I'm bugged by these laws about where sex offenders can live

First and foremost, I recognize that these are serious crimes and I'm not trying to be easy on them.

But more cities are enacting these laws that would prevent sex offenders, even those who are considered low-med risk, from living within certain communities.

I'm reading this article in my local paper about the new law being proposed from a neighboring community here in Delaware and I really started to think about this law.

If people in better communities fight to keep sex offenders out of their neighborhood then ultimately these people end up in the poor communities. Last time I checked - those communities are made up of the same families that are found in the nicer communties - families, kids, etc. Only difference is the income.

So in a nutshell, if you're poor then you're stuck with the sex offenders.

Outside of pedophiles and keeping them away from schools & parks, I don't see why we need to toss all the sex offenders into the lower income neighborhoods. I mean, I'm assuming these people did their time in jail and many of them are guilty of non-violent crimes (ie statuatory rape).

Maybe I'm just off on all of this. Help me understand

among sex offenders than any other type of criminal. No local elected politician is going to oppose a group of his or her constituents who want to keep sex offenders out of their neighborhood (paticularly if it's an affluent area). So what's the answer? Dump 'em all in the lower and lower middle class areas? As you point out these people have kids too and they want them protected. I've thought a lot about this and maybe some sort of third strike program for repeat sex offenders would be the answer. Life sentence? I dunno - sounds a little harsh but I wouldn't want these creeps running around my grandkids' neighborhood either. Here in CA some released sex offenders have been hounded from four or five cities before they wer placed in some sort of group home. It's a big problem no doubt.

from what I've read, the truly rehabilitated sex offender is an extreme rarity. Many of them are seemingly wired for evil. I know where the convicted pervs are in my neighborhood and so does my daughter. It's the 90% of sex offenders who haven't been caught yet that I worry about.

around. Kinda' complex to figure it out, as this justice dept. study makes clear. Here's an excerpt from it, but there's lots more at the link, including stuff indicating how much treatment actually does help some.

<snip>
One method of dealing with this problem is to examine recidivism studies of specific types of sex offenders. This approach is warranted, given the established base rate differences across types of sex offenders. (Recent research suggests that many offenders have histories of assaulting across genders and age groups, rather than against only one specific victim population. Researchers in a 1999 study (Ahlmeyer, English, and Simons) found that, through polygraph examinations, the number offenders who "crossed over" age groups of victims is extremely high. The study revealed that before polygraph examinations, 6 percent of a sample of incarcerated sex offenders had both child and adult victims, compared to 71 percent after polygraph exams. Thus, caution must be taken in placing sex offenders in exclusive categories.) Marshall and Barbaree (1990) found in their review of studies that the recidivism rate for specific types of offenders varied:

* Incest offenders ranged between 4 and 10 percent.
* Rapists ranged between 7 and 35 percent.
* Child molesters with female victims ranged between 10 and 29 percent.
* Child molesters with male victims ranged between 13 and 40 percent.
* Exhibitionists ranged between 41 and 71 percent.

In summary, practitioners should recognize several key points related to research studies on sex offender recidivism. First, since sexual offending may differ from other criminal behavior, research specific to sex offender recidivism is needed to inform interventions with sex offenders. Second, researchers seek to identify static and dynamic factors associated with recidivism of sex offenders. In particular, the identification of, and support of, "positive" dynamic factors may help reduce the risk of recidivism. Third, although research studies on recidivism of sex offenders often appear to have contradictory findings, variations in outcomes can typically be explained by the differences in the study populations. Finally, since base rate differences have been identified across types of sex offenses, it makes sense to study recidivism of sex offenders by offense type.

http://www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html

Nobody in their right mind approves of this in any way. But like a lot of other "hot button" issues in our society these days there is a lot of hysteria and misuse politically of this issue.

