Thursday, August 11, 2005

"Please, sir, where may I live?"

If the community is going to designate areas where sex offenders are not allowed to live, is it not incumbent upon the community to provide maps? Some of these locales are designating day cares and "places where children gather" as the center points of exclusion zones. But how to identify those?

Years ago a neighbor opened a day care. You couldn't tell from the street that there was a daycare there. So a sex offender could easily take up residence someplace, well away from identifiable locations such as schools, only to be told he's got forfeit his rent (or lease) money and move out. Pretty soon you've got a broke and angry offender on the loose, thinking he no longer has anything to lose. I don't think that's a desirable situation.

And what the heck are "places where children gather"? The play area of the local McDonalds? Does a child's birthday party count as a "place where children gather"? The term is so vague as to be useless in letting a sex offender figure out where he can and cannot live.

It would seem it ought to be incumbent upon communities who enact exclusion zones to be able to provide maps of those zones to any who request them. After all, they will have had to already map out those zones so that they can go after the offenders who move into those zones.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you considered the case where newly-enacted laws are forcing established sex offenders out?

9:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Take a look at Issaquah, Washington.
They are about to enact such a law.

9:33 AM  
Blogger the administration said...

I see that. It doesn't appear to apply to those already established. But it's based on false information, which you can see at the site linked in the sidebar.

9:37 AM  

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