Essay Sample on Why Sex Offenders Should Not Visit Their Child

Introduction

There has been a decline in the number of reported physical abuse and sexual abuse from 1992 to 2010. Great strides have been achieved in putting laws in place to help reduce the number of sex offenders. However, more still needs to be done. There are still a high number of people that are convicted every year because of committing sex crimes. This is just a tip of the iceberg. Less than a quarter of the sex crimes are reported and even far less than that are convicted. Many activists have proposed people that have been convicted for sexual crimes not to be allowed to see their children. By putting this law in place, they hope to deter anyone who might think about committing the sex crimes. In this paper, I will discuss the reasons why I think that this is appalling and why children of former sex offenders should be allowed to see their parents.

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Thesis Statement: By allowing children to see their parents no matter the severity of the crimes that they have committed ensures that the children will grow up to be self-sufficient and independent due to the love from both parents.

Reasons For

Many pieces of research have been done showing the effect that having absentee parents affects the development of a child both psychologically and socially. It is a widely accepted fact that when a child has one or both parents missing from his life, the child does not grow up to be morally and emotionally upright. Studies have shown that children who grow up in single-parent families without the influence of the other parent have a lower cognitive ability than children whose parents are separated but who are both involved in the child's upbringing. This lower cognitive ability is as a result of lower parental involvement in the child's education due to the absentee parent.

By making barring a person that had been previously convicted of a sex crime from seeing his children, is punishing the child for the sins of the parent. The child has a right to be loved by both parents, and no one should be able to take that away from the child no matter what wrongs the parent has done. Absentee parents also contribute to the children having behavioral challenges. Children who miss their parent might be dealing with resentment. This resentment can be expressed in the form of aggression and defiance toward authority. This bad behavior can lead the child to be a criminal and might even end up as their parent. To help avoid this, parents should be allowed to see their children no matter the circumstances of the crimes that they have committed (Robertiello & Terry, 2007).

The parent might have been wrongfully convicted and denying him the chance to see his children will deny an innocent person the chance to see his children based on a fabricated lie. Wrongful conviction is one of the main problems that the justice department is faced with. Many prosecutors want to be seen as to have put more criminals behind bars without even caring whether these people are criminals or not. Many people have had to spend decades behind bars for a crime they did not commit only for a new prosecutor to look at the case and find a piece of evidence that had been overlooked by the previous prosecution team. This is especially the case with sex offenders. These cases are so cringe-worthy that people do not even want to consider the slimmest chance that these people might be innocent and different people and the media push for the speedy conviction of these persons.

This pressure makes the prosecution overlook key evidence that could exonerate the person in question for the crimes that he committed. The result has been many parents being locked up due to wrongful convictions or just the laziness of the prosecution team. When the government denies the children of these convicts the opportunity to visit their parents and spend time together, it is not only an injustice to the child but also an injustice to the parent who did nothing wrong.

The previously convicted felon might have reformed from his crimes and denying him the chance to visit his children is the government not trusting its systems. When the persons that have been convicted of sex crimes go to prison, they are taken under a rigorous process in the hope that they will reform, and when it comes to the time that they are released, they can rejoin the society as reformed members of the society.

If a convict has undergone this process and has been cleared as fit to rejoin the society, there is no reason that the government should not let the person visit his children. If the government does this, it will be a show of the distrust and the inefficiency of the process of reformation. This distrust is even though the government has spent millions of taxpayers' money on ensuring that the process is the best that it can be. If this is the case, then the government has more problems in its hands than the mare dilemma of either allowing a parent to see their child or not. The government should be able to trust that the systems that millions have been spent on works and enable parents to visit their children.

Reason Against

Many people that are against alloying the convicted parents to visit their children propose that these convicted parents will impart negative influences to the children argue that the first role models that children have are their parents. The convicted parent can very easily impart vices to the child and the child not knowing better and trusting the parent will follow what he is told without question. This will result in the child getting the vices that the parent had that resulted in him ending up in prison. Furthermore, they argue that the convict parents might harm the children in many ways. Many of the convicted sex offenders are also child molesters. By allowing these people to visit their children is exposing the children to risks of being molested by their convict parents. This is a legitimate risk that has to be addressed before letting the children see their parents (Tierney & McCabe, 2005).

Rebuttal

The above issue that people who are opposed to convicted sex offenders being allowed to see their children can be addressed in many ways. First, in the argument, the safety of the child is endangered by allowing convicted people around them, police and other security agencies can be present when the meeting of the parent and the children happens. This will reduce the probability of the parents harming the children.

However, I believe that every parent wishes the best for their children and harming their children is not one of the wishes of the parents. In the second argument that was raised about

Parents teaching their children vices, the chances of these happening will be reduced by having the police present when the meeting happens. The love that a parent has for their child can also help to curb this. Every parent loves their child and wants them to perform and be better than they ever did. Teaching the child vices will only cause the child pain and untold suffering. No parent would ever want this for their children, and a parent should not be separated from his children because of this.

Conclusion

The presence of a parent in the life of their child is important to the development of that child both emotionally and psychologically. When a parent of a child is convicted of a sex offense, many people argue that the parent should not be allowed to visit their children. The concerns that they raise for this is that the parents will have a negative influence on the children. Many steps can be taken to ensure that this is not the case. If these concerns that have been raised are looked at, and it is ensured that there is no possible way that the parent can harm the child, these meetings between the children and their parents should be not only allowed but also encouraged. This is because of the vast number of advantages that the children will have if all their parents are in their life.

Works Cited

Robertiello, G., & Terry, K. J. (2007, September). Can we profile sex offenders? A review of sex offender typologies. Aggression and Violent Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2007.02.010Tierney, D. W., & McCabe, M. P. (2005). The utility of the trans-theoretical model of behavior change in the treatment of sex offenders. Sexual Abuse: Journal of Research and Treatment, 17(2), 153-170. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11194-005-4602-1