With Halloween just around the corner Facebook and New York Public Safety figured it would be a good time to let you be able to find out where all those Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders are hiding out in your neighborhood.

As Sean M. Byrne, Acting Commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), said at the launch of the Facebook app, it puts important information at parents’ fingertips whether they are at home or on the go.

This application makes the state sex offender list available through the New York State Public Safety Facebook page but at this point only the Level 2 and Level 3 – medium and high risk – offenders is available.

Level 1 offender information is available due to current state laws prevent this and is only available if you phone a toll-free number and provide to possible offender’s first and last name along with some other identifying information.

Right now the state’s offender listing has 32,994 names but only 11,685 are Level 2 offenders and some 8,000 are Level 3 offenders.

via The Next Web

Facebook and New York State bring you a sex offender app is a post from: The Inquisitr

Actor Jeffrey Jones, who is best known to the over 25 set as the principal in 80s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, has been busted again for failing to re-register with a sex offender’s database in California.

Jones’s legal problems began in 2003, when he was arrested for possessing child pornography and enticing a 14-year-old boy to appear in pornographic pictures. The actor secured a plea bargain and pleaded no contest to inducing a minor to pose for sexually explicit photos. Jones received five years of probation, court mandated counseling and was required to register as a sex offender on local registries. In 2004, Jones was arrested in Florida for failure to notify local law enforcement of a change of address- an action required under Florida’s version of Megan’s Law. Jones was pursued civilly by the minor in the case when he reached legal adulthood, but the suit was “dismissed with prejudice at the plaintiff’s request” less than two weeks after it was initially filed.

The actor has been charged again this month with felony failure to update his sex offender status. Jones was required to re-register after his September birthday, but had not done so. He was arrested and freed on $20,000 bail, and is set to be arraigned on June 14th.

Actor Jeffrey Jones busted again over sex offender registration is a post from: The Inquisitr

Hiding! From sex offenders! (Actually, it’s supposed to tell you where the sex offenders are, but it doesn’t really look that way.)

[SFWeekly via Gawker]

Geolocation syntax fail is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’m sure it wasn’t intentional but the  Toronto  MetroNews newspaper has potentially caused anyone reading the current issue on their way to work or in the privacy of their own home to potentially be charged as a sex offender.

It is a result of the story titled “Hangin’ Out at St. Peter’s” which had some pictures of St. Peter’s School students frolicking in a hot tub during the annual Kinsman Santa Claus Parade in Peterborough, Ontario (hmm almost next door to me). This might seem innocuous enough except the male student in the front of the photograph had a wardrobe malfunction that left him hanging out for all to see.

The sex offender part comes in because the students are all classified as minors which would make this child pornography and anyone in possession of the picture could be charged as a sex offender and subject to all the penalties under the law as such.

The Torontoist has a pixelated version of the offending image

They have also updated the story with a statement from the Catholic School Board

UPDATE, DECEMBER 9, 2009: According to the Catholic school board which represents St. Peter’s, the photo depicts a current seventeen-year-old student of the school. While the image as it appeared in Metro does not constitute “child pornography“—those depicted are not “engaged in explicit sexual activity” nor was the image’s “dominant characteristic…the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a sexual organ”—we’ve nonetheless pixellated the point of contention in the photo above.

Canadian newspaper turns readers into sex offenders is a post from: The Inquisitr

In a move that brings the issue of freedom versus safety online to the forefront, New York state Attorney General Mario Cuomo has announced that 3,500 convicted sex offenders have been removed from Facebook and MySpace collectively.

While no one wants to stand up for the kiddie diddlers, it’s a move that makes some (like me, a mother and registered Libertarian) very uncomfortable. I personally don’t want my kids interacting with sex offenders on the internet. And I think the responsibility falls entirely on me and their dad to keep them safe online. Booting the offenders from a legal activity engaged in while they’re not incarcerated is scary- and the fact that as of now all fifty states don’t possess the ability to cast a wide net means that the move is akin to wearing a condom one out of fifty times you have sex. (Excepting population density from the equation.)

Surveillance of private citizens online, even convicted felons, is a scary precedent to be setting. Under the guise of protection, legal patterns can be set significantly affecting your online experience down the road. (And how information transmitted can be used against you.) The sites are privately held, of course, and have the right to decide who uses their service, but this level of collusion with law enforcement can’t be a good thing. Throw in the fact that a crime such as public urination can get one branded as sex offender (as well as crimes committed as a teenager) and the move is further cast into a gray area in which the rights of a citizen after an arrest become murkier.

According the the New York Daily News, affected users include at least three people convicted of sexual crimes against children. Mashable commented on the action, saying:

That said, until we see cases of unjust account termination emerging, it’s certainly good news that the social networks and the states are working effectively to remove dangerous users from their services.

