Sex-offender residency laws / A pointless effort

4-28-2011 New Jersey:

The state Senate is scheduled to vote today on a law that would give municipalities the authority to restrict where sex offenders can live. Lawmakers would be better off not resurrecting this issue.

Municipal laws restricting where convicted sex offenders could live were so popular in 2005 that passing them seemed like a fad. More than 100 New Jersey towns adopted such ordinances, including Galloway Township.

Galloway's restrictions - making off limits any place within 2,500 feet of a school, park, playground, day-care center or anywhere children were likely to congregate - turned two-thirds of the township into an exclusionary zone.

As the courts that struck down these laws noted, the state already has a comprehensive set of rules for dealing with sex offenders once they serve their sentences. Megan's Law requires offenders to register and submit to monitoring. It limits them to living in places approved by their parole officers and requires notification of neighbors when someone convicted of a serious sex offense moves into an area.

The courts said local residency restrictions could undermine efforts to protect all residents of the state. They suggested the restrictions could make it so difficult for offenders to find housing that they could drive them underground.

The other problem with residency restriction laws is that they can give parents a false sense of security. Most sexual offenses against children are committed by people they know, not strangers who live too close to schools.

The bottom line is that these laws don't make children safer and may, in fact, make them less safe.

Meanwhile, the state has no shortage of problems that need to be addressed by lawmakers.

On Tuesday, Gov. Chris Christie listed some of them when he took a shot at what he called the "do nothing" Legislature with a report card full of "incompletes."

Obviously, Christie has his own agenda, but he also has a point.

Instead of laws that make everyone feel good but do nothing to solve problems, our lawmakers should be wrestling with the real issues: securing the pension system for state workers, taking up ethics reform and getting more control over the spending of "independent" authorities.

Still, at a time when campaigns are nuance-free zones composed of sound bites, no politicians want the blurbs about them to say they are soft on pedophiles.

This is true on the local level as well. If this legislation becomes law, it will encourage council and committee members throughout the state to once again pass restrictions that may be good public relations but do nothing to make children safer. And when those restrictions are challenged in court, these same officials will feel obligated to spend scarce tax dollars to defend them.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that efforts like this are less about helping children than they are about finding an easy issue to help incumbents get re-elected.

And that's not why we send legislators to Trenton. ..Source.. by Press of Atlantic City.com