Sex Offenders Keep Out

By Rod Dreher • May 30, 2012, 6:08 AM

Orange County finds itself at the enter of a new wave of laws restricting the movement of sex offenders. The county government and a dozen cities here have banned sex offenders from even setting foot in public parks, on beaches and at harbors, rendering almost half the parks in Orange County closed to them. Ten more cities are considering similar legislation.

And Orange County is far from alone. In recent years, communities around the country have gone beyond regulating where sex offenders can live and begun banning them outright from a growing list of public places.

From North Carolina to Washington State, communities have designated swimming pools, parks and school bus stops as “child safety zones,” off limits to some sex offenders. They are barred from libraries in half a dozen Massachusetts cities, and from all public facilities in tiny Huachuca City, Ariz.

Here in Louisiana, a bill that will ban sex offenders from public libraries is awaiting the governor’s signature, which it will certainly receive. Our 12 year old son volunteers in the local library, and couldn’t figure out the other day why the librarians were being so protective of him. It turns out that a known, registered sex offender was loitering in the library that afternoon. All perfectly legal — until the governor signs the bill, that is. Bring it.

33 Responses to Sex Offenders Keep Out

Sammacdon says:

May 30, 2012 at 6:16 am

OK. I have kids, too. But this makes me very uneasy. We have all seen the horror stories of an 18-year-old charged with a sex crime for having sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend. I am not sure my kids need protected from that guy, nor that he needs a lifetime banishment from society. Until society becomes better at making these distinctions, I am a little dubious.

There needs to be a way to know the difference between the creepy guy loitering in the Harry Potter section and everyone else, and a way to deal with it. There used to be. Where I am from, it was called, “take him to the edge of town and put the shoes to him.” It worked. But it obviously came with its own complications.

I am not sure this is an improvement, though.
jetan says:

May 30, 2012 at 6:38 am

Gosh, Rod, I can’t believe you are falling for this. These laws are stupid and ineffective, vicious and un-Christian and, more pertinently, very likely not constitutional. The unintended consequences regarding the laws governing where sex offenders can live have been widely reported and have in some cases hampered the police. Moreover, the term “sex offender” can cover both the guy who has raped a child and the drunken accountant who got too handsy with the waitress at his bar. These are very poor statutes.
JonF311 says:

May 30, 2012 at 6:45 am

“Sex offender” is as horribly broad category. It can include people caught making out in a car in a “Lover’s Lane”. Or even someone caught urinating in public.
I can understand concerns on pedophiles, but many of these 21st century Scarlett Letter laws have unexpected consequences– rarely good. Sex offenders in South Florida were so restricted in where they could and could not live that a whole colony of them ended up living under a bridge in horribly fetid conditions since they A) had to live in a certain geographic area while under court supervision but B) were banned from just about every house or apartment in that area.

I am reminded of a point CS Lewis made about crime and punishment: that a malefactor should take his punishment, as severe as justice requires, but after that it should over and done with since dragging it on and on (Lewis was writing about sentencing people to psychiatric hospitals for indefinite terms) is a hallmark not of just government but of tyranny.

I also see something of a moral panic, even a witch hunt, in these sorts of laws. Many of us here grew up without these laws on the books– and in the Free Range Children era. Somehow we all did just fine.
Don Quijote says:

May 30, 2012 at 7:34 am

Two issues here, one the definition of sex offender can be so broad as to be ridiculous for example 18-year-old senior in high school when he was arrested for having sex with his girlfriend, a 14-year-old freshman, in 2004. and the other being that once you have removed access to all public spaces from these people,where are they suppose to go?

BTW This isn’t to say that there aren’t fifty year old trolling for 12 year old virgin flesh…
Justin St. Giles Payne says:

May 30, 2012 at 7:39 am

DOJ crime stats have always indicated that sex offenders have the second-lowest rates of recidivism. These laws are motivated by moral panic and the counterfactual assumption that someone with a sex offense record is a different type of criminal than a thief or murderer.
baconboy68 says:

May 30, 2012 at 7:56 am

I would be more comfortable with this sort of thing if we didn’t label so many people as sex offenders. Guys like the one at your library are real dangers. Guys who were 18 and had sex with a 16 year old, I’m not so worried about. I worry about excluding too many of the latter from civil society. It seems to me that we need some sort of categorization or clearing house process for discerning which ones are real dangers and which ones aren’t.
JohnE_o says:

May 30, 2012 at 8:17 am

Good for Louisiana!
Tyro says:

May 30, 2012 at 8:31 am

While many states have extremely broad definitions of what constitutes a “sex offender” (eg, streaking), the “sex offender registry” in Louisiana seems to only cover offenses against minors and violent sexual assaults.