But until we can ascertain that initiatives such as these aren’t impinging on our civil liberties, shouldn’t the state abstain from them? The data used in the sweep was provided by the offenders themselves, and 8,106 registered sex offenders reported their online information to the state.

NYS gets Facebook and MySpace to boot 3,500 convicted sex offenders is a post from: The Inquisitr

There is a growing group in the United States that is facing an increasing number of charges for creating and distributing pornography and contributing to child abuse but it isn’t who you think it is. As exampled by three cases going to trial in Pennsylvania this section of our society is our very own children. These type of charges are all being based around something that is getting the catchy buzzword of – sexting and it would appear that it is more of a common practice among young girls than we realize.

For those of you who might not know what sexting is here’s a quick little primer. Sexting is the act of taking a picture of yourself nude or semi-nude with your camera phone and then sending that picture to whoever you want. Normally this is suppose to be only between dating partners but as the case of the young girl in Cincinnati who hung herself after the picture she took of herself made it past her boyfriend and was spread around the school it can end up getting out of control.

Now I am pretty sure we all agree – at least those of us who are parents – that this isn’t exactly what we would like our little girls; or boys, to be doing but does this mean that they should be charged and prosecuted as child abusers and pornographers? An action that will end up with them having a felony conviction on their record for life and not just any felony but that of being a sexual offender.

Well this is what District Attorney George P. Skumanick in Pennsylvania wants to do to three girls who were caught sexting after their camera phones were confiscated by their school during an investigation by the school after boys at the school were caught with pictures of girls who had been sexting them.

At issue in the Tunkhannock case are two photos depicting the three girls. One photo of Marissa Miller and Grace Kelly shows them two years ago at age 13 lying side by side while one talks on the phone and the other makes a peace sign with her fingers, according to the ACLU complaint. The two are photographed from the waist up and are wearing white opaque bras. A second photo shows a girl referred to in the court document as "Jane Doe" photographed outside a shower with a towel wrapped around her waist. Her breasts are bared.

Last year, Tunkhannock school officials discovered that male students had been trading these and other photos on their phones. Officials confiscated the phones and turned them over to county prosecutors who began a criminal investigation.

Skumanick then threatened to charge the three girls with producing child porn unless their parents agree to place them on a six-month probation and send them to a five-week, 10-hour education program to discuss why what they did was wrong and what it means to be a girl in today’s society. The girls also must agree to subject themselves to drug testing.

Skumanick told an assembly of students that possessing inappropriate images of minors could be prosecuted under state child porn laws. Anyone convicted under the laws faces a possible seven year sentence and a felony conviction on their record. Under a state sex offender law, they must also register as a sex offender for 10 years and have their name and photo posted on the state’s sex offender website — the latter requirement will include juvenile offenders when the law is amended later this year.

Source: Threat Level

Granted these type of actions might not be the smartest thing for girls to be doing but I find the threats and bullying of the District Attorney far more reprehensible than anything these kids have done. The fact is that the world our children are use to to isn’t the same one we are living in. For them there is nothing wrong in what they have done – their world has a different set of morality judgments being made, just as mine or yours were different than our parents.

Should the kids be spoken to about the danger of what they are doing – from our points of view; which is radically different than theirs – you betcha but that is the responsibility of the parents not something that some dickhead looking for re-election an a couple of months can make headlines out of. As far as I am concerned Skumanick has abused his position of power by literally blackmailing parents into forcing their children into state sanctioned behavior training.

According to the Threat Level post the ACLU has stepped in to defend the three girls and their parents as well as filing a lawsuit against the District Attorney

The ACLU of Pennsylvania is representing the girls and their parents. In its lawsuit –  filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania — the organization charges that the prosecutor violated the girls’ First Amendment rights. The lawsuit says the photos do not constitute child pornography under Pennsylvania’s criminal code since they depict no sexual activity and do not display the pubic area of the girls’ bodies.

"Skumanick’s threatened prosecution chills Plaintiff’s First Amendment right of expression, causing them concern about whether they may photograph their daughters, or whether the girls may allow themselves to be photographed, wearing a two-piece bathing suit," the ACLU wrote.

The lawsuit also claims the demand that the parents agree to place their girls in an education program violates the parents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to direct the upbringing of their own children.

According to the ACLU filing, Skumanick told Miller’s parents that the photo of their daughter constituted child pornography because she and her friend were posed "provocatively." When lawyers for the parents asked for a copy of the photos that would be used to charge their children, Skumanick reportedly refused on grounds that he would be committing a crime by sharing child porn.

Personally I think the DA should hand in his resignation and let parents get back to being parents; or perhaps he should be far more diligent in sending actual pedophiles to jail instead of making political hay out of natural childhood curiosity and exploration.

[photo courtesy of Threat Level]

Protecting our children by turning them into felons is a post from: The Inquisitr