Posts Tagged With: Bullock

ELMER FUDD BEING ARRESTED FOR INDECENT EXPOSURE

Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock announced Monday a new statewide effort “Successfully protecting kids and prosecuting offenders requires all of us working together,” Bullock said at a press conference in Billings announcing the creation of the Children’s Justice Center.

While the name implies a brick-and-mortar structure, the new effort is focused on bringing specialists from state and local agencies together in a team approach when dealing with child victims and child offenders. The program is overseen by a former state child protective services worker in Helena.

To date, 17 teams of specialists have been created statewide to work under the umbrella of the Children’s Justice Center. Participants include members from six state Department of Justice programs and other state and local officials who use a team approach to track child predators and work with child victims.

The programs, many of them started by Bullock in recent years, already exist so no new funding is required, he said.

How is this new?  This is something that he has always promoted for political votes and it generates money to line pockets for certain people higher up when the rest of the communities are in a recession. Continue to next article which will explain that statement.  Let’s put our tax money to where it is going to make a difference.  This gives you a look at how Montana qualifies a sex offender.  We need better guidelines so parents know who they need to protect their children from.

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/bullock-announces-new-approach-to-protecting-children-convicting-child-offenders/article_f2110779-aba6-5c0c-b564-6a600b0047a6.html#ixzz1mc4U1mYq

Not all sexual offenders are the same or should be treated similarly, they’re not all pedophiles said Gallatin County Attorney Marty Lambert.

“People need to recognize that sexual intercourse without consent of an 18-year-old with a 15-year-old that, in every other sense of the word, was consensual” is not the same as an adult sexually abusing a child, he said. “The only thing making the (teen’s crime) illegal is the statute saying that a person of the age of 15 cannot give consent.”It should be seen entirely differently than a pedophile’s crime, which “isn’t just a teenage dalliance,” Lambert said.

According to state Department of Corrections statistics, pedophiles represent less than 4 percent of the sexual offender population in Montana.

Of 91 sexual offenders on Gallatin County’s registry, four are considered to have a high risk to re-offend. Yet only one of those four committed a crime against a child.

Sexual crimes cover a wide spectrum of charges, from Peeping Tom and indecent exposure to raping a child. Yet all of the offenders are mandated to register and are condemned to the sexual offender list.

About 34 percent of Montana’s current prisoners were convicted of sexual crimes, according to statistics compiled by Blair Hopkins, a therapist who treats sexual offenders in the state prison.  34 percent of Montana’s current prisoners?  What would be the percentage including those that were convicted in the past?   That is quite a high number of sex offenders!  Something wrong with that number.

“Registration gives people a false sense of security because (those registered) are not the ones who are offending,” said Fred Lemons, who initiated the prison-based treatment program in 1980. “Ninety percent of the time it’s a family member, acquaintance or neighbor – someone with an established relationship” with the victim.  Read more: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/crime/article_57b6931c-9f9d-11e0-aff1-001cc4c03286.html

Wouldn’t it be better to make the sex offender label for those that really need it and are a danger to children and the community?   Why are we wasting tax payers money on labeling and on a registry for teenagers?  If this was in effect 50 years ago how many of the older people of the community would be on this list?   A thought to ponder.  If you go to the bathroom out in the woods while you are hunting, that is in public.  By law that is indecent exposure, how many hunters would be labeled a sex offender?  This is scary friends!  I am not soft on crime, I have testified against some that have ended up in prison. Let’s use wisdom.  Allow us to really protect our children and citizens with doing this right.  Not a system that is making money off a label that then becomes broken and we don’t know which ones are a real threat and those that are not. That would be something NEW!