The Associated Press is reporting that the ACLU has asked the Indiana Supreme Court to overturn a Plainfield ordinance banning sex offenders from public parks. In September, the Indiana Court of Appeals rejected the challenge (pdf). This case is one in a growing line (via the Indiana Law Blog) of challenges involving sex offenders. Part of this has to do with how fearful we are of sex offenders and what an easy political target they are.
Legislators respond to the fear of their constituents by attempting to drive sex offenders further from the public sphere. Whether these laws and ordinances are Constitutional – at least as they apply to offenders who committed their crimes before the laws were passed – depends largely on whether the new law is regarded as a civil regulation or a criminal penalty. The former are generally permissible, the latter are not.
I’m a father of little kids, and I have recently been involved in a couple of cases involving horrible things happening to children. So, I get the fear. But I question the efficacy of laws in keeping us safe in this area. Close supervision of your kids is one good approach to protecting them — but I kind of feel like our kids are over-supervised, in a sense. I was talking with some other Dads at a soccer practice, and we were commenting on how our parents let us “run” a little more. Having said that, I’m not sure I would be brave enough to put my money where my mouth is and take a chance by letting my kids play outside, unsupervised more than I do.
Another safeguard is probably to try to overcome the taboos our society has about discussing sex with kids so that they have enough understanding to keep out of a situation where a sex offender might harm them. No amount of education is going to stop a forcible abduction, but my understanding from watching Very Special Episodes of 80s sit-coms is that would-be molesters take advantage of kids’ confusion.
Given the heavily emotional nature of the issue, legislators will continue to impose laws and ordinances, and sex offenders — who are, much as we want to ignore the fact, people trying to live lives — will continue to challenge those laws and ordinances. So, whatever the best non-legal approaches to protecting our kids might be, we will have to take them. Even if we execute or imprison as many sex offenders as we can and impose all kinds of draconian rules on sex offender registrants; the fact is not all of them will get ensnared in the legal system before they cause harm.
Luckily, due to these laws, the rural area where I live is littered with push pins on the offender database.
Yea unintended consequences!
I remember the things we did as children, most of it unsupervised. If I had children, there is no way I would let them do what we did back in the day. Richmond has become a much scarier place, unfortunately. Honestly, I can’t begin to posit a reasonable solution when it comes to dealing with sex offenders. I’m pretty liberal and pretty tolerant, but when it comes to protecting children, I can be very conservative.