In a country where no legislator can oppose any increased get-tough measure on criminal for fear of being labeled “soft on crime”, Louisiana’s laws regarding this issue and the consequences are surprisingly rational.
TimJohn says:

May 30, 2012 at 8:47 am

I agree with your sentiments, Rod, with one caveat: distinctions need to be made between sex offenders. When I worked with the homeless, men who had been arrested for public urination were categorized (and unfairly stigmatized) as “sex offenders.” I would argue it’s also unfair to lump together those convicted of sexual assault with the 19 year old that is convicted of statutory rape for having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend.
William says:

May 30, 2012 at 9:03 am

All public facilities? How does that even work? Does it include sidewalks and streets? What if someone needs to get their drivers’s licence renewed?
Ethan_C says:

May 30, 2012 at 9:22 am

That might be okay, if by “sex offender” we only mean “child molester”, and not also “18 year-old high school senior who got caught having sex with his 16 year-old girlfriend”. No public libraries, beaches, parks, or swimming pools for you, mister! For the rest of your life!
Saint_Andeol says:

May 30, 2012 at 9:35 am

The only problem I could see with this is that in some places, it doesn’t take much to get placed on the sex offenders list. Drunk urination in “public” or being a sexually active teenager can get you branded and treated the same as a child molester by law.

But for those offenders who actually pose a danger to children, this is a good step. Also, that guy in the library watching kids with the webcam is taking a big risk. All it will take is the wrong dad or uncle to show up and realize what’s going on, then a posse gets called in and the hurtin’ starts.
AndreaJ says:

May 30, 2012 at 9:48 am

I don’t think these laws are particularly effective and they tend to give parents a false sense of security. When this particular creep is in the library the librarians know who he is and to keep an eye on your son. However, most of the people who do these things — particularly those who commit NEW crimes — are NOT on any registry and you would have no idea if your kid is coming into contact with them. Your best mode of protection is to keep a close eye on your child and know who he is interacting with and what is going on in his life. Close friends and family members are actually far more likely to be a risk than some stranger on the sex offender registry.

The recidivism rate for people on the registry is also very, very low, under 6 percent and that is even lower when you look at the type of offense committed. The sex offender registry is now so bloated that there are a lot of people on it who do not belong there, including people who committed their offenses as preteens or early teens or were guilty of statutory rape and are very, very unlikely to reoffend as adults according to multiple studies. People think only the most dangerous people are on those registries and that’s not always so.

All these restrictive laws do is make it harder for them to find places to live and work. They also make it extraordinarily difficult for the families of these offenders, since their addresses are also on the registry and their children are taunted at school. These laws are bound to increase their stress level and more unstable, making it far more likely that they will be tempted to reoffend.

I also have grave concerns about the constitutionality of these measures as well and it bothers me that society is so eager to restrict the civil rights of citizens. It is easy to do so for the most despised of society’s criminals but at some point they may decide it’s a good idea to do something similar to other groups. Don’t be so eager to ban people from a public library.
CJusD says:

May 30, 2012 at 9:48 am

“It turns out that a known, registered sex offender was loitering in the
library that afternoon, and was observed sitting at a table using a
webcam to observe kids. All perfectly legal — until the governor signs
the bill, that is. Bring it.”

What do you mean “using a webcam to observe kids”? Does that mean looking at child porn? That sounds illegal. Or does he have webcam that is focused on somewhere else in the library where he can see kids going about their business?
SamHamilton says:

May 30, 2012 at 10:45 am

Thanks for the important information.
The_Ghost_of_Jaybird says:

May 30, 2012 at 10:54 am

I guess I’m with the others on this thread who see this as little more than another grandstanding moral-panic/witch-hunt. Children are many, many times more likely to be sexually abused by someone in their own family or a known and trusted authority figure like a teacher or pastor than by some anonymous pervert lurking in the young-adult section at the public library, but I guess this sort of thing is a reliable, low-risk vote-getter for politicians who want to appear “tough on crime”.
AnneMarie Dickey says:

May 30, 2012 at 11:11 am

In some states, it can also be the 17 year old boyfriend and 16 year old girlfriend…and they both end up on the registry.

I am all for keeping child molester predators away from kids. I do NOT support damaging the Constitution to do it, nor do I think that somebody who was arrested for urinating in the alley behind a bar (or the infamous case in Georgia of the 17 year old girl arrested with her 16 year old boyfriend and put on the registry) should be banned from public places and penalized for life.
ossicle says:

May 30, 2012 at 11:36 am

Yes, I’m baffled by that accusation as well.
Mike says:

May 30, 2012 at 11:50 am

It is strange that sex offenders are the only former group of offenders who do their time and remain permanently stigmatized, even after their release and probation is over. We are in the midst of a sexual panic and child abuse panic that sometimes clouds are better understanding of justice and liberty.

