically abusing orphans or priests abusing altar boys or professors abusing seminarians, the scandal is always on that thread.

              None of the scandals are two consensual adults engaging in a healthy sexual relationship.Report

  10. Jaybird says:

    For the record, here’s back when we discussed the “Ban The Box” movement.Report

  11. LeeEsq says:

    Olivia Munn is a private person and private people have the capability to act beyond the law as long as they don’t do anything illegal. There isn’t any obligation on the part of private individuals to forgive criminals that have been punished. It might be a good idea if private individuals were less vengeful but that is not a legal obligation.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to LeeEsq says:

      Yes, this is exactly correct. The whole time I’m reading the OP I’m all, “It would be great if people had more progressive values, but they don’t and this may not be the sort of thing the law can shift.” Munn broke no law, and the producers broke no law if the actor was paid for his time. We’re not going to make “reformed former sex offender” status legally protected.

      I can recall multiple times in my real estate practice that I was asked “Hey we have a registered sex offender in the neighborhood, what can we do about it?” and the only answer I chose to give was “Nothing violent or destructive or that spreads false information.”Report

      • Trumwill in reply to Burt Likko says:

        It seems there are two possible legal considerations:

        1) The appropriateness of having sex offender registries and the conditions under which people are put on them and stay on them.
        2) We wouldn’t make “reformed sex offender” a legally protected class, but we’re moving in the general direction on criminal histories in general aren’t with with “Ban the box”?

        I am not commenting on this actor specifically and whether Munn’s actions were appropriate. I would need to know more abolut his transgressions. I am just thinking in general I am sympathetic to reigning in offender registries… ban the box is complicated.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Trumwill says:

          The problem with sex offender registries is that they were seriously overused for a while there… If someone is engaging in public urination in an alley, are they exposing themselves? Well, there were a handful of stories of people who were engaging in public urination who got charged with exposing themselves and got put on a sex offender registry.

          But there are people who do stuff that requires a serious trigger warning and they get put on the sex offender registry and you find yourself wondering “how in the holy hell are they not in prison? Why aren’t we having a discussion about how awful it is that people like this get killed in prison instead of having discussions about the sex offender registry?”Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

            you find yourself wondering “how in the holy hell are they not in prison?

            THIS. I think the list is partly a response to THIS. Serious crimes weren’t (aren’t?) treated seriously. Society insists that they should in a generic sense.

            …there were a handful of stories

            (If memory serves) we have people listed for having consensual sex with a “minor” they (later) married, even decades ago.

            However both of those examples are questioning whether some people are innocently on the list and simply shouldn’t be on it. The better question is whether D-list crimes, especially old crimes, should be listed in there with the A-list crimes. This doesn’t seem like a binary event situation.

            We’re in this weird place where there’s both too much punishment and nowhere near enough.Report

      • PD Shaw in reply to Burt Likko says:

        I thought the OP alluded to the concern as being more than legalistic, but perhaps I misinterpreted. I am not comfortable with the internet enabling a rejuvenated Victorian-style shame culture, while I am equally uncomfortable with defending the broad parameters of the conduct generally described.

        Maribou’s link supports the second issue — communities are given no guidance about what to do about the registry. The registry exists as a black mark, haunting its bearer as well as innocent, concerned neighbors. “In tracking the rates of recidivism among a group of released sex offenders, the Minnesota Department of Corrections concluded, ‘not a single re-offense would have been prevented by an ordinance restricting where sex offenders could live.’”

        I’m probably not as charitable as the link, but maybe a consensus can emerge that a bunch of unrelated stuff is being lumped into a single category of sex-related stuff, which pose different types of risks.Report

    • InMD in reply to LeeEsq says:

      This is true as far as it goes but I think sort of misses the forest for the trees. I’m not saying that everyone needs to take an ex-con by the hand and sing kumbaya. People need to do what they think is best for them. But where do you think the laws that have made our criminal justice system such a mess came from exactly? Popular opinion influences law and public policy and influential people making the case for ostracism isn’t wholly without consequence.Report

  12. Maribou says:

    Have seen folks, not so much here, bringing up that the 14 year old might have even been consenting, what business is it of Munn’s and who is she helping, etc.

