Sex offender exclusion zones--a policy we like?

[High Plains]

Iowa law has sex offenders packing bags

By Michael Riley
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com

Des Moines, Iowa - David Johnson fiddles with the orange extension cord that snakes into the covered bed of his battered pickup, powering the electric blanket and small space heater he hopes will keep him warm as the temperature plummets toward 10 below. Beside his inflatable mattress, the butt of the night's last cigarette lies in an ashtray, while nearby there's a borrowed cellphone. His young daughter calls on it nightly, he said, "to check on me and make sure I'm warm."

A convicted sex offender, Johnson has spent the night in a parking lot on the outskirts of Iowa's capital city since mid-November. According to an ordinance approved in Des Moines two months before, it's one of the few places in the city where he can legally sleep. "My daughter knows where I'm going. It's hard on her to say goodbye at night," said Johnson, 42. "I can't live like this forever. It's like I'm getting punished twice."

As Colorado lawmakers consider tough new restrictions on where sex offenders can live, work or go, Iowa has become a national model - of preventive law enforcement for some, of unchecked fear for others. A 4-year-old Iowa law bans sex offenders whose victims were minors from living in the vast majority of the state's residential areas. It creates 2,000-foot "buffer zones" around schools and day-care centers where offenders can't live, defined in the law as where they sleep.

...

In Des Moines, police have been knocking on the doors of more than 300 sex offenders whose residences now violate the law, giving them 30 days to leave. Among those who will have to relocate are two elderly men at a nursing home and one at a veterans hospital. As offenders try to comply with the new laws, some have clustered in rundown hotels around the edge of Iowa's cities. Among the addresses now listed on the state's sex-offender registry are a car at a truck stop and a tent under an interstate bridge.

"There simply isn't many places for them to go," said Lori Kelly, the Des Moines police investigator administering the city's enforcement of the laws. "I tell them about the motels, but that's expensive. When you make $8 an hour, how long can you stay in a Motel 6?"

...more at: http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3382005


edited: to delete paragraphs I meant to delete the first time around

[High Plains]

1. Here's a bit more from the article:

Critics - including researchers and law enforcement experts - warn that the laws' results are the opposite of what lawmakers intended: Fewer offenders are registering, and those who comply are left with little family or medical support, increasing the chances they may strike again.

"We've had people become homeless. We've had people absconding from their supervisors," said Jeanette Bucklew, a deputy director of the Iowa Department of Corrections. "Our parole officers are frustrated, to say the least."

But those concerns have been muffled by a spate of high- profile murders by sex offenders that has created a backlash of new laws and restrictions across the country.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Once a person has paid their debt to society they are done. If...

...people are for these exclusion zones perhaps they would consider that the punishment/treatment prior to release isn't severe enough. I know this is a complicated issue especially since the recivitism rate among pedophiles. But not all sex offenders are pedophiles. And not all sex offenders have been convicted for crimes that we would consider worthy of the treatment anyone labelled with "sex offender" deserves.

I believe "sex offender free" zones are unConstitutional, place a person in double jeopardy and constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Again, if persons agree with these "(crime of your choice)-free zones" consider that this sort of zoning could set a dangerous precedent which could one day be used against us as a country.

PB

[mrcheerful]

5. Actually the statistics show sex offenders are the ones with the lowest re

committing sex crimes. What law enforcement is doing is lumping all other crimes other then sex crimes to drive up the numbers. Its pure fear tactics and people are falling for it the same way they fell for terrorists attacking their homes and schools.

[OneBlueSky]

6. well said . . . I agree completely . . . n/t

.

[Ariana Celeste]

9. I completely agree.

It's a very emotional subject that makes a lot of people angry. Angry enough not to see how unconstitutional this is.
You are absolutely right when you say that not all offenders are pedophiles. Those who are should be incarcerated for longer periods of time, and given treatment, counseling, etc. before they are let out into the world again. Those who are not pedophiles should not be given the same treatment as those who are. And those that are pedophiles should not get off so easily.

Our system does NOT work. The answer is not in continuing punishment when they have served their time. The answer is in finding a better way to deal with offenders when they are caught.
I can give a good example of how the system doesn't work as it should. I dated a guy in junior high, who at 16 was arrested for touching a little girl. I believe she was 8. He was released at 18. 18. He spent less than 2 years locked up for something that most likely traumatized this little girl. I wish I knew more of the facts but when he contacted me after being released, I told him to never contact me again.