Please take the time to become educated about it. By not taking more scientific approaches we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Sexual offenders ****CAN**** be rehabilitiated. With known treatments effective rehabilitation occurs in as many as 9 out of 10 offenders. It is when these are left professionally untreated that high recidivsm rates can occur. Though not 90%, as rumors seem to believe.


"The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) has established a Collaborative Data Research Project with the goals of defining standards for research on treatment, summarizing existing research, and promoting high quality evaluations. As part of this project, researchers are conducting a meta-analysis of treatment studies. Included in the meta-analysis are studies that compare treatment groups with some form of a control group (average length of follow-up in these studies was four to five years). Preliminary findings indicate that the overall effect of treatment shows reductions in both sexual recidivism, 10 percent of the treatment subjects to 17 percent of the control group subjects, and general recidivism, 32 percent of the treatment subjects to 51 percent of the control group subjects (Hanson, 2000). "

Hysteria is a diagnostic label applied to a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often centered on a body part, most often on an imagined problem with that body part (disease is a common complaint). People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear.

The term originates with the Greek medical term, hysterikos. This referred to a supposed medical condition, peculiar to women, caused by disturbances of the uterus, hystera in Greek. The term hysteria was coined by Hippocrates, who thought that the cause of hysteria was irregular movement of blood from the uterus to the brain.

The reason that people, and particularly women, are in fear of rape and rapists is that we live in a culture where rape is disturbingly common, underpenalized, and allowed to continue.

It is far from irrational.

jail? for someone with what I think most people would call a compulsion, if not a mental illness, jail is useless. If you throw an alcoholic in jail for a couple of years, you still have an alcoholic when he gets out. Compulsions and illnesses cannot be treated with the stick alone.

unfortunately, I don't understand either. I don't get why the poor and middle class have to deal with them. I also don't get why they get out of jail at all...

Most of the guys that commit this kind of crime, never stop pursuing children. They can't be cured or rehabilitated. I've heard this many times by their own admission.

I'm for keeping them incarcerated forever--where they can't endanger children anymore. :shrug: but that's just me...

offender. I new a 19 year old boy once get an offenders status because he was sleeping with a 17 year old girl. These issues can get really twisted by our courts sometimes.

Everybody agrees that all sex offenders are either rapists or child molesters or they're people who will be rapists or child molesters sometime a week from Tuesday. This includes those people who have public nudity, or public urination charges or statuatory rape of 17 year olds. They are all going to go out there and rape and molest the first possible victim they come across.

So if we have to put them all out in the middle of a desert all by themselves with no food, clothing or shelter and shoot at them if they try to leave it's just what they deserve. It's ok to hate these people because they are sex offenders and your petty attempts to make value judgements just don't wash.



:sarcasm: (for the literal minded)

Peeing in public on a drunken night; flashing or mooning someone; protesting the war in the nude; or any host of what are truly minor, irrelevant "crimes", but they get that sex offender label and then their lives are fucked up.

We should only label and follow those who are acually abusive - the child molestors and the rapists.

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Just because someone urinated in public, mooned someone or dated someone 17 years old when they were 19 (which if you want the truth - I've done all 3) doesn't mean they'll be going out and raping next. BTW, the 17-year old I dated - his parents loved me and yes, as a 16-17 year old I dated plenty of guys who were over the age of 18. All of them have gone on to successful careers which never included rape/pedophilia.

of statutory rape.

For stats, start here: http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/stats.htm#Offenders

Then make up your mind. I've made mine up.

The original post was saying that forcing these people out of certain neighborhoods ultimately puts them in some of the poorest neighborhoods. So, you still have the 117 victims, but they are all from the lower classes.

where the population is more highly dense, less likelihood of computer ownership (thus not being able to check online about where sex offenders are lving) and plenty of children everywhere.

I'm not questioning the statistics you're giving me or the heiniousness of the crime. I'm questioning that we're now putting these people into lower income neighborhoods like somehow that's ok if they fall back into their old ways since they're living amongst people who can't afford a better place to live.

