Sex offender myths and government failure


Do you know where the sex offenders are? Increasingly, government doesn't.
File this one under Good Intentions Making Things Worse. Odd how that seems to happen when government gets involved in morality, even if it is to "protect the children."

Residency restriction laws are among the most common new legislative efforts to address community concerns. Many states have enacted laws that bar offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center. In California, the required distance is a quarter mile.

But the not-in-my-backyard mentality that has understandably prompted much of this legislation may be producing the opposite effect.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sheriff Don Zeller said new residency restrictions are forcing offenders into rural parts of the county where they are far harder to keep track of -- or worse, forcing them underground, where they can be lost track of completely.

"We're finding that it's almost impossible to keep track of individuals we have registered in the county,'' Zeller told ABC News' Law & Justice Unit. "Five years ago, we knew where about 95 percent of those individuals were. Now we're lucky if we know where 50, 55 percent of them are.''

And paradoxically, Zeller said, the new restrictions are also creating creepy sex offender "clusters'' -- like the Ced-Rel Motel in Lynn County, where more than two dozen sex offenders lived at one time.

"What if some individual comes in there with a family and decides that they're going to stay there overnight, not knowing that 26 sex offenders are living there? And what happens if then they expose their family because most families will send their kids down to get pop or ice and, unbeknown to them, there are 26 sex offenders living in that same complex?" Zeller said.

Polly Boland knows how that feels. Her family's farm sits beside a sex offender cluster.

"We told our kids that if anything peculiar is going on, to go back to the house,'' she said. "They're really aware of it. Our dog Henry is a good watchdog. & We don't feel unsafe, we wish they didn't live there," Boland said. "Other neighbors have thought about leaving, [but] we farm, and that's not something we can do."

It's never happened to me, but I know people who have been labeled "sex offender" and had their lives ruined. And once you're labeled, there is nothing you can do. Even if you did nothing wrong.

In some states, even the accusation of rape is enough to label a man a sex offender. No trial, no due process, no rights. Just the word of one person against another with the odds heavily stacked against the man.

Why do we allow laws like that?

It certainly fails the parity test. The feminists who helped change the law would not stand to have similar standards enforced against them.

Good luck living in California and NOT living and working within a half mile of a school or park. It can't be done except in a rural location.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - February 2, 2009 at 02:03 PM  Tag


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