Thank you. Now we can finely get back to the topic of the thread.

In terms of how sex laws are applied an interesting article was published in Iowa Law Review, which was written by Alejandro Leguízamo, who is a psychology professor, and "worries that that enforcement of sex offender regulations may vary by race. He is particularly concerned that the risk assessment process will yield racially disparate outcomes because the most common tool - Static-99 - may not work well with non-whites." See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=648261

However, as I previously pointed out, the application of the laws is different from the basis in which the laws were created and enacted. Many times criminal laws are created in neutral manner, yet, they are applied against one race more than another, yet, here, I believe sex laws are racially motivated in why and how they came about in being created and enacted.

Of course no politician is going to admit they voted in favor of a sex law out of their own racial bias, nor are we going to find studies done on this particular subject. Maybe the only evidence we will ever have is the fact that we do not see registry and civil commitment laws being applied in other areas where children are being harmed such as being recruited into gangs, being killed because of gang violence, and being preyed upon by drug dealers.

When we use a motto such as "to protect the children" but do not create the same kind of laws to protect children in other areas, i.e. gangs verses sex offenders, it becomes rather difficult to believe the true intent of the laws was founded on non-racially motivated motivations.

In other words, the laws were not created to target a race, for example, African American males, but rather to protect a specific race, e.g. white children, regardless of the sex offenders' race. So I do believe there is sufficient evidence however circumstantial it may be, to support a hypothesis that sex laws are racially motivated, where as there is no evidence supporting the hypothesis that sex laws were created to target the lower income bracket.

I do not wish to engage into a debate regarding the racial bias of the sex offender laws, as I don't really know. I have never seen any statistics, but I do know what I saw in prison, as I have described in a previous post.

I fully agree that a white child being sexually assaulted or killed invaribly receives much more media attention than a child of another race. It is almost as if those children do not matter.

But one reason there are more white people charged and convicted with these sex crimes against white victims is that the black community is much less likely to report these crimes. If you have ever lived around black people, they have a deep mistrust of law enforcement and they are much less likely to contact the authorities and report these crimes that occur within the black community.

Black people have historically had unfortunate run ins with many in law enforcement and there is an almost inherent distrust of the police.

They regard reporting a crime, even a sex crime against a child, as snitching, and thus crimes of this nature are underreported.

This may be one of the reasons I saw very few black men in prison with convictions of child molestation.

rewdiazepam

So born of racism rather than outright racist perhaps? Extending the thought a lot of the registration and residency restrictions RSO's have to deal with probably have Jim Crow legislation in their ancestry and by that I mean the wording. construction and concept of the legislation probably mirrors Jim Crow laws.

@ rewdiazepam: Perhaps then, it is a case of the African American community taking care of things themselves with those who commit sex crimes against children, rather than reporting such to law enforcement.

@ aladdin: The wording and construction of the laws is neutral so they can be and should be applied to anyone, even though they are not equally enforced against the rich and politically connected. But the concept is likely racial insofar as wanting "to protect the white children" for prejudice remains.

I have realized that it is not about the children at all - if it were - not only would (like Guardian said include drugs etc.) but it would also include other kinds of child abuse. Neglect, physical abuse (not sexual), emotional abuse, etc. are not treated as sex offenses are. I always wonder about the message that is sent to those victims.

Through the years I think I have actually figured out the answer to that question or at least part of it. Think of this - neglect is and can only be perpetuated by someone that is responsible for the child (in most cases a parent), physical abuse that is not sexual also is usually only done by a responsible person or parent, emotional abuse is the same story - so sex offenses are really the only form of child abuse that can be blamed on the myth of stranger danger and the politicians and media are responsible for all the laws that have arisen from that myth.