Sex offenders face obstacles from well-intended laws
I’ve been trying to help a sex offender I’ll call George to find a home plan in preparation for his release from prison in March. I’ve known this man for 10 years. His crimes are computer crimes and stupidity. Will he re-offend? Of course I don’t know. I do know it’s statistically unlikely that he would molest a child. But I don’t know.
What I also know is that if he can find housing and a job, he has a much better chance of not re-offending and public safety will be enhanced. But the state legislature has said in its wisdom that convicted sex offenders cannot live within a thousand feet of a day-care center. The two home addresses George has submitted have day-care centers exactly on the edge of that thousand-foot circle. Nope, say the parole officers who investigate home plans.
George is lucky in that he has a team from a Lutheran congregation that has committed to help him, and one of the team members works for a housing management company that will give George a job as well as an apartment — if they can find an open, low-rent flat in the city that is not near a school or day-care center or park. It’s the day-care, small businesses in homes, meeting real urban needs, that pop up on the map and nix housing plans.
If George can’t find housing, he’ll stay in prison past his parole date, possibly serving his full sentence. Good riddance, some might say, but he’ll lose parole assistance and oversight and, because he will have to register as a sex offender, he will still have the same housing problems. And of course George is not alone. He has a lot more support than most.
Around the country, people with sex offence convictions are living under bridges, lying to registry officers, or not registering. None of these strategies enhance public safety. I’m sure it seemed like common sense to legislators, including Congress, to require public registration and housing restrictions, but unemployed and homeless people who may have deviant sexual desires are in need of help and support, not rejection and destitution. Politicians know they have erred, but they are terrified of being called soft on crime if they attempt smarter policy. Walking bad policy backwards is a very slow process.
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I am a parent so I hear the mothers and fathers regularly talking about how they don’t want sex offenders living in their communities while I can understand some fears arise I can’t understand how the mass assumption is that all sex offenders are going to hurt your children. I would rather have a sex offender living in my neighborhood in a home and working then one living in the woods behind my house desperate for food and other basic needs. Most people who find themselves desperate will go to desperate measure to maintain life it’s part of our instincts. This all steams from media creating mass paranoia and fear in people. I wish our world would wake up and educated themselves rather then relying on politicians and the government to tell us what is best for our lives. The sex offenders I know pose no more threat then anyone else does to my child of course then again she could walk out the door tomorrow and be taken down by a fellow student this is the world we live in and society has made its own bed. If you don’t want to lie in it get up and take a stand.
AMEN!
I believe we would be better served to no longer refer to any of these laws as “well-intended.”
The first law of such nature? Perhaps well-intended. The second? Maybe so… Decades upon decades, hundreds upon hundreds of laws, and longer and longer lists of requirements (after we made our legal decisions based on the requirements at the time of our charges) have made it clear:
These laws are no longer WELL-INTENDED.
That’s a very valid point, JR. Now, most in politics are aware that these have no impact, so what is the real intent? It’s to punish or to gain political gain for themselves. That’s no longer a “well-intended” reason for introducing this horse poop.