GA- OUR OPINIONS: We're no safer

Assembly's revamped sex-offender law will just send worst predators underground

5-21-2008 Georgia:

A high court decision striking down the state's draconian sex offender law gave the General Assembly an opportunity to craft legislation that made the law more effective in protecting the public, more reasonable as well as constitutional.

The opportunity was wasted. Instead, the General Assembly chose to doctor the old law slightly and reinstate it, warts and all.

While federal law requires states to maintain registries of sex offenders, Georgia's law has gone further by imposing the nation's most restrictive residency and employment limits on offenders. The state's lifetime registry also grants no exemption for age or infirmity.

But the biggest flaw in Georgia's approach involves the decision to treat low-risk offenders, such as a 17-year-old who engages in consensual sex with a 15-year-old, the exact same way it treats a dangerous pedophile. Both offenders would be placed on the state's sex offender registry; both would be barred from living within 1,000 feet of any place where children congregate, including school bus stops, day care centers, parks, rec centers or skating rinks, and from working around schools, churches or day care centers.

Under the new law, the only exceptions are offenders who owned their homes before a school or day care or bus stop moved into the area.

As a result, 30-year-olds with jobs and families are being forced from their homes or apartments because back in high school they had sex with a younger girlfriend. It means that dying 88-year-olds in nursing homes that are close to school bus stops are now homeless and living at the taxpayers' expense in their local jails.

Virtually every advocate for sex abuse victims and every researcher in the area who testified urged lawmakers not to re-enact such sweeping restrictions, saying they hurt rather than help children. What keeps offenders from offending again is a stable community and ongoing treatment, two things lost when they are forced to move repeatedly to comply with the rigid restrictions.

In broadening the limits on where sex offenders can live and work, lawmakers have also hampered the ability of law enforcement to keep tabs on them. Because so many places are now off limits, police say sex offenders will stop registering and go underground rather than give up their homes, their jobs and their communities.

Georgia should reserve its sex registry for predatory offenders who truly pose a threat and eliminate those who were involved in consensual, nonviolent acts. It should also introduce a graduated system that imposes the severest restrictions on the worst offenders.

Not surprisingly, the state is already back in court in a legal battle that it deserves to lose.

"There is simply no evidence that 1,000-foot restrictions reduce sexual offenses," said Sarah Geraghty, an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, which is suing the state. "It's unfortunate that our Legislature has again chosen political posturing over the safety of women and children." ..more.. Opinion by Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)