    In case anyone is wondering about that, this might clear it up for you:

    https://twitter.com/oliviamunn/status/1040276657284833280/photo/1Report

  13. Bill D. says:

    LTL FTC:
    People will have to work with sex offenders who have paid their dues. People will have to work with people who shot gas station attendants over $40. People will have to work with people who sold heroin to teenagers.

    Either that, or Munn & Co. should pick up shovels and start building more prisons to protect all the other folks who aren’t privileged enough to make headlines with a snap of their fingers.

    No, people don’t “have” to do any such thing. They can find a new job, which I would if ever put in direct contact with a pedo at my job, and I would be very candid about my reasons for leaving.Report

    • Will Allen in reply to Bill D. says:

      A “pedo” huh? What names may we all call you? I assume that you have lied in your lifetime so surely we can all call you “liar”. What else? Please do reply and let us all know. I’ve already thought of some.

      Munn’s response was idiotic. The Registries are supposedly to protect people. What she did was not for that obviously. In fact, she misused the Registries in a way that is illegal in California and she ought to be sued. But whatever. Just think, if his past did not involve $EX, no one would care at all. Munn would not have been able to find him on a Nanny Big Government website and retroactively, extra-judicially harass the guy.

      I hope people like run when you need to interact with people who don’t meet your standards. That is the way it should work. There is a lot of hate in America today. So do enjoy it all and your Registries.Report

    • DG in reply to Bill D. says:

      Bill D. Peoples, such as yourself, have very little knowledge of who is on our sex offense registry. Let me help you along with your education. Fact – In 1997 when Adam Walsh Act and Megan Laws came into being there were only 8 laws that would incarcerate a person and list them on our registry. Today 2018 there are 38 laws that can place a person in jail/prison and listed on the registry. Fact – 20% of the 900K names listed on our registry were placed there as a minor, under the age of 18 for a non-violent offense. The youngest person listed a 10 year old girl who’s non-violent offense listed her for life. This may be okay with someone like youself who doesn’t know the facts. But if you decide to take time an educate yourself to who is on our registry and for what, then hopefully it will shock you as it did me. Bill D. – As a parent, I am much more worried that my children or even future grandchildren may end up on our registry more than I ever worried about them becoming a victim of a sex offense.Report

  14. Will Allen says:

    The $EX Offender Registries are clearly pure, through and through, idiotic social policy. They don’t protect anyone. They aren’t needed or significantly beneficial. But they are gravely harming all of America. No real American who believes in facts or reality can support the $EX Offender Registries.

    But where are the Gun Offender Registries. Or do I only have a BS “right to know” if something involves $EX? Why do the immoral, anti-factual, anti-American, harassing terrorists who support the $EX Offender Registries want people who have shot children to live by schools and parks. Why do they want shooters in schools?Report

  15. Josh James says:

    I wish that the guy had played the actual predator part and not a side role. Can they cut that out of the horrible movie? All jokes aside, to show how dumb the studio is, they should go ahead and go through every movie ever produced and cut out anyone accused of a sex crime (not convicted since convictions don’t matter anymore). Remove all of those parts from the movie. You wouldn’t have much left.

    Someone mentioned that rehabilitated sex offenders will never be a protected status. Never say “Never”. Just 10 years ago, one would never predict the types of people who are protected. Yup, those have all been added to the list. I don’t think it will be Sex offenders specifically, but there will be job protection for people with a record. One of the issues here is that our punishment system is based on forgiveness. You serve the time and move on. Sex crimes are “unforgivable” for some, so the punishment system is built for them to be perpetually punished (by constantly reminding them with a slew of overreaching laws). I would not be surprised if the registry is ultimately considered unconstitutional and done away with since it completely lacks due process (14th amendment)Report