And I'm also upset about a law that takes non-violent 'sex offenses' like public urination and statuatory rape and lumping them in with the hardened criminals

are you really thinking exist? By the time these guys or gals get out of the joint most of them have to live in low income neighborhoods b/c they either lack a job or have a very poor one. Consider also that most offenders are spawned in families so we really can't be sure that neighborhoods or density have anything to do with it. Added to the fact that no perp needs to live in a poor neighborhood to molest any kid, let alone poor kids. They are equal opportunity offenders. For the majority of offenders, any kid, anytime, anywhere will suffice.

What is needed is knowledge about sex offenders. They typically do follow a type and while that may not be a perfect way in which to judge the seriousness or lack thereof of repeat offenders, more knowledge can and will offer better ways of managing them in ANY neighborhood.

What you see as a plan by design, possibly by zealous middle or upper class law enforcement, I see as happenstance.

like the poster mentioned about the situation in Iowa. It'll get to the point where they can't find anywhere to live and will end up out on the streets.

And like I said. If you happen to be rich you can run them all out of town but if you happen to be poor then you're shit-out-of-luck. Pedophile and rapists are not all from lower income families. You're right that many of these people probably couldn't afford homes in the better neighborhood but what if they had family who was willing to take them in and help them out? I guess then they're shit-out-of-luck

just about everyone involved is. The US has ignored this criminal activity forever, including the highly profitable trafficking of kids from one locale to another. As to living on the street that's less likely as the law requires them to have some permanent address per parole or probation. Most are involved in other criminal activity tho' so they often bounce themselves back into prison. Depends on whether they have a job/family/other supports to go back to.

rapists, child molestors--they can live on the streets, it doesn't matter to me.

I don't want them living in poor neighborhoods where people have children either--and I think that poorer people (like myself and I am sure many others here) should work just as hard to have them banned.

I have absolutely NO pity for sex offenders.

legal? I wonder how much of statutory rape is committed because the person can't get a partner of their own age, (I'm talking over the age of 14 or so here) and getting a younger person is easier because they are easily manipulated.

I'm just thinking out loud but it might be something to look into. I've seen many sex advertisements on the net where they dress up the women to look like little girls and use words like, "barely legal" to describe them. I guess I'm thinking if they can play out the fantasy legitimately or just pay for it then maybe it would cut down on the number of actual predatory acts.

Of course I may be totally off base which might make sense since it i 4:30am and I can't sleep and I'm typing with my eyes closed.

Fantasy is a factor that is not usually present in cases of statutory rape but that doesn't mean its not present in some fashion. I am referring largely to the much older person who in effect fancies he/she will not be held accountable for their choices.

However, the use of prostitutes has not been shown to diminish the sex drive of perp's. Nor has it contributed to a cure for perp's. Actually, many perp's are impotent and are stimulated only by minors or their fantasies of minors.

citations listed in your link.

First, the citations are imprecise, sometimes inaccurate (I have stacks of some of the journals mentioned, and checked refs - no dice), and cherry-picked. Some of the articles have circular references (i.e. a Bagley paper refers to a Courtois paper that refers to a Finkelhof paper that refers to a Bagley paper...) The sources are all names that have interests in the not-for-profit public welfare and treatment communities, and I'm seeing a case of the dog that didn't bark in the night. These agencies rely on funding from public and private sources to continue to operate, so it is in their own financial best interest to ensure that the problem of abuse affects as many people as possible and is as damaging as possible.

I've worked for non-profits that have to justify their budgets every fiscal year, and #1 on the list of justifications is always the prevalence and prominence of the problem. And when journalists want quotes, they want numbers, and sometimes our ballpark, back of the envelope guesstimates get inflated into hard, quoted numbers, which then get passed around as real.

