Let’s say you’re going on a first date and you want to make sure the person you’re meeting up with isn’t a registered sex offender. If you live in the US, you can find this out very quickly: there’s a centralized website provided by the US Department of Justice that lets you search a name or location in seconds.
This doesn’t mean that everyone found liable for sexual abuse comes up, of course. They have to have been convicted of certain sex offenses in a criminal, rather than civil, court to be put on the registry
Now let’s say you want to check whether your potential date has ever been found guilty of domestic violence. Good luck with that. There isn’t a similar sort of centralized registry and you’d have to look through various court records.
If you live in Tennessee, however, that situation has just changed: the state has created the first registry in the US to track repeat domestic violence offenders. Anyone convicted of more than one domestic violence offense after 1 January will be registered in a public database maintained by the Tennessee bureau of investigation. The new legislation, Savanna’s Law, is named for Savanna Puckett, 22, who was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend, James Jackson Conn, in 2022. Conn, who also suffocated Puckett’s dog, had a history of domestic violence and stalking.
The fact that Tennessee, consistently in the top 10 states for domestic violence homicides, is taking this issue seriously should be applauded. The new law, which was passed with bipartisan support, is very much a step in the right direction. It raises awareness of intimate partner violence and signals to survivors that the state is on their side.
Nevertheless, it’s important to bear in mind the limitations to a registry like this. Domestic violence cases are underreported and can be notoriously difficult to prosecute – so a large number of offenders will never end up in the system.
While well-intentioned, it should also be noted that an easily searchable registry of serious offenders isn’t always an unalloyed good. Various analyses, for example, have found that many state registries that keep track of sex offenders are filled with errors. Some critics argue that the registry system is overly expensive and inefficient and diverts resources away from survivors and prevention strategies. And, in the case of domestic violence, it’s possible that some survivors might actually end up on the registry: perpetuators of abuse frequently weaponize the law to paint their victims as abusers. It’s certainly possible to envisage a situation where someone fighting back against their abuser ends up convicted of abuse, and put on a registry, themselves.
All that said, it’s good to see a red state making history in a positive way.
Look, if you’re starving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and suddenly someone is like ‘oh I have tons of food and it just happens to be meat do you want some lol’ you CANNOT act surprised when it’s people. You simply CANNOT.
There are times and places where it is realistic to expect NOT to be served people. For example, in a pie shop underneath a barber shop. THEN you can be all 'OH GOD IT’S PEOPLE.’
If you are in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and are suddenly served a really good meat pie, you have to know it’s people. Do you see any cows? No, they all apocalypsed. It’s your neighbor.
If you’re served food in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, ask yourself these questions first:
Do I trust the person feeding me?
Is this meat fresh, and if so, have there been any livestock non-apocalypsed recently?
Have I seen Kevin within the past week?
Am I willing to commit the penultimate culinary taboo? (The ultimate culinary taboo is putting pineapple on pizza, a crime I regularly commit)
this current wave of mid 2010s nostalgia is so laughable. yeah dude we need to retvrn to the days when closer by the chainsmokers was the biggest song in the world and we were all drinking “unicorn flavored” milkshakes
Please don’t fall victim to internet misinformation. There is no floating head. It’s a regular horse, it’s neck is just hidden due to the position of the camera. I made an image to help you understand the what’s actually going on.
