This is a very interesting article. I was especially interested in the link discussing the Internet Registry for sex offenders.

I don't know anything about the constitutional laws in Germany, however, I believe that this registry is very important for the safety of children. Time and time again in the US we are hearing about sex offenders who have had multiple run-ins with the law who eventually end up raping and killing. Without this registry, there is no way to know that this behavior exists in a person, they are masters at hiding behind a mask and blending in with society.

Those sex offenders who commit these crimes cannot be rehabilitated, IMO. I'm not sure of any studies that say otherwise, they may exist.

I can understand the theory that this makes it impossible for someone who has served their time in jail for the offense to try and make a clean start, but isn't it the job of our courts to protect the public from these types of crimes? If their hands are tied with laws that only allow the courts to jail a person who committed these crimes for a short time, what else are they to do? IMO, this is the very least that could be done.

The Bavarian Youth Union (JU) who feel these criminals should be jailed could possibly be speaking out about such measures because the other measures have proven to be weak. Like I said, I am not German, nor from Germany, so I am unfamiliar with this group and their leanings.

I hope Germany does adopt this law of Internet Registry for sex offenders and are not deterred from the one incident in Massachusetts.

JW

I think it's difficult to access overall police strengths or weakness in the US. Each state runs its own police force and local or state courts are the ones who handle most of the everyday crime. The number of officers on the street varies from town to town depending on how much money they have to support them.

The larger cities, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles will have different problems than the smaller suburbs or towns. For an example, I will use the city of Chicago since this is the area I live in. If you go into the city, the police are busy dealing with break-ins, drugs, murder, rapes, and gangs etc. They handle traffic control, but aren't going to be too fussy unless the driver has committed a serious violation. Whereas you go into the suburbs of Chicago, where there are few crimes of rape, drugs or murder, they are going to concentrate on traffic related issues such as speeding, or driving drunk. This is where a large proportion of their revenues comes from. The more traffic tickets they give out, the more money they have to take care of their expenses.

The city police have much bigger fish to fry and they aren't too worried if someone doesn't make a complete stop at a stop sign. The more wealthy suburbs will have police with the best equipment available, the poorer towns or suburbs will have old junky cars and outdated equipment.

I had just heard recently that Chicago had a test for evacuation in case of terrorist attacks and did quite well, however, the emergency room doctors failed to be able to identify or handle situations with mass casualties due to chemical based weapons. They are working to get the doctors up to speed on that.

Personally, I think there is a false sense of security in the US when it comes to terrorism. We haven't had that many incidents and I think we are under great threat of smaller attacks such as bombs on trains or busses. I also don't feel our airports are as secure as they would like you to believe. It may look like they are doing a lot if you judge by the long lines at the check in areas, but it's not true. It's very easy to get something by if you really want to.