Sex offenders are scum, but I always looked at these insanely strict laws that effectively tell them where they can can, and cannot, live, and wondered how that could be constitutional.
Apparently it isn’t, and now Georgia is scrambling to save as much of the restrictive statutes as they can.
Georgia Forced to Soften Famously Strict Laws Against Sex Offenders
We spent a lot of time talking about laws regarding where sex offenders can and can’t live in this Values and Ethics class I had to take last fall. One of the people in my class is from Georgia (it’s rather coincidental that she’s from Georgia and the issue in this thread is in Georgia, because they have lots of laws like this all over the country- This American Life recently did a story about a bunch of people who are living under a bridge in Florida because they can’t live anywhere else in the county, to the extent that parole officers are actually telling their parolees to go live there) and she was telling me about how in the county she’s from, sex offenders have taken up living in the forest because there is literally no place in the town they can live. It was her opinion that this is a human rights violation.
From a policy standpoint, it’s terrible as well, because if sex offenders don’t have a registered address and are living in the forest, you can’t keep track of them and check up on them to make sure they’re following the terms of their release.
The bottom line is this: “As long as it’s not in my backyard I don’t care.” And that applies to the town dump, sex offenders, nuclear waste, etc etc…
They passed a very strict anti-sex-offender law in Schenectady about five years ago, promoted by a city councilman who had eyes on winning an assembly seat. It said that no sex offender could live within 2000 feet of any school*, church, or park, but meant that they couldn’t live anywhere in the city.
There was an uproar. Alas, it wasn’t because of the basic denial of rights; it was because the towns outside the city feared that the offenders would move into the towns. The law was quickly repealed and the councilman – running as a Democrat in a strong Democratic district – lost when he tried to run for the Assembly.
*The logic here is pure fear: If the sex offender is not a pedophile, how is he a threat to schoolkids?
It’s a problem even when it isn’t the laws doing it - if offenders get hounded out of decent neighborhoods, which they do, then they’ll just have to move into crappy neighborhoods where, for example, children are much less likely to be supervised and parents are much less likely to be involved. It’s a bad situation all around.
A really really nasty sex ofender moved into my town, in a house on the same block with a school bus stop. The Guardian Angels came to town to hand out flyers and it made the cover of the Sunday NY Times magazine. Story here, but warning: it’s really really icky.
There was also a Geraldo talk show on the issue. Geraldo was forbidden by court order to mention the name of the town, but the first guest included it four times in his opening sentence (When I moved to Englewood, New Jersey, it was because I heard that Englewood, New Jersey was a good place to raise a family, but now I fear my children are in danger in Englewood, New Jersey because a registered sex ofender is now living in Englewood, New Jersey).
My town is the type of place where everybody knows everbody’s business, so it didn’t take long for the news to get around.
While true, Zsofia, you’re falling into the same fallacy that sex offenders are all pedophiles. Most are not.
Many are people who made a terrible choice, were rightly punished for it, and don’t want to go to jail again.
Another fallacy is that sex offenders always repeat their crimes. When the sex offender law brouhaha was going around here, a reporter asked the DA how often a registered sex offender was caught committing a sex crime. The DA said he couldn’t recall a case where that happened; all sex crimes were committed by people who were not registered sex offenders. I suggested it might be safer to ban people who were not registered sex offenders from living in the city, since they committed all the sex crimes. 
No. Sexual predators are scum.
Unfortunately, Dopers aren’t the only ones who conflate these distinct but overlapping categories. State legislators have done so all too frequently as well.
There’s a similar law in Californa, I remember a while ago the local newspaper did an analysis and showed that the restrictions were so severe that pretty much everywhere in the Bay Area was off limits, and in fact there were so few acceptable areas in cities or towns in the state that sex offenders would have to be concentrated in those locations. And is that what people really want? – the article asked.
What I never see addressed is what are the living restrictions supposed to do? Most kids live more than 1,000ft from their school. What’s stopping the sex offender from going to a local park, shopping mall or any place where kids are present?
Well, as some people have noted, in some places, the restrictions also include parks.
I agree with you though; the restrictions don’t really do much except make some idiots feel better. They are nothing more than fear-mongering stupidity by a bunch of selfish NIMBYs.
To me, the crux of the issue is reintegrating the offender (any offender who has been released from jail) back into society. Why should we make it more difficult by imposing draconian, humiliating restrictions on people?
Yes, they should be supervised. Closely. But…
Last I checked, only about 10% of incarcerated prisoners are serving life sentences. That means that 90% of prisoners will eventually be let go and expected to rejoin society. It strikes me as just plain stupid to place more stress upon such a person.
What gets me is the fact that these registration laws are now applied to juveniles. They can’t get the crimes expunged off of their record, and in some cases may have to register for life.
IIRC, the Supreme Court recently ruled that life without parole for juvenile non-murder offenders is unconstitutional. I’d hope that a sentence that restricts where they live and what they can do for a living for their entire lives will also be eventually struck down as well.
This article is a few years old, but shows some of the real problems with labeling youthful offenders as sexual predators for life.
I have a friend doing research on sex offender recidivism. The base rate is so low that it’s hard to build a good statistical model. In most of their samples, <5%.
Are you* a sex offender? The laws defining what makes one so can be pretty broad. For example, if you really have to urinate and you slip behind some business to relieve yourself you could be prosecuted as a sex offender. This kind of stuff scares me.
*=not directed at any one poster or group thereof.
Actually, probably more than 90 percent, given that many Life sentences are not literally for the rest of the person’s life.
Or you could read the thread and discover that there was no evidence of this ever happening.
I did read it. I didn’t read it well and posted somewhat off topic. Sorry about that.
I do think that our sex offender law situation is ridiculous. One of the purposes of parole and post-release programs is to help ex-offenders reintegrate and become valuable members of society, and even without them, the fact that there are non-life sentences is that we as a society believe that people can be redeemed. My personal opinion is that if the person is deemed so dangerous that they must have all these restrictions, then they belong in prison or in a mental hospital.
I think that having reasonable laws goes a long way to getting people to respect them - draconian laws breed contempt among the people.
I’m also dismayed by how reactive our sex offender laws are. Here in Virginia, we have a law that makes it a registrable sex offense for an adult to French kiss a preteen. This law was passed because someone was caught doing it, and the State basically had a heart attack when they realized that they couldn’t pin anything other than Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor (a minor misdemeanor offense, the same thing you get charged with if you give a kid cigarettes or encourage them to skip school) on this guy, and that he would walk away unregistered. The state quickly passed the no french kissing little children law shortly afterward.