Columnist warns, “new sex offender law will fail”

When lawmakers say they’re acting to keep kids safe, most of us want to believe the solution must be a good one. But public safety policy shouldn’t be judged by its intentions. It should be judged by whether it actually works.

Let’s consider a recent ordinance passed by Middleburg Heights City Council in late February. The law, which mirrors one already on the books in Fairview Park, bars registered sex offenders from entering parks, playgrounds, recreation centers and other public spaces across the city, including City Hall, meaning some residents are effectively excluded from the civic spaces where the community gathers.

Many of them have long since served their sentences, built careers, raised families and rejoined their communities. Yet under this ordinance, their past never stops haunting them. It follows them into retirement, into grandparenthood and into everyday moments of civic life — dictating whether they are allowed to stroll through a public park, run on a treadmill at the rec center or set foot in City Hall.

But good intentions are not the same thing as good policy. Policies like this are politically easy to pass. They sound tough and protective. And they cost almost nothing to enact. But decades of research suggest restrictions like these rarely deliver the safety they promise.

For example, studies reviewed by the National Institute of Justice, the research, evaluation and technology arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, have found no evidence that residency restrictions — laws keeping offenders away from parks, schools or playgrounds — reduce sexual reoffending. Where someone lives in relation to those places has not been shown to predict whether they commit new crimes.

That’s because the narrative behind many of these laws doesn’t match the reality of how abuse occurs. Sexual abuse of children is overwhelmingly committed by someone the victim already knows — a family member, acquaintance or trusted adult — not a stranger encountered in a public park.

Public safety experts have long warned that policies built mainly on exclusion can backfire. When people leaving prison are pushed further from jobs, housing and involvement in community life, they are also pushed further from the stability that helps prevent new crimes.

Best practices on reducing recidivism point in a different direction.

What works is stability: housing, employment, treatment and supervision that focuses on the specific risks a person presents. Programs that address addiction, antisocial thinking and other drivers of crime have been shown to reduce reoffending. So has something simpler — making sure people leaving prison have a place to live and a path back into work.

Policies that isolate people from the very structures that support rehabilitation often push people the opposite way.

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