by Sandy Rozek
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If every shred of evidence showed that traffic lights, while costing large amounts of resources to install, did nothing to decrease auto accidents and actually created a host of undesirable consequences, would cities still install them at every major intersection?
This is exactly what happens with the creation of what are euphemistically called “child safety zones.”
The emergence of sex-offender registration and notification laws in the mid-1990s created awareness of convicted sexual offenders living throughout communities and neighborhoods. This led to the notion that restricting these individuals from living (and often from just being) within close proximity to areas where children congregate would help prevent the sexual victimization of children. Today, 35 states have statewide residency restrictions, and many of the others allow individual jurisdictions to establish them.
This ignores the most basic fact about child molestation, a fact that has long been known but largely ignored: Children are not sexually abused by strangers lurking in parks and school playgrounds. Virtually all molestation of children is committed by those in the children’s lives in trusted positions, the majority in private residences.
The clamor for residency restrictions
Every month, new communities demand the creation of these “protected” areas for children. These are prominent headlines from the past few months.
In New York: “Cuomo seeks 1000-foot boundary for sex offenders around schools”;
In Maine: “Lawmakers seek to close loophole on residency restrictions for registered sex offenders”;
In Florida: “Possible ordinance would limit where sex offenders can live”; and
In California: “Vidak authors measure to limit where sex offenders can live”
Research shows these laws to be ineffective
Read the entire article from Clinical Legal News – LINK BELOW
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