Inflating the numbers, associating non-abuse (i.e. allowing a child to see a sex scene in a movie, answering questions about sexuality with frankness and accuracy, or parents being affectionate in the same household with a child) with actual abuse (and these acts, as well as others, are often used as "evidence" against the accused), and claiming that X causes Y in later years does nothing to prevent abuse or improve law enforcement and get help for children who are actually abused.

About a tenth of the girls I've worked with have been verbally, sexually, physically or neglectfully abused. (My primary work has been in the fields of self-mutilation, eating disorders and criminal behavior in adolescents.) When other therapists or paraprofessionals have tried to make all of their disorders out to be the product of abuse, we fail to serve the actual needs of the client, and instead add to their issues. It happens too often to be an accident, and is often, sadly based on the political views of older therapists. (Not that I'm not a feminist - I am - but not everything relates back to the oppression of the patriarchy. Brain chemistry and social dynamics are a lot more complex than that.)

And finally, the above linked author has an axe to grind - she repeatedly comes back to the concept that, in custody issues, the reporting parent should be believed at all costs, and that no skepticism of any sort should be exercised. That's not just bad for the child, it is a very good way to encourage false reporting, vengeance, and wasting resources that can be used to protect children who are being abused.

Try the Federal stats, or your state's Department of Justice, Crime stats, or some other verifiable data source. Please.

cured..

there needs to be some REAL research done.. it is apparent that a lot of these people need to be kept in locked communities for life... it is fairly easy to identify which ones need to be.

it is also tragic that they are the product of being sexually assaulted as children themselves.

that is reason to isolate them from society in reasonable living standards in communities behind walls.. for life if necessary..

that will break the cycle of creating more of them.. each pedophile contaminates the lives of dozens of children before being caught for a single assault.

care does need to be taken not to get caught up in hysteria and put Innocent men in jail due to things like wives falsely accusing men for assault to facilitate a quick divorce or such.. there are simple tests to determine this OCD.

In fact, some pedophiles only show sexual stimulation from young children (using plethysmography-as plethysmography is a method of measuring blood flow, and when attached to one's sexual organs while being shown pictures of various people, children, etc, will show even small amounts of reaction. Tests that measure the reaction of the pupils to various stimuli are harder to fool.
These tests are no foolproof, and I know of no real test to differentiate out compulsive sex offenders from non compulsive ones.

Other pedophiles are not true pedophiles at all as they may have both children and adult (age appropriate) partners. There offenses may be part of a compulsive pattern of acting out sexually.

But it is not typical OCD. There is no "undoing" as seen in OCD (hand washing, etc. where one is trying to "undo" something that they believe they have done)

OCD responds to antidepressants, whereas sexual compulsivity does not respond in the same way. There may be help in antidepressants, etc. but the only true recovery is going to involve alot of therapy, external controls (staying away from children) etc.

Separating the two types of pedophiles is possible. Treating the second type discussed is possible. It takes a lot of time, money, and effort. And it is less successful than treating alcoholics or drug addicts. So it isn't funded well in most states.

A friend of mine just left a job in the corrections system as a mental health therapist for sex offenders. I talked to her and well, she pretty well said she couldn't take it any more. She said prisoners exposed themselves to her daily. Masturbated in public areas, especially when there were visitors. And got in fights over over who belonged to who if you get my drift.

I have no reason to doubt her. This is a very difficult population to treat.

I've never heard of people being put on offender lists due to public urination when drunk, (a misdemeanor) or even lewd behavior (unless it was exposing oneself to children)

I don't see how only allowing them into lower income neighborhoods is going to help protect children at all. I just see that as politicians taking the path of least resistance (and more money)

who typified a section of the group.. they are obsessed with thoughts of children.. one person who had been chemically castrated still had the problem unabated.

that is why i suggest total isolation from society for these groups of incorrigible offenders, being careful not to get hysterical about it. do the science but dont contract it out to a faith based witch hunt

i worked in mental hospitals and it was not uncommon for patients to obsessively masturbate and expose themselves

it really looks like this is a form of mental illness.. and the government just doesn't want to call it what it is because that would force them to treat it appropriately which would cost money and there are rich Republicans that need that money.. and the filthy underclasses dont deserve any help.

garbage collection, water treatment plants, factories, and other nasty polluting things are also in the poor areas, those sex offenders won't live long enough to offend again. Of course, neither will the poor in taht area live long enough, but, hell, it's a small price to pay to ensure the richer don't have to smell diesel from buses or that awful water treatment smell or be around anything dirty.

