Longer Prison Terms Only Works for Politics

Recently Matt Gaetz who is running for the republican representative for Bay county Florida has come out with a new shocking advertisement. In this ad he boasts his role in “fixing” sex offender laws. He comes out saying that he will always protect kids and that the system in broken. He plans on fixing theses laws by increasing the minimum mandatory jail time laws for sexual offenders. The law he passed would increase this jail time to 50 years. That is 50 years for a sex offender crime, not even second degree murder has this stiff of a penalty.

There has been studies that show sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates. There was a study done and was written in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence in October 2014. The findings of this study were that 4.2% of the offenders that were classified as high risk or violent offenders had a no new charge for ten years. This is an extremely low statistic that shows sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates. This shows how this new law is just a “feel good law” that just keeps sex offenders out of mind and out of sight, but however doesn’t fix the problem. Actually fixing the problem would be dealing with the issue of homelessness and having psychological classes that help these individuals work out their psychological issues. Christian Rasmussen of the Commerce City Police department is trying to do just that. According to this officer he is “Offering them resources so they can become contributing members of society again”. This is how we fix sex offender laws, by enacting legislation that allows sex offenders to get jobs and maintain them.

Throwing sex offenders in jail doesn’t truly fix the problem it just throws them out of sight. What really needs to be done is enact legislation that helps them psychologically and with simple things like getting jobs. When a sex offender has a place to live they are less likely re offend.