Are Sex Crimes Worse Than Other Crimes?

I don't know the answer to that, and sex crimes are certainly heinous and despicable, but I think the question is worth considering in light of the fact that our criminal justice system has de facto deemed those convicted of sex crimes as unredeemable and, increasingly, unfit to reside, well, just about anywhere. It has also become the norm for states to publish sex offender registries on the web.

Two recent stories in the news have made me think harder about this issue. First, two Maine residents on the state sex offender registry were recently murdered by a vigilante who found their personal information on the registry. As the Boston Globe reported,

One of the two Maine sex offenders killed by an apparent vigilante was listed in the state's online registry because of a 2002 conviction for having sex with a minor when he was 19...He had been convicted of having sex with a girlfriend who was two weeks shy of her 16th birthday.

Second is the Duke rape scandal, not the scandal itself but specifically that one of the defendants had previously been convicted of a gay bashing in DC, for which he received a very light punishment, if you can call it a punishment at all. The Wa Post wrote today,

Finnerty was arrested in the District five months ago, early on the morning of Nov. 5, charged with assaulting a man on Wisconsin Avenue NW, outside the Georgetown Inn.

Accounts of the 2:30 a.m. altercation in court records allege that Finnerty and two friends -- one a Georgetown University lacrosse player and high school teammate of Finnerty's -- called the man derogatory names and anti-gay slurs, then punched him in his face and body when he told them to stop and tried to walk away.

Finnerty did not enter a plea in the case. He agreed to perform 25 hours of community service in Washington by next September, after which the misdemeanor assault charge would be dropped.

In contrast, Finnerty's bail was set at $400,000 for the Duke sex charge, which is yet to be proven and the DNA evidence is inconclusive. But the Maine case really gets me, as how does having sex, at 19, with your girlfriend who is two weeks shy of being legal, and there is no victim in this "crime," doom you for life to being on the sex offender registry, which ultimately killed you, while gay bashers get 25 hours of community service, after which your record will be clean?