If an ex-offender can’t go to the library or the park or the beach, it represents a limitation to public spaces that we exact on no other group of offenders. Why don’t we have the same concerns about drug dealers or killers or people who steal?
JimmyQuiggs says:

May 30, 2012 at 11:52 am

I dread the high-minded chastisments, but the story of the creep in the library seems a good example of where law can’t be a replacement for the kind of community involvement where ordinary people can confront the man and ask him just what the hell he thinks he is doing.

To me this is a greater good than avoiding the possibility of intolerance. I’m thinking of George Zimmerman asking Trayvon Martin what he was doing in that gated community. Yes there was some racial profiling, too much testorone, and misjudgment at work here, but that alone isn’t what should be called the criminal act. Zimmerman was overzealous, but I would sooner defend his right to protect his community, so recently victimized by theft, than the right of someone to wear the uniform of a hood but not be judged as one.

I’m just talking about confrontation. It makes me think of the pagan man discussion. Isn’t this a virtue of masculinity?
Aaron Hinkley says:

May 30, 2012 at 11:58 am

It seems to me the more regulations we place on the free movement of convicted sex offenders who have served their time, the more likely they are to eventually reoffend. Not to mention the fact that what counts as a sex offense varies quite widely – all the way from child rapists who produce kiddie porn and murder their victims to cover up their crimes to 18 year old boy whose had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend and her parents make an objection. For these two reasons – from a purely practical standpoint such laws are ridiculous – not even to get into the question of their constitutionality or indeed more fundamentally, their morality.
Rebecca Trotter says:

May 30, 2012 at 12:02 pm

The best way to protect your children from sexual abuse is to have a good relationship with them, teach them to be confident, trust their instincts and be willing to stand-up to people who are mistreating them. Something like 95% of child sexual abuse victims are abused by someone they and their family knows. Strangers sexually abusing a child are extraordinarily rare. The sort of “predator out in public who pulls a kid off the street/swing/bike/public bathroom” scenarios that these sorts of laws MIGHT help to prevent are far less common than people being hit by lightening. But as others have pointed out here, those who get labeled as sex offenders is so ridiculously broad. These sorts of laws do nothing to prevent the victimization of children. They only make life unbearable for more and more people very few of whom are a danger to anyone. Easy political points and nothing else.
Franklin_Evans says:

May 30, 2012 at 12:50 pm

Well, all I have is the slippery-slope argument: Convicted murderers who’ve done their time and are back out in society represent a far greater threat to others, including children, than most (arguably, the vast majority) of those required to be on the registry. [sarcasm] What I want to know is why laws are not being passed to force these dangerous people to live under bridges and eat garbage? [/s]

In an open society, governed by a criminal justice system that by indelible definition must view every accused person as innocent until proven guilty, there is no such thing as prevention, and safety is forever a relative concept. Mr. Franklin had the right of it when he said people deserve neither when they give up liberty for safety. Or, my other favorite quote:

Vivir con miedo, es como vivir a medias!

A life lived in fear is a life half lived. “Strictly Ballroom”, Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce (screenplay)
Rjak says:

May 30, 2012 at 12:53 pm

Could you post some links to the info on this? I have always been given to understand that pedophiles (a group, I am aware, that is not co-extensive with sex offenders) have very high rates of recidivism. Given the different kinds of sex offenders, perhaps some more nuance is what’s needed here, as several have suggested.
MC says:

May 30, 2012 at 1:19 pm

Bingo.
Sean Nelson says:

May 30, 2012 at 2:33 pm

They are barred from libraries in half a dozen Massachusetts cities, and from all public facilities in tiny Huachuca City, Ariz.

I used to live in neighboring Sierra Vista, where most locals regarded Huachuca City (pop: 1,890) as a meth-infested collection of mobile home parks and cheap pre-fabs. Almost everyone else who lives there is in the military. There aren’t a lot of “public facilities” to ban people from, but I can hardly see how preventing people from going to the tiny public library and the dog pound will protect anyone’s kids in a town that is two miles long and a quarter mile wide.

Once you’ve done your time, you should be allowed to re-integrate into society to whatever extent possible. Our mania for continuing to punish people long after they have repaid their debt to society only creates more criminals and gives us a false sense of security, . We generally recognize how overly-aggressive tactics and marginalization create more terrorists in Afghanistan, but we often fail to apply that lesson to crime-fighting at home. Confining broad categories of ex-cons to ever-shrinking areas only creates red-light districts and bad neighborhoods. It should be a last resort, not a first one.

Plus, your child is much more likely to be assaulted by someone he knows. I know too many people who were violated as children, and none of them were approached by a stranger. Kids know not to trust strangers if you raise them that way. They are much less sure about what to do when a friend or family member pressures them.
Dave Dutcher says:

May 30, 2012 at 3:04 pm

I’m surprised you don’t reference this story about Miami:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104150499

Short form, Sex offenders are living in a squatter’s colony under a bridge mostly because the ordinance prevents them from living 2500 feet from anywhere children gather.