But it boils down to this fundamental question:

Do you believe that punishment serves to correct behavior?

If so, sex offenders who have served their time should be allowed to integrate into their community.

If you don't believe that punishment corrects behavior then:

1).- What purpose does punishment serve?

2).- Should sex offenders ever be released into the community?

Add to this mess the pigeonholing of various behaviors into one all-encompassing category labeled 'sex offenses', and now you have a recipe for catastrophe.

Consider this: the following are ALL considered sex offenses:

1).- Statutory rape
2).- Rape
3).- Indecent exposure
4).- Urinating in public

I may be wrong on this point, but I don't see why these four items belong in the same category.

Should people who go out drinking, and can't hold it, be grouped with pedophiles and rapists?

Where is the benefit?

Where do you get off thinking that punishment does anything to either prevent crimes or help the victims? As if that really mattered. Punishment is about the rest of us feeling that it is ok to have somebody to hurt. That's it.

Prevention is messy and involves understanding human motivations that arent' Christian. It also researching and understanding causes and motivations for behaviors that really shouldn't be part of public discussion.

Helping the victims also involves complex causes and results. Victim A seems to do fine once her attacker is in jail while victim B needs a process of reconciliation that may involve his attacker, his parents, his ex-wife and job retraining. Who wants to do that.

Lets just tack on the greatest punishments we think we can get away with and then walk away from the empty husks of humans we create. Is that not what homeless shelters and freeway offramps are for?


more_:sarcasm:

or detract from the incentive to participate in other behaviours. not, however, behaviours that come from a compulsion, no amount of punishment can stop and alcoholic from drinking, or a drug addict from shooting up, or a pedophile from (pedophiling?) in every case you need to address the problems involved and they have to want to address the issues. but lock up a drunk for 50 years, and upon walking out, he'll want a drink.

Basically it said that when these laws are enacted, it increases the chance that the sex offenders become part of the homeless population, making it virtually impossible to keep track of them. Your points about them ending up in poor communities is a good one.

The answer is to identify and treat young victims, even young perpetrators. They can be helped. Adults? Maybe/maybe not.

currently going in the opposite direction - sometimes punishing young offenders more severely than older criminals who commit similar crimes.

...for having sex with her 15-y-o boyfriend.

So, should she be taken out and just shot and left to rot in a cornfield, or will it be enough that she has to live at 42nd and Post for the rest of her life?

I've dated someone under the age of 18 when I was over 18 (this was back in the mid-80s and only a 2 year difference between us). With today's standards I could have been tossed in jail, criminal record for life and my every move recorded in some database being forced to live in bad neighborhoods because nobody else wanted me. We're taking non-criminals and turning them into criminals. I don't like that one bit at all

I was 19, she was visiting her grandparents for the summer, and the subject of age never came up because she was uh, how you say "Forward"?.

Found out about 20 years later from an old classmate that she was pretty young.

deflect attention from the REAL problem.

The state enacted a law basically banning Sex offenders from living anywhere. The joke was that all of Iowa's sex offenders were going to be forced to move to Missouri. In reality, after the law went into effect, sex offenders had to register where they live and some are living in a Wal Mart in Des Moines, at rest stop along I-35, behind a grocery store.

the sex offenders homeless and thus nearly impossible to track.

Wouldn't it be better to just restrict them from parks & schools areas so at least you know where they are

which in some towns basically restricts sex offenders from living in the city. A couple towns went a step further and extending the 2,000 feet to like 5,000 feet.

