Should The Government Name Streakers As Sex Offenders?

Is public nudity a sex crime?  Should streakers register as sex offenders for life?  Well, according to this Boulder Camera article on last week's Naked Pumpkin Run in Boulder, twelve arrested participants may need to register as sex offenders for life!

The 10th year of the Naked Pumpkin Run started as usual — with laughter, beer and a whole lot of pumpkin carving. But the nude run, which has grown in recent years to include well over 100 people, ended with police citing 12 of the streakers for indecent exposure, a Class 1 misdemeanor. Police have warned runners in the past that the activity isn’t legal, but this is the first time officers showed up en masse to enforce the law.

Now the ticketed runners, whose names have not yet been released, will have to register as sex offenders — a scarlet letter that could mark their professional and personal lives for years — if the charge of indecent exposure sticks.

As Charles Dicken's Mr. Bumble said, "If the law supposed that,... the law is a ass—a idiot."  Granted, these naked runners are just as asinine as the law.  There likely should be some sort of law to prevent public nudity in certain settings.  Societal norms and modesty prevent me from walking to the street in the nude to grab my Denver Post, yet I do not believe that someone who does this is nessessarily a sex offender.

From the Colorado Convicted Sex Offender Site, the following infractions require registration as sex offenders:

Sex Offender

Sections 16-22-102(9) and 18-1.3-1008, C.R.S. define a sex offender as a person convicted of one of the following sex offenses:

• Sexual assault in the first, second or third degree;
• Unlawful sexual contact;
• Sexual assault on a child;
• Sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust;
• Sexual assault on a client by a psychotherapist;
• Enticement of a child;
• Incest;
• Aggravated Incest;
• Trafficking in children;
• Sexual exploitation of children;
• Procurement of a child for sexual exploitation;
• Indecent exposure;
• Soliciting for child prostitution;
• Pandering of a child;
• Procurement of a child for prostitution;
• Keeping a place of child prostitution;
• Pimping of a child;
• Inducement of child prostitution;
• Patronizing a prostituted child;
• Engaging in Sexual Conduct in a Penal Institution;
• Wholesale Promotion of Obscenity to Minors; and
• Promotion of Obscenity to Minors
• Criminal attempt, conspiracy or solicitation to commit any of the above offenses.

One of these offenses is not like the other ones.  Indecent exposure is not tantamount to child rape or child prosititution.  Yet the law treats the offenses equally.  This turns simple boorishness into a crime for which the offender registers for life in a national database. 

Governments create laws to ensure order in society and to "fix" a problem.  Unfortunately, in many instances, unintended consequences of these overbroad laws ensnare people and provide draconian punishments for minor crimes.  It would be appropriate for the state legislature to look at removing indecent exposure from the sex crime list so that nude Boulder boors who run with pumpkins on their heads will not become "sex offenders".  Honest legislators would see that the punishment does not fit the crime. However, I sincerely doubt that the "indecent exposure" lobby has any pull within the statehouse.

by Civil Sense

Comments

[a watcher]

While I fundamentally agree with Civil Sense regarding the pumpkin run and the charges, he might have noted that there are many other circumstances where indecent exposure does warrant being labeled a sex offender.

The problem I have with this law is that it doesn't allow specificity. A pumpkin runner gets the same lifetime label and restrictions as a child rapist. That part of the law is clearly an ass.