--- Declaring a Person or Group in Society, Dangerous ---
Certain groups of persons in society are perceived to have the label of DANGEROUS attached to them by virtue of, commission of a current crime OR presumption that they will commit a crime in the future (possible recidivism). Two of those groups are 1) persons arrested and accused of a current crime; AND 2) sex offenders in society accused of a possible future crime.
Only arrestees are permitted a hearing before a judge to prove they are not a dangerous person. Sex offenders are labeled dangerous because the legislatures force them to register in a sex offenders' registry.
Note: It is one thing to require sex offenders to register under the state's registry law, BUT, it is a different issue when the legislature has it written into the law , that these persons are dangerous. When legislatures DECLARE persons DANGEROUS the legislature violates the prohibition against Bills of Attainder (or its lesser form, Bill of Pains and Penalties).
Sex offender registries have been touted to be a list of dangerous persons in society. Registries have been either, legislatively declared dangerous (based upon an unfounded assumption of high recidivism rate), or assumed to be dangerous by virtue of public speakers and the news media who apparently are following the unfounded legislative assumptions. The labeling of Dangerous causes all sorts of subtle societal denials, up to and including ostracising these folks from society.
How the group obtains the label of "dangerous" and whether they are permitted a hearing to remove that label or not, is the issue we are addressing here. To hopefully eliminate confusion, any person arrested, including sex offenders, are entitled to the rights under the Bail Reform Act, but that act is only available to arrestees for an alleged current crime.
"as to Arrestees"
When a person is arrested for a serious felony, the Bail Reform Act of 1984 requires courts to detain arrestees, if the government demonstrates at a hearing by clear and convincing evidence that the arrestee is dangerous to another person or to the community.
The issue of dangerousness must be presented to a judge in a hearing, and evidence as to the specific individual, must be presented by the state to prove the individual is a danger to society! Remember, the individual has not yet been convicted of the alleged crime, arrestees are presumed innocent until proven guilty, even if they have previously committed a crime.
"as to Sex Offenders"
The issue of dangerousness, excepting when arrested for a current crime, does not go before a judge and no hearing is held, no crime has been committed nor has one been charged, the sex offender is legislatively and publically declared dangerous to society, automatically! The sex offender is presumed guilty of a possible future crime, innocence is never an option!
The effects of the "dangerous labeling: Sex offenders' legal status is changed and they are systematically denied a society by the very, construction and misconstruction, of the laws that govern society! Sex offenders, even though they have paid their debt according to society's penal laws, and now are labeled an outcast ostracised from society, and subject to subtle denials without any legal recourse!
In Trop -v- Dulles 356 U.S. 86 (1958), as to denationalization (the act of depriving a citizen of national rights or status), the court said:
"We believe, as did Chief Judge Clark in the court below, that use of denationalization as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment. There may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is instead the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself. While any one country may accord him some rights, and presumably as long as he remained in this country he would enjoy the limited rights of an alien, no country need do so because he is stateless. ... In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights.
This punishment is offensive to cardinal principles for which the Constitution stands. It subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress. He knows not what discriminations may be established against him, what proscriptions may be directed against him, and when and for what cause his existence in his native land may be terminated. He may be subject to banishment, a fate universally decried by civilized people. He is stateless, a condition deplored in the international community of democracies. It is no answer to suggest that all the disastrous consequences of this fate may not be brought to bear on a stateless person. The threat makes the punishment obnoxious. The civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity that statelessness is not to be imposed as punishment for crime. In this country the Eighth Amendment forbids this to be done."
The effect of today's, constructions and misconstructions, of laws relating only to sex offenders (excluding all other crime types) is that, the sex offender is ostracised from society as is the stateless person!
In some states, the state performs a Risk Assessment which allegedly determines the dangerousness of the sex offender. These frequently unreliable risk assessments, each different from the other, mislead society and further ostracise the sex offender from society; a societyless person just like the stateless person.
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