With kids on the sex offender registry, some question value

RUINING LIVES: The sex offender registry is, by most measures, a good system. But does it ruin the lives of some who don't deserve it? Lenore Skenazy writes of two sixteen year-old boys who committed a crime at age fourteen – Horseplay – and are now registered sex offenders. She explains the gravity of the situation: "What does it mean to be on the sex offender list? First of all, the public knows where you live. Websites and newspapers can publish your photo. So can TV news. Parents can warn their kids never to go near you. In many states, registered sex offenders have to live a certain distance from where kids congregate, be that a school, day care center, park or bus stop. So these young men may have to move to the sticks." The list of consequences goes on...

A reader of Cory Doctorow's writes: "My nephew had a mutual love affair with a 15 year old girl while he was 18. The girl's family, with the assistance of a now discredited DA, got him sentenced to 5 years in a state pen as statutory rape offender, and 16 years later, it continues to haunt him. He has been forced to move 4 times, once after buying a house and living in it for 5 years, when a day-care center opened nearby. He has never been in any trouble with the law in any other way. His marriage has been threatened by the Sex Offender law's continuing extreme additions - including the inability for him to adopt his wife's children from a previous marriage (this is after the original father abandoned the kids). There are true sex offenders and there are kids who made some bad choices while young, who should not have their lives forever destroyed by bad laws."