Rational Outrage

It started in the early 1990s: a great new idea to track sex offenders who had been released from prison. The intent was good and the motivation sensible; the program would allow law enforcement to keep track of released sex offenders and, as it developed let people know when a convicted sex offender was living down the street.

There was a flaw in the plan right from the start. As a parent, sure, I’d like to know if there’s a sex offender living next door. I’d also like to know if there was a child batterer, a drug dealer, or a murderer living next door…but for some reason the legislatures didn’t think those things were quite so pressing. Sex offenders got special treatment. The selectivity had some absurd results, too. My family was safe from the 19-year-old kid who’d had six with his underage girlfriend. In most states, that makes him a sex offender subject to registration requirements and doomed to show up on watch lists and websites for years to come—maybe even for the rest of his life. Just the price he has to pay to keep my family safe. Well, except from armed robbers and kidnappers and burglars and identity thieves and serial killers and stuff.

It is useful, though, to be able to find out when there are convicted child molesters in the neighborhood. And if child murderers also happen to have been convicted of some sexual misconduct, we might be able to find out about them to. As a mother, I sincerely appreciate that. Or I appreciated it in concept, anyway, until I attempted to USE my local sex offender website. You see, the extreme thoroughness that put every person convicted of a crime tangentially related to sex had an unintended effect: it buried the real threats in a landslide of relatively petty criminals and people whose sole offenses had occurred many years ago.

But at least the records weren’t cluttered up with murderers and such.

After a while, though, registration and websites weren’t enough. Legislatures started having more great ideas—ideas like restricting where convicted sex offenders could live. Again, the concept made sense: let’s make sure convicted child molesters don’t set up shop across the street from the elementary school. But in many states, they neglected to confine the restrictions to child molesters (although it’s extraordinarily rare for an offender to target both children and adults), and in some of those states it wasn’t just schools and playgrounds that were off limits.

In Georgia, for instance, no sex offender may reside within 1,000 feet of a child care facility, church, school, or "area where minors congregate." Those areas are defined as: parks, recreation facilities, playgrounds, skating rinks, neighborhood centers, gymnasiums, school bus stops, public libraries and public and community swimming pools. In some communities, that makes it virtually impossible to find housing that doesn’t violate the law—and the law applies even to those convicted of crimes of indecency such as public urination.

Not feeling too sorry for the convicted sex offender who has trouble finding a home after he’s released from prison? You’re undoubtedly in good company. But you might want to consider this: homelessness not only makes offenders harder for parole and probation officers to track and makes notification of neighbors impossible, it increases the likelihood of recidivism. Thus, by making it difficult or impossible for convicted sex offenders to find stable housing, we’re minimizing the ability to monitor them and making them more likely to commit new crimes.

Portions of the Georgia law were struck down as unconstitutional in 2007, but the legislature was determined, and a modified but substantially similar law is back on the books.

In California, the number of homeless sex offenders today is more than 12 times what it was just over two years ago, when voters approved residency restrictions in an initiative. A state panel is reporting that there is no evidence suggesting that the restrictions decrease recidivism, and has asked the governor and legislature to change the law. Meanwhile, California officials determined not to let those offenders slip through the cracks are spending nearly $25 million/year to house convicted sex offenders who are unable to find legal lodging under the law. In addition to the expense and ineffectiveness of the operation, it often has the undesirable effect of grouping convicted sex offenders together in temporary housing or residential hotels—precisely counter to the usual effort to separate released convicts.

One small town recently considered a revised proposal about sex offender living restrictions: the initial plan would have prohibited sex offenders from living in 98% of the town, while the revised plan cut that figure back to 84%.

It’s easy to say “That’s fine—we don’t want sex offenders in our town!” Probably no one does. But restricting where they can live isn’t going to make them disappear: it’s been tried in more than 20 states and the proven result is that it drives them underground.

Sex offender registration in its current form ruins the lives of people as the result of very minor transgressions. A man who was arrested for urinating in an alley on his way home from a bar one night in college might find himself, years later, unable to work in (or even live near) a school. The teenage girls recently charged criminally for sending nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriends’ cell phones could face similar restrictions. Perhaps it’s easy to shrug that off—however petty, they did commit crimes, and in today’s climate it’s arguable that everyone should know that a very wide range of activity to criminal charges and lifelong consequences.

But what about the children these laws were intended to protect?

The simple fact is that mass sex offender registration, without charge-specific filtering, provides little or no value—and whatever minimal value it does provide comes at the expense of something far more important: the ability to track and monitor sex offenders in a stable environment that may reduce recidivism.

It’s time we stopped racing to the polls to vent our emotions and pass laws that make us feel better, and started thinking about the kind of law that might make a difference.

More Sex Offender Registration / Restriction Absurdities Unveiled

How to Stay 30 Feet Away from Kids

Florida Housing Sex Offenders Under Bridge

How to Deal With Sex Offenders

Banishment by a Thousand Laws: Residency Restrictions on Sex Offenders

How to Stop a Predator: The Rush to Enact Mandatory Sex Offender Residency Restrictions and Why States Should Abstain

Never Going Home: Does it Make Us Safer?

Additional Resources on the Impact of Sex Offender Registration and Restrictions