KS: Another day another new restriction.
The Kansas Senate voted to approve legislation forbidding adults on the state’s offender registry from participating in work-release programs or having access to private or public school property.
But at least there was discussion of some concerns…
The 32-8 consensus of the Senate on Wednesday demonstrated interest in protecting the state’s youth from predators, but two Democrats in the chamber questioned lack of exceptions for an offender to attend public events such as a school graduation. The issue of Christian forgiveness was raised by a Republican aware of a constituent on the registry.
Sen. Bill Clifford, a Garden City Republican who voted for the bill, said the Legislature ought to work on legislation allowing expungement of convictions for certain sex offenses. He said people guilty of other serious crimes were required to serve their sentences but weren’t placed on a lifetime registry that made it difficult to gain employment or be part of a family. “Certainly, many of us have constituents who, in this day and age, have kind of got caught up on the internet in a moment of poor judgment and found themselves guilty of soliciting a minor,” Clifford said.
“I think somebody who offended, maybe not the second-time offender, but the first offender, as a Christian, I’d say at some point, ‘I forgive you and give grace,’” Clifford said.
Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, and Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, questioned the bill’s inclusion of an exemption for religious activities hosted by schools but not for individuals to observe school plays, sports activities or graduation ceremonies in those same buildings. “I think the issue here is that it’s so limiting,” said Francisco, who voted for the legislation.
Haley, who voted against the bill, said the legislation prohibited a parent or grandparent who committed a crime years ago from attending school activities open to the public and capable of being monitored by security. “We all are wanting to insure we protect our children and that we make our schools as safe as they can possibly be,” Haley said. “My concern is the real-world application.”
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At least the KS House had the decency to vote against this measure and not concur with the KS Senate so it could die on the vine.
So, even if we were removed from the registry, we still have the charges, so we would probably still be banned from attending the meetings at schools?
Most ex-felons are banned from schools anyway In some form or fashion, depending on the state or counties rules?
If someone is going to re-offend, it is most likely not going to be at a school, unless it is a teacher who grooms a student, not someone coming to appear at a school meeting with 100s of people around.
Some laws are just dumbed down legislation with no real purpose or justification. We can legislate all we want but if someone is Hell bent on offending, no law, piece of paper, legislation etc. is going to stop that person.
Lastly, many of us had a crime numerous decades ago without any re-offenses, yet here we still are on the registry for life.
What I keep coming back to is this: lawmakers can protect children and uphold the Constitution at the same time, but only if they resist the political temptation to legislate by fear. The Constitution doesn’t forbid reasonable safety measures. What it forbids is blanket punishment disguised as regulation, especially when those rules are untethered from evidence and applied for life. If anything, the Constitution demands that lawmakers cultivate small bastions of sensibility—places where nuance, proportionality, and actual public safety data guide policy rather than headlines or hysteria.
Schools are a perfect example of where sensibility has been lost and desperately needs to be restored.
Schools are not just classrooms; they are community hubs. They host Sunday church services when no students are present. They serve as polling places, with public access carefully roped off. They hold football games, track meets, and soccer matches after hours, often outdoors with portable restrooms. They host plays, concerts, and PTA meetings in controlled-access areas. In other words, schools already know how to manage public access safely. They do it every week.
Yet most states impose blanket bans that forbid anyone on the registry from stepping onto school grounds under any circumstances—even when the school is closed, even when the individual is a parent or grandparent, even when the event is open to the general public. These bans are not tailored to risk. They are not tied to time of day, location, or purpose. They are not even tied to whether the person’s offense involved a minor. They are simply absolute.
There is a better way, and it doesn’t require sacrificing child safety.
• Schools already enforce non-student access rules. Visitors check in, show ID, and are restricted to designated areas. These systems work. They simply need to be applied consistently.
• Schools already maintain gender-specific areas, and they already monitor them. This is not a new challenge.
• Schools already employ security personnel during and after school hours. They already manage controlled-access events.
• Schools can create structured, supervised access for non-violent former offenders who are parents or grandparents, allowing them to attend IEP meetings, student council events, or parent-teacher conferences. This is not radical; it is humane and constitutional.
• Local trespass laws already keep unauthorized adults off campus. Enforcing those laws is far more sensible than imposing lifetime bans that ignore context.
These are the kinds of small, rational adjustments lawmakers should be cultivating—evidence-based, targeted, and respectful of constitutional limits.
The same principle applies to work-release programs. Common sense—not fear—should guide placement. Individuals assessed as non-violent already have every incentive to comply with rules and maintain good conduct. Work-release should be structured to avoid unnecessary risk, but it should not be designed to sabotage reentry. After all, once probation ends, these same individuals will be in grocery stores, fast-food restaurants, gyms, libraries, and public parks. If society expects them to reintegrate safely, then the system must actually practice reintegration rather than pretend it can be postponed indefinitely.
You cannot train someone for freedom by denying them every opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness. If the only alternative is to confine registrants for life—or exile them to some metaphorical island off Cuba—then we have abandoned both constitutional principles and common sense.
The real challenge for lawmakers is not how to be harsher. It is how to be smarter. How to craft laws that protect children without destroying families. How to distinguish between risk and stereotype. How to recognize that safety comes from prevention, education, and proportionality—not from expanding a system that punishes people long after they have served their sentence.
If lawmakers can cultivate even a few of these small bastions of sensibility, the entire system begins to shift. And that shift is long overdue.
hopefully the people on the KS Hit list and their family, friends and even those in other states will reach out to those politicians whom raised a concern and thank them and maybe next years session we could start seeing change for the better in KS.