It's the pedophiles who have the high recidivism rate. "Rapists" run the gamut from sadistic sexual killer all the way to the 19-year-old boy who has sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend. There should not be a one-size-fits-all punishment for sex offenders nor should they all be excluded from people's neighborhoods.

Ex-cons have a very hard time finding work, so they end up being untreated in prison, unemployed when they come out of jail..

The ones lucky enough to have family who will take them in are the ones that present a problem. If the family member is not a home owner, all they have to do is move somewhere where the ex-con is not known, and then they just move in when they get out..

Until they re-offend, most people do not even know they are there..

...both the fifth and the eighth amendments. Anyone who has been tried and convicted of any crime, and who has completed their sentence and been discharged, is entitled to every right and privilege that any other citizen is entitled to, including privacy, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment (such as being forced to live in certain places, forced to wear the equivalent of a scarlet letter, etc.,) and certainly free from being tried and/or punished again for the same crime, if only at the bar of public opinion, etc.

That said, when the level of risk reaches a certain point, the community's right to protect itself may outweigh certain individual rights for a limited time and in limited circumstances. But we need to tread very, very, very carefully indeed in drawing that line. As many posters in this thread have pointed out, there is a considerable difference between making sure that someone with an uncontrolled and/or untreated mental illness that produces violent and/or deeply abhorrent criminal abuse of vulnerable individuals is limited in their opportunities to reoffend, and making sure that someone who engaged in ordinary reprehensible criminal behavior is branded for life and prevented from ever enjoying their full rights and privileges as a citizen again.

I could only support these "registries" if they were limited to those convicted more than once of actual sexual abuse of children and/or forcible rape. I can't support the violation of anyone's Constitutional rights, even a criminal's, for anything less. That way lies the madness of King George and the tyranny of the star chamber, the black bag, and the Bastille. It's simply too easy, in a time when the wealthy and powerful already have so much unchecked freedom to abuse the rights of others, to let it slide over the edge into a society where the powerful can "remove" those inconvenient to them using some contemporary equivalent of the lettre de cachet.

adamantly,
Bright

Very well put; thank you. I don't know what the answer is; but this is not it. Such a hard subject!

A friend of mine emailed me one of those Neigborhood Watchdog websites, which indicated that not one, not two, but THREE of my neighbors are convicted sex offenders. Of course I dont get to know what they are guilty of, exactly, and I have a 8 year old boy and a 5 year old girl. AS a mom, I can worry myself into a great big stew about sex crimes. I dont live that far from where Polly Klaas was abducted out of her bedroom and murdered. If I dwell on that long enough, I can stay awake all night long wondering who will hurt my kids in the middle of the night.

But then I thought this over a bit. What am I supposed to do with this information? Make my kids walk around the block to avoid their houses? Spray paint "Get the Fuck Out you Weirdo Perv" on their front door?

When I used to get uptight about child abduction and molestation, my dad the ex-cop told me that while bad things can and do happen to kids at the hands of strangers and weirdo neighbors, it's family members and close friends you have to worry about most. Creepy old Uncle Bob is far more likely to be hurting your kid than the poor schlep living two doors down from you on the sex offender list that cant escape his past.

This may or may not be true, but believing it allows me to sleep at night.

You're so right though. We can do everything feasible to protect outselves from what we know out there not realizing that what we don't know could be even worse

Welcome to DU :hi:

problem is landlords are getting a lot of money from state governments to house these people. One apt building here in L.A. had 32 pedophiles, and you know that just ain't right. All comes down to money, as usual.

offenses. Predators as I understand it, at least in Florida, are the ones who go after children under age 12 or so. I would not feel bad if these people were kept in places like the old Leper colonies. I know that sounds mean but it doesn't have to be a barbaric jail type thing to keep these, (mostly men) away from the rest of society.

