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Thursday, June 29, 2006
Sex offender law is short-sighted
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper has shown he has something that our legislators lack: common sense.
With an order issued Thursday, he ruled that Georgia’s registered sex offenders can live within 1,000 feet of school bus stops without the threat of possible arrest.
“While the Court recognizes and appreciates the importance of protecting the public, the Court cannot approve of doing so in a manner that offends the Constitution,” Cooper wrote after granting a temporary restraining order earlier in the week.
Amen.
Look, I’m all for protecting our children. But this is law is troubling for many reasons. (The judge’s decision on the bus stop rule is temporary and the remaining provisions of the law went into affect July 1.)
First, there’s strong potential for abuse.
County government officials assign the locations of school bus stops prior to the start of every school year.
Someone might review a sex offender registry and say, “Hmm, a sex offender lives there. We’ll move this school bus stop over this way just a little bit and chase them out of here.”
Second, it is anathema to our country’s standards of crime and punishment. Prisons rehabilitate criminals. They provide therapy for those who need it. When prisoners have served their time, they’ve paid their debt to society.
Not so with this law. According to media reports, its remaining provisions include employment and loitering restrictions and a broader definition of areas where children congregate, such as churches. Current Georgia law already bans registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of places such as child care centers and schools.
Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer for the Atlanta-based Southern Center, said the act “imposes one of the oldest and severest form of punishment, and that is banishment from the community.”
She’s right.
We can’t ruin the life of a 22-year old man who had sex with a young girl who lied about her age and had the fake driver’s license to back up her claim (and why isn’t she charged with fraud?) by legally treating him like the man who sexually assaulted his stepchildren.
The way I see it, we shouldn’t make a man move out of his house because was charged with indecent exposure after urinating in the woods and then ended up on a sex offender registry. A caller to the Neal Boortz show on Thursday said this happened to him.
People commit heinous of crimes, acts so despicable and vile that they make us physically ill. Yes, we need to do something to protect our children and our citizens from those people. There is a special place in hell for them, and I don’t mind giving them a head start.
But this is not the way to do it. This law is lazy, ignorant, shortsighted, and just plain mean.
It says something about us that I don’t like. It says that we pass laws casually without fully considering the ramifications or consequences. It says we pass laws based more on fear and prejudice than on justice and the establishment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It’s not an easy decision to make. It shouldn’t be. This law was passed too easily and without enough thought. Surely, we are a more reasoned society than this. Surely, we as citizens can’t be as lazy as our politicians.
What do you think?
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