I think eventually people are going to break down and suggest leper colony style exile for sex offenders. Mostly because it’s viewed not just as a crime, but an orientation that can’t be cured. Exile would probably be more humane than the increasingly draconian protections that they would need to enforce to feel safe when they try to reintegrate into society. I don’t know.
Geoff Guth says:

May 30, 2012 at 6:10 pm

One good thing to point out about the incident in the library: the “system” (i.e. the informal system of members of the community keeping an eye on things) worked pretty well.

Here’s my take on sex offender lists. I don’t like ex post facto punishments. I don’t like the idea of an offender serving his time and then getting punished all over again. It does nothing for recidivism.

But may I respectfully suggest to the other commenters two considerations:

1) The function of the criminal justice system, first and foremost, is to protect the public from known dangers, i.e. people who have already offended. To the extent that they can be reformed and released, they should be, but that’s a secondary concern. To me, this means that offenders with a very high propensity to reoffend should probably be locked away until that propensity goes away for some reason, instead of messing about with no-go areas that determined child molesters will probably ignore in any case.

2) If we are actually serious about recidivism, I’d suggest that it’s far more important to have some way of purging felony records. We’ve all seen the part of job applications that requires you to list felony convictions, and we all know that answering truthfully will get your application tossed in the circular file, no matter what qualifications you may have. It’s probably better to make a case for earning the right to wipe your record clean after a certain amount of time without any further problems than it is to rail against sex offender laws.
JonF311 says:

May 30, 2012 at 6:33 pm

In Florida it was technically the case that sex offenders could not be arrested and held in in the municipal jail or admitted to any of the major hospitals as the jail and the hospitals were too near to public facilities (parks, school and registered daycare centers) from which they had to maintain a certain distance in regards to where they spent the night*. Florida of course is famous for poorly drafted laws, but I’d bet you could find similar ludicrous results from other such laws elsewhere.

* Of course the police and the hospitals ignored the law, but the fact remains that they could have faced legal repercussions is someone had cared to make the case.
Tyro says:

May 30, 2012 at 10:56 pm

Note that there are two things going on here that people are discussing– one is that the definition of sex offender is overly broad (in many states, it is) and the other is that the recidivism rate of sex offenses is low. Both these are related– under the maximal definition of sex offenses, many of them aren’t ones that people keep doing. However, certain sex offenses like child molestation are ones with very high recidivism rates, and that’s the reason why, even when sex offenders are let out of jail, we keep them under strict supervision for the rest of their lives.
Carl says:

May 31, 2012 at 4:37 am

In terms of the Constitutionality question, I wonder if an offender could make a case that this is a form of ex post facto punishment—at the time of his arrest, the law said X and he did his time, but now he’s out and they’re adding on a new punishment Y that bars him from public parks etc.

As for the effectiveness of these laws, it seems silly to me to suppose that someone who violates the law by harming a child would be dissuaded by the existence of yet another law against what they’re doing.
AndreaJ says:

May 31, 2012 at 11:32 am

I’ve seen studies that say even that isn’t always the case and that treatment can be pretty effective. It depends somewhat on their motivation.

With young adolescents, the motivation might well be simple curiosity or experimentation. Those kids need treatment or perhaps a good talking to and better adult supervision. Their chances of growing up to be adult offenders is in the single digits, in some cases less than 1 percent. Yet children as young as 9 or 10 are on those registries, which is an utter disgrace.

It might be a situational crime for one sort of adult, influenced by being drunk and depressed and out of work, etc. and having a child living in the same house or visiting, etc. Under other circumstances, he probably wouldn’t do it again, particularly if he’s not ordinarily attracted to children and feels remorseful. Substance abuse treatment and cognitive therapy can work with these guys, though they should obviously be punished and have to report to a probation officer and get treatment, etc. Someone who is a true pedophile and can’t or won’t control his urges and has multiple victims is a different sort altogether, as is someone who is violent.

I’d say that only adults belong on those registries and only adults who are violent, have multiple victims or have been deemed mentally ill and unable to control their urges.
Sean Nelson says:

May 31, 2012 at 6:58 pm

However, certain sex offenses like child molestation are ones with very high recidivism rates, and that’s the reason why, even when sex offenders are let out of jail, we keep them under strict supervision for the rest of their lives.

While it’s true that child molester recidivism is far higher than it is for other sex offenses, studies have shown that the rate can be dropped significantly through treatment both in prison and after release. If we’re going to “supervise” them, we should do it through regular treatment, not by banishing them to the fringes of society and treating them like second-class citizens for the rest of their lives.