That judge that let the pedophile go with just probation may be trying to send a message that our society needs to do something different with these people. I don't think anyone grows up wanting to be a pedophile and I most certainly think they should be punished if they act out on it but keeping them in jail for life just does not seem to be feasible.

And even though they say castration does not work 100% I think it should be done anyway. I remember seeing a special on TV about a male to female transgendered woman and she said that testosterone is a much more powerful force than people realize. Removing the testosterone may help stop some of the impulses. If you don't believe it take high doses of certain anti-depressants or anti-psychotics for a while and see how much you think about sex. I've been on them and I can tell you for me it was about NEVER.

EDIT: I just found this on the net.


"Causes and symptoms
Causes

A variety of different theories exist as to the causes of pedophilia. A few researchers attribute pedophilia along with the other paraphiliasto biology. They hold that testosterone, one of the male sex hormones, predisposes men to develop deviant sexual behaviors."

http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Pedophilia.html

So even though they say it is not fool proof I think castration or chemical castration is a good idea. I know I am rambling past the Leper colony thing. Please bear with me.

--which makes people of both sexes horny. It has nothing to do with what kinds of things make you horny. Nor is it responsible for the sense of entitlement some people (mostly male) seem to have that they deserve access to anyone, no exceptions, when they happen to be horny. This attitude is just about unknown among women, though some of us might really freak out if there was a sudden shortage of D batteries.

>>This attitude is just about unknown among women, though some of us might really freak out if there was a sudden shortage of D batteries.<<

::clutching Mr. Buzzy protectively::

Bitecher TONGUE, woman!

worriedly, Bright

want because the entire political process runs on MONEY.

Not much to understand, really......

Make good use of that space. You can't take property from sex offenders, but you can seize drug offenders to finance your flagging police dept.

than sex offenders.

Like pedo's can't drive?

How many aren't registered as they have not been caught?

How many aren't registered because they pled out on lesser charges?

Lock them UP, not OUT.

again? Always the poor who have to support the policies for the stinking rich... When will this end?

They say keep 'em in the low income neighborhoods.

the purpose is to shove the offenders into poor neighborhoods where poor children will be victims of the predators, similar to zoning which allows factories that pollute to build in poor neighborhoods and not middle class or rich neighborhoods

now put that together w. new welfare laws trying to force single moms to work instead of watching their kids in a tough neighborhood

you have a whole generation of disadvantaged children that will never be any threat or competition for things rich kids want like higher education and scholarships and later the good jobs, they'll be crushed from the get-go by the sheer weight of challenges that face them

and that is apparently as this country wants it, after all, fuck our poor kids, we can just bring in some mexicans to do what few low-skilled jobs still exist that are not done by robot in twenty years

SO, for the purposes of child molesters, what good does it do to keep them out of a particular community or away from churches and schools?

So for them, doesn't it make more sense to pass laws barring them from access to friends or families than it does keeping them from schools and churches?

Perhaps more laws isn't the answer. I know my local news does a story every single morning about sex offenders who have gone missing or unregistered. A guy in Henderson, NV, was recently released -- on yet another probation -- after having been found to be employed working with children (I want to say youth minister? maybe Boy Scout leader?). We've passed all kinds of popular laws about monitoring sex offenders, but as someone who has a little background in criminal justice, I can also tell you that the resources (i.e., money) are not there for the enforcement of these laws.

Perhaps more laws aren't necessary. Perhaps enforcing the laws we already have are. You know what'll happen to men who violate these local laws barring convicted sex offenders from their boudaries? Nothing. Precisely squat. Zero. Zip. Nada. Maybe a referral to their probation officers, and a forced change in housing location. If things go really, really well for the public, maybe even a slap on the wrist.

And, while we're at it, perhaps removing the stigma the victims of sex crimes often feel/receive would do more to alleviate the culture of sexual violence we've all grown so accustomed to. Until more people -- women, children, and especially men -- feel free to speak out and condemn, sex crimes will keep happening.