49 News: ABC Topeka

shevy61 (anonymous) says...

justus-
I couldn't agree more. If anyone in Kansas has any doubts about the effectiveness of residency restrictions, just ask the folks over in Iowa, who implemented strict residency restrictions in 2005. Now, everyone from the Iowa Sheriff's Association to the Iowa County Attorney's Association are calling for the repeal of these laws ( http://www.iowa-icaa.com/icaa%20statemen... ) Among their findings:
~There is no demonstrated protective effect of the residency requirement that justifies the huge draining of scarce law
enforcement resources in the effort to enforce the restriction
~The categories of crimes included in the restriction are too broad, imposing the restriction on many offenders who present no
known risk to children in the covered locations
~Many offenders have families whose lives are unfairly and unnecessarily disrupted by the restriction, causing children
to be pulled out of school and away from friends, and causing spouses to lose jobs and community connections.

Over the last several years, the huge expansion of the type of offenses which are included as "registerable" sex offenses is staggering. The original intent of the public sex offender registry, to identify truly dangerous predators, has been completely obliterated in a mad rush to publicly shame ANYONE convicted of an offense of a sexual nature. There are thousands of people on Kansas' sex offender registry who present no more of a danger to children, or anyone else for that matter, than you do. As a parent, I am outraged that lawmakers have actually made it harder to identify predators by littering the sex offender registry with thousands of people who present no danger to my children. Will residency restrictions make them any safer? Of course not, only a fool could believe that they will. The fact of the matter is that 93% of sexual abuse committed against a child is committed by a family member, or a person already known to the child. The myth of "stranger danger" is based on a handful of well publicized incidents, a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of child sexual abuse cases committed every year. Laws such as residency restrictions and publicly accessible sex offender registries focus attention on the avenue of least likely attack. They makes us, they make politicians, feel good, feel like they have taken positive steps, like they have "done" something, when all they have actually done is allowed the truly dangerous to hide in plain sight amongst the thousands of non-dangerous offenders. Before supporting residency restrictions, I urge you to do the research, look at states that already have these restrictions in place, and see the problems they have caused there, the extra expense they have generated to enforce, and the fact that residency restrictions have not reduced the incidence of sexual abuse against children one iota.

On Is online sex offender list enough? Some parents say no

May 19, 2008 at 9:37 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )