Here we go again. From the Daily Mail in the UK:
Police are refusing to reveal the identities of sex offenders who are on the run – because it would be an invasion of their privacy.
Four registered sex offenders have been on the run for as long as two years after disappearing from their homes in the North-East.
But confusion over whether the wanted criminals should be identified means that just one of them has been made known to the public, sparking fury among victim’s groups.
Read more in the Daily Mail.
Equally silent are they about the crimes that landed these individuals on the sex-offenders list. Are they crimes of sufficient seriousness and magnitude, with proven recidivism, such that their inclusion on the list is justified, or were they caught with their pants down in public b/c they were drunk and thought that was a good place to take a wiz?
My first thought is that this is another case of unjustified mass hysteria.
You raise a valid point, but do you think the police would be pursuing the matter and be in touch with Interpol if the offense were so minor as your example? In the two cases where the police were willing to name the missing convicted offenders, both cases were serious, one involving a man convicted of the indecent assault of three children.
Maybe not everyone belongs on the list, as you suggest, but do you think that law enforcement should reveal the identity of convicted offenders who have violated the terms of their release if they are deemed to pose a significant risk to public safety, or do you think that the fact that they were released at all means that the government doesn’t really view them as a significant risk?