We need to work on the system. Not feel good measures like this that make people think they are safe, when it really doesn't change a thing.

Furthermore, I have been a victim. But I still believe that once someone has done their time, they have done their time.


edited for bad spelling

[mrcheerful]

13. Also remember lots of people are being convicted

on plea bargains that their court appointed lawyers convince them to cop out to. Until your in the system most people don't understand the consequences of taking the plea. Something like 90% of those on the list are there by being frightened into taking a plea bargain. It doesn't help when judges tell people accused that if they refuse to take pleas then the judge will give them harsher sentences if convicted. Most people are faced with probation with the plea bargain or doing prison time if they fight and a vast majority of them will take the plea. The real problem is this fear, courts are afrid of being seen as soft on crime if they let an accused offender go. Parents are afraid that their children are at risk, though its been proven that most molesters are family or friends of the family and this myth about dangerous sexual predators living in your neighborhood searching for a victim actually is very rare and those types are few and over played by the MSM. BTW, thats also why sexual predators are clergy, police, teachers, boy scout leaders and coachs that have gained the trust of kids and parents.

[MindPilot]

3. Wouldn't it be more humane to keep them

in some kind of mental health facility? Obviously, but in the real world we couldn't fathom the idea of actually spending money to help these guys recover, and perhaps even figure out some methods of prevention.

The other problem with laws like this is it's way too easy in our anti-sexual culture to be wrongly accused of a sex crime. Hell there are stories of grade school boys being accused of sexual misconduct so like many other of our draconian laws, this one is another that is not about punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation or anything else that would benefit society, it just cold-hearted revenge.

Of course convicted sex offenders could be rehabilitated into the priesthood.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. a quagmire, and a dangerous precedent.

There is a whole range of acts which constitute sex crimes. if a 16 yr old boy fucks his 15 yr old girl friend, he is screwed in many states. He is treated (for life) no different than a 50 yr old predator who serially rapes 20 20 yr olds.

Why not simply tattoo their foreheads with the mark of the sexual criminal? And forbid them from wearing hats or headbands?

If a sentence is served, why the continuing punishment?

If these type of laws continue to be passed, what prevents expansion into other fields and crimes? Drugs, adultery, tax evasion, swearing at god, ownership of vibrators, smoking of cigs inside a public building?

the whole litany of conservative do-gooder-ism is far worse than any liberal platform. The long range prognosis for our country is poor to very poor.

[mrcheerful]

7. Somewhere in DU theres a thread about

one state that now has a list for people making meth. Its already started down the path of complete control of americans by putting them on lists.

[High Plains]

14. That would be Tennessee

Now meth offenders join sex offenders in officially reaching pariah status in the Volunteer State.

[MindPilot]

12. Here in California there is talk of

making released sex offenders wear a tracking bracelet for life.

[mike_c]

8. this is just wrong....

If a sex offender is CONVICTED of committing new offenses, then they should be RELOCATED TO JAIL. Otherwise, they're innocent citizens just like everyone else. This is wrong. These people have paid their debt, and now they deserve respect.

[meganmonkey]

10. I have a real hard time with this

His comment "It's like I'm getting punished twice" is very relevent.

If a sex offender is still dangerous, he/she should remain in custody.

If a sex offender is released and decides to molest a kid, he/she will bypass the 'buffer zone' and find a kid to molest.

Please don't think I am being sympathetic to child molesters - I am not. I just believe in fairness and logic in the legal system, and this seems to have neither.

[Ariana Celeste]

11. Exactly.

If they really want to commit the crime again, they are going to do it, buffer zone or no.

This does nothing but make parents feel like they are safe to let their children roam free without fear. And to think of how many people there are that have not been caught yet... it makes it all the more easy for them, if parents think they don't need to worry.

IMO I think this is just a way to make people think they are doing something about the problem, without really doing anything at all.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. The evil part of this is the retroactivity thing.

When this man chose a place to live, he complied with the restrictions that were in effect at that time. These changes should be only for new offenders or those who decide to relocate.

[dogday]

16. Today the perverts, tomorrow the meth addicts,

and then who knows what the next labeled group of people will be. When you start putting people in groups and labeling them, and restricting them, well Nazi Germany is not far behind...