Collateral Damage

The Sex Offender. The boogeyman du jour, so evil that untold law enforcement man hours are spent tracking their every movement, so uncontrollable that they're not allowed within hundreds (sometimes thousands) of feet of anywhere children are, so different from the rest of society that their every detail must be listed on a website for all to see.

Sometimes, the desire to identify and mark as different means that it's not enough to list them on a public website. No, in the name of safety, we must identify them in other ways, such as special license plates for their vehicles, or special markings on their drivers licenses. So, what happens when the wrong box gets checked off by a bored and inattentive clerk, resulting in being identified as a sex offender when you are not?

Woman: Driver's license mistakenly labeled me a sex offender

"It reminds me of 'The Scarlet Letter,'" said Phillips, referring to the 19th century literature classic about a woman ostracized for having a child out of wedlock in Puritan Massachusetts. "This is the worst thing you can call a person."

The Scarlet Letter. Marking a mistake for all the world to see. It's wrong, and it needs to stop.