Posted on 02/02/2008 4:51:06 PM PST by SJackson
There's a bill floating in the Wisconsin Legislature to keep municipalities from banning convicted sex predators from their communities.
At first glance, the bill's merits could be questioned. Who wants a sex offender just released from prison to move in next door? And municipalities should have the right to say they don't want such people within their communities, right?
But when the bill, introduced by Rep. Donald Friske, R-Merrill, is considered more deeply, it makes all the sense in the world and deserves to be passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.
The bill - similar to what's been introduced in the past - would stop the "domino effect" created by ordinances banning convicted sex predators from communities. One city will pass a banning ordinance, which will push the neighboring city to pass one. Most importantly, it appears likely that the last dominoes standing - those that would end up with sex offenders living within their borders - would be rural.
There already have been plenty of cases in which sex offenders released from prison were pushed outside of their home cities and into rural areas. City dwellers say having predators in the metropolitan areas would give the predators - especially those charged with crimes against children - more opportunities to offend again. Metropolitan leaders also have long demanded that the offenders not be placed near playgrounds, schools or other places where children congregate, in some cases drawing circles around those facilities that would push predators out of their cities.
Rural areas have their own problems, including their own share of registered sexual predators, to deal with. They don't need those predators pushed out of the metropolitan areas to add to the rural population base.
In the best situation, each convicted sexual predator released from prison would be returned to the same municipality - at least the same county - from which they came. But with ordinances banning those people from living within their borders, the reality is that they'll be pushed onto the rural folks.
Green Bay is one of the cities with such an ordinance. Green Bay City Council president Chad Fradette said his city's sex-offender residency ordinance isn't meant to push the predators into other communities.
"If they keep the worst of the worst - the predators - in prison the rest of their lives, you won't need these laws," Mr. Fradette said in a recent newspaper story. "That's why this law was drafted in Green Bay.
"We're trying to force them to keep the predators in prison. If (Rep. Friske) was a real leader, he would solve the problem instead."
Keeping every one of them in prison "the rest of their lives" will never happen and, in plenty of cases, should never happen. Besides respecting the notion of prisoners' potential rehabilitation and that a person did their time fairly as prescribed by a judge, there are factors such as costs and basic logistics that make it impossible for the state to keep that many convicted sex predators locked up.
Perhaps an answer to Mr. Fradette's idea would be for his city or county to provide funding and housing to keep his municipality's predators "in prison the rest of their lives."
As that very argument demonstrates, Rep. Friske is correct when he says ordinances to keep offenders from moving into municipalities "pits communities against each other."
"The safety and security of each community is equal," Rep. Friske said in a recent newspaper story. "I don't know if we can start to say this community's more important because of this or the children of that community are entitled to less protection because they live there."
Rep. Friske, a former rural county law enforcement officer, also knows that the domino effect of pushing the predators into rural areas is asking for real trouble. Most rural counties have many miles that seldom feel the tires of a county sheriff's patrol vehicle. Even most small villages and cities that have municipal police officers don't have the enforcement personnel to keep watch over neighborhoods with the frequency of metropolitan police forces.
The bottom line is that each municipality - no matter the size - needs to account for the convicted sexual predators they produce. When those people are released from prison, their home municipalities must be responsible for accommodating them.
Rural Wisconsin isn't a dumping ground for metropolitan areas' convicted sex offenders.
Of course noone uses these "pocket parks" because they are too small even to walk a dog.
But they do create the necessary technicalities to prevent vicious sex predators (e.g. drunk college kids caught urinating against an alley wall) from ravaging the children.
Iowa was the first state to enact such laws. I read a while back that the result was that the percentage of sex offenders who moved without registering went from about 5% to over 50%, the police are clamoring for the law to be revoked, but no legislator dares to file such a bill for fear of being called soft on sex offenders in the next election.
The term “sex offender” has been watered down to include people caught urinating. Not all sex offenders are dangerous or a threat.
We need to redefine what a true sex offender is and keep that person locked up forever. Every time we let out a rapist or a mollester, we are almost guaranteeing more victims.
So what are you doing to achieve this laudable goal?
Well, I think this should be a moot point because most of them should have been put to death.
But since we don’t do that, it’s a problem. However, I’m not sure they live in rural areas.
Sex offenders who focus on kids are, in general, not going to find a lot of available kids out there. Personally, I think a lot of them move to fringe areas: trailer parks near town, residential motels where poor families live, and even marginal housing in big cities. Here in Florida, there are actually entire areas around our cities where I suspect that most of the residents are sex offenders or their families; the poor little girl who was buried alive a couple of years ago by a convicted sex offender lived in one of these areas.
The moral of the story is that capital punishment for these crimes must be brought back. It’s the only thing that works.
I suggest Antarctica.
I've been at this for about a decade now; often bills I dislike get revised, sometimes they die, but rarely do they get through unchanged.
Seriously, TaxCuts, once you learn the ropes just one person, you, CAN change things! Get involved.
wasn't this guy sentenced to death?
Yes, he was, Cooey was sentenced to death after he killed the little girl. However, he was a convicted sex offender before that (I don’t recall the details of his crimes, but they were committed on young girls like the girl he killed).
Once upon a time, rape was a capital crime, and so was child molesting. Unfortunately, death seems to be the only cure for pedophilia, and also, probably, the only deterrent. If Cooey had been put to death after his other crimes, the little girl would still be alive.
I believe there is a bill circulating to make the second sexual offense against a child either a capital crime or one automatically drawing a life sentence. That’s the only thing that will protect children.
Having the second crime be the one that triggers the law means that this eliminates bizarre mistakes of justice, mistaken identity and a host of other things. I think it’s a good idea. (Being nasty, mean and vicious, I’d rather see them put to death than go onto the taxpayer’s dime for potentially 60+ years, but I guess that’s a little harsh