Sex offenders bill would not be effective

2-11-2008 Georgia:
The state of Georgia doesn't alert neighbors when a convicted arsonist moves into a Cobb County subdivision.

Nor does the state inform the Athens community when a drunken driver convicted for plowing into a car full of teens rents an apartment across from a sorority house.

But when a young man who engaged in sex at age 17 with a willing 15-year-old moves into your area, the state will let you know. The state will also ban that young man from living within 1,000 feet of any place where children congregate, and also prohibit him from working around schools, churches or day care centers.

An overzealous, heavy-handed effort to crack down on sex offenses against children has led the Georgia House of Representatives to pass House Bill 908, a poorly conceived, one-size-fits-all bill that makes no distinction between low-risk sex offenders and serious predators. Now, it's up to the Senate to add reason and balance to this counterproductive piece of legislation.

Under previous state law — tossed out as unconstitutional — all 14,500 Georgians convicted of sex-related offenses faced severe limits on where they could live and work. While only about 40 of those offenders were classified as "dangerous predators," the law provided no exemptions or calibrations based on the nature of the offense. It ended up evicting 82-year-old advanced Alzheimer's patients from hospitals and 18-year-olds from their family homes.

Lawmakers failed to take into account that some offenders committed their crimes as teens and are now law-abiding taxpayers with spotless records. The blanket restrictions forced fathers to leave their homes at night and sleep in their cars elsewhere because their houses are close to a church.

Worse, there's no evidence that these residency buffers protect children. To the contrary, good evidence from other states suggests that such limits cause offenders to stop registering and go underground, leaving police no idea where they live.

During House debate, supporters thundered that Georgia should not coddle child molesters and that forcing them out of their jobs and homes is the price of their sins. Such declarations make great sound bites, but not good policy.

None of the experts on sex crimes or the victims advocates who testified on the bill supported HB 908. Rather, they pleaded with the House to stop treating all sex offenders the same. They complained that in touting residency restrictions as a major deterrent, lawmakers ignored the fact that the state's own data show that 94 percent of child victims of sexual abuse in Georgia knew their abuser.

As the father of a 4-year-old daughter, state Rep. Randal Mangham (D-DeKalb) said, "I am not here to defend one sexual predator ... but we should not be spending tax dollars and using law enforcement to track a 17-year-old all his life for consensual sex with a 15-year-old." ..more.. by Maureen Downey, for the editorial board