Most of you know by now that I don't like sex offender housing restrictions because they provide a false sense of security, they encourage offenders to drop out of the tracking system, and they ignore the most likely offenders (family and friends) in favor of the most easily targeted. Senator Tony Fulton's LB735 takes that one step further by limiting how closely to schools and daycares sex offenders can work. Here's a rule of thumb: if a politician proposes legislation in reaction to a single specific incident, it's probably a bad law. The rule applies here.
The biggest giveaway that LB735 is all fluff and no substance is that the restriction deals only with distance. It would be illegal to work in a suit-and-tie office 400 feet from a school, but it would not be illegal to work with and/or serve children in a business 510 feet from a school. In other words, the legislation has nothing to say about actual interactions with kids, only how close you are. If proximity were really the problem, why not ban sex offenders from ever being within 500 feet of schools and childcare centers, no matter their reason?
Senator Fulton's heart is in the right place, but his head is in the clouds if he actually believes his law would do anything substantial to protect children. Feel-good legislation isn't the answer he's looking for.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
If the distance was in furlongs rather than feet I might support it 😉
Senator Fulton has been in the media a bunch lately. (insert rant about term limits here)
What I wonder is, if sex offenders are so dangerous that we have to try to limit how close to certain places they can be, why aren’t they in jail? This is tantamount to letting convenience store robbers go free, as long as they don’t go within 500 feet of a convenience store.
I am really fearful that the sex offender law craze is the beginning (or a symptom, maybe) of a long, slippery slope to a police state. The fact that you can map sex offenders that live near you scares the shit out of me- and not because of the sex offenders.
I can think of a lot of people I don’t want living near me- but I don’t think legislating it is the right answer.
As Dave says, if they are a danger, perhaps jail times should be extended. Certainly we could spend more time and money on rehabilitation.
EVER-IN-UNDER…There are only 2 ways to prevent a sex offender from EVER offending again-keep them IN a cell 24/7 or put them six feet UNDER. I don’t see either of those happening.
Wouldn’t this rule of thumb about bad law also apply to changing the liquor zoning mostly in response to 9 South Chargrill? Just sayin’ ...
There’s a substantial difference between the creation of new restrictions and the relaxing (or elimination) of existing restrictions. The former is where my rule of thumb applies; the latter, in my opinion, is almost always good.
To dovetail on Mrs CU’s thoughts - we could always cut off their franks and beans.
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...well, tried to ftfy, but my comment-fu is weak.
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