SEX OFFENDER CLEANSING

Pocket parks are latest scheme to exile sex offenders

We’ve all heard about ethnic cleansing. Well, how about sex offender cleansing? Restrictions on where sex offenders may reside are specifically designed to result in sex offender cleansing.

Most states have passed laws banning sex offenders from residing within 1,000 feet of where children may gather, while a few have passed a 2,000 foot restriction. Communities all across America have passed ordinances prohibiting convicted sex offenders from residing in the vicinity of any school, playground, park or any other place where children may gather that are even more restrictive than the state laws. Some city ordinances have enacted a 2,500 foot restriction.

Some of the state laws and many of the local ordinances do not distinguish between the different types of sex offenders. Thus in many places a person convicted of exposing his person is treated the same way as a child molester.

Let’s be honest. We don’t want any sex offenders living anywhere around us. By passing an ordinance banning a sex offender from residing anywhere within 2,000 feet of a place where children may gather just about prevents such a person from living anywhere within the city limits of a municipality. In larger cities such ordinances have resulted in a concentration of sex offenders in certain neighborhoods. Even though there are no places in those neighborhoods where children gather, the cities intend to cleanse themselves of all sex offenders.

Pocket parks are the latest scheme to exile sex offenders. When a city finds a concentration of sex offenders in places where children do not gather, they take a tiny parcel of grassy land where they set up a jungle-gym and designate it as a children's playground. If there is no grassy area, they’ll tear up a strip of concrete, plant grass in its place and set up that jungle-gym. Any way you look at it, that's sex offender cleansing at work.

According to the Los Angeles times, the City of Angels is now building a pocket park in Harbor Gateway to get rid of 33 sex offenders living in one apartment building. This park is only one-fifth of an acre in size, barely large enough to accommodate two jungle-gyms, some benches and a brick wall. Harbor Gateway has one of the city's highest concentrations of registered sex offenders: 86 live in a 13-block area.

According to the Times, Los Angeles plans to build a total of three pocket parks with the intent of driving out registered sex offenders; two will be in Wilmington.

Make no misstate about it - I have absolutely no use or sympathy for pedophiles. But I wonder how many of those 86 sex offenders who have been driven to Harbor Gateway by the state’s 2,000 foot restriction are actually child molesters? And even if all 86 of them are pedophiles, which I’m sure they’re not, shouldn’t they have the right to live with their parents, siblings or other relatives when released from prison, even if that happens to be within 2,000 feet of places where children may gather?

Jeff ‘Paco’ Doyle is known as a tough law and order guy, but Jeff says that “These laws make the public feel good while chewing the Bill of Rights into a spit-wad.”

Since our laws allow pedophiles to be released from prison, other laws should not be enacted for the purpose of sex offender cleansing. Scientific studies have shown that child molesters continue to have a proclivity for molesting children even after imprisonment and/or participation in clinical treatment programs. But I have not seen a single study that shows restrictions on where sex offenders may reside have made children one bit safer.

If we don’t want any child molesters living in our midst, we should enact laws that carry a mandatory life sentence upon conviction for the crime of child molestation. Of course, civil libertarians would scream bloody murder about such sentences constituting cruel and unusual punishment. Bus a life sentence is less cruel than sex offender cleansing.