15 Mar 2006
Iowa's Residency Rules Drive Sex Offenders Underground

There's no lower form of life than a child molester. Not one. But not all sex offenders are child molesters - as this article points out, some were convicted when they were 16 for having sex with their 14 or 15 year old girlfriends: that's not generally what the public has in mind when they hear "child molester", but that's the rap.

When I was younger, I had a friend who was arrested for "indecent exposure" - he was drunk and took a whiz in an alley when a police cruiser happened by. "Indecent exposure" is a sex offense: if the same incident happened today, he'd be wearing a Scarlet Letter for life... for taking a whiz in an alley at 3 am.

The law mentioned in Iowa is similar to one here in Indiana. I've not heard of problems like the ones reported in the article cropping up here, yet, but I can sure see the potential. Two thousand feet from a school or day care center pretty much cuts out the city - and there's no work out here in the boonies for the natives, much less transplanted "sex offenders" (who may just be drunks, or who may be the worst form of vermin on the planet - nobody can really tell without a good deal of research). So where are these folks gonna go when they've "paid their debt to society" and society won't let them back in? Underground.

Frankly, I'd be more concerned about 26 registered sex offenders staying in one hotel than I would be if they were spread out over a metro area: talk about a pervert support group!

I'd like to see more attention paid to the laws themselves, and some distinguishing done between essentially harmless "sex offenses" (such as a whiz in the alley or two teenagers in puppy love) and the real maniacs. And for the latter, how about longer prison terms - like, say, life? Or the death penalty, as appropriate?

But I guess that's impractical. After all, if we start locking these guys up for a longer time (and even death penalty cases take years behind bars before the final resolution), where're we gonna put all the marijuana smokers?

The Ced-Rel Motel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was home to 26 registered sex offenders by early March. Many other places either will not take them, or, under state law restricting where offenders may live, cannot.

(link) [New York Times]

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