Protecting Children from Predators: But who will protect them from the General Assembly?
3-20-2008 South Carolina:
By the time you read this, our legislature in Columbia will have likely passed another witless and counterproductive piece of legislation designed to accomplish nothing more than win headlines and cheers from the gallery. And they'll be patting each other on the back and taking bows for their tough stand to protect South Carolina's children.
Yes, our General Assembly is about to pass one of those laws barring child sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds, or other places where children regularly congregate.
The legislation is getting strong bipartisan support. After all, who doesn't want to protect children from child molesters? But maybe it's not that simple.
These laws are becoming more common throughout the country. In the past decade, at least 27 states and hundreds of municipalities have jumped on the bandwagon and passed residency restrictions for sex offenders. New or expanded laws have been proposed in 20 states this year, according to USA Today.
Many of these laws are called "Jessica's Laws," in memory of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, a Florida girl who was murdered in 2005. Her neighbor, convicted sex offender John Couey, is on trial for her death.
These laws were sparked out of pure fear, with little thought given to the real effects of controlling where sex offenders live. Now some early studies are coming in to suggest that this approach may be wrong-headed and even counterproductive.
Obviously, drawing huge circles with 1,000-foot radii around these child-friendly venues is going to put huge sections of any modern city off limits to sex offenders. So where are they going to live?
Some registered sex offenders solve the problem by simply dropping out of the monitoring system that identifies and reports their residences. Yes, there are penalties if they get caught, but they are betting they won't. And while they are off the law-enforcement radar, they could be posing a threat to children.
Other sex offenders may be driven out of cities and into rural areas, where there are fewer mental health facilities and other resources to help them stabilize their lives. Some will become homeless. Deprived of a support network, counseling facilities, or monitoring by authorities, they fall back into old patterns of drug and alcohol abuse — and child sexual abuse.
It's also worth noting that 90 percent of abused children suffer at the hands of people they know, according to Nancy Sabin of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, an organization which fights child exploitation. Sabin adds that the rush to restrict the residency of registered sex offenders gives a "false sense of security" to parents and the public.
This should come as no surprise to folks in South Carolina, where our lawmakers have been offering false security and empty promises for generations. The residency restriction law, now under debate, is a perfect example. It is a quick-and-easy fix to a problem that is not even defined in this state. How many children were sexually abused near their school or playground last year by a registered sex offender living in the neighborhood? Nobody has asked the question, and nobody seems to care.
Answering that question, there has not been a single crime reported anywhere in the nation, that could have been prevented if a residency law was in place beforehand! eAdvocate
Passing this vacuous law will cost the General Assembly nothing. But it will cost local law enforcement agencies quite a lot, if the experience of other states is an indication. After all, our legislators won't be responsible for monitoring the whereabouts of sex offenders, measuring the distance from their door to the nearest park or school, arresting and booking them if they come up a few feet short.
If our distinguished solons would stop posturing for a moment and look around, they might find some real and tangible measures to help the children of South Carolina. After all, according to the 2006 national Kids Count Databook, our state ranks 47th in the nation in the well being of its children. Nearly a quarter of the state's children live in poverty, and we rank fourth for low birth-weight babies in the nation as a result of a lack of insurance and prenatal care.
Some 38 percent of high school students smoke in South Carolina. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that the state spend $23.9 million a year on tobacco prevention programs for children and teens. In 2004, the state spent $1.1 million on such programs.
The state's public education system remains among the worst in the nation, due in large part to an antiquated school-funding formula that the General Assembly refuses to restructure. To meet the current state budget deficit, the first thing Gov. Mark Sanford recommended cutting was health insurance for needy children.
Sex offenders? Let's keep these politicians away from our children. ..more.. by WILL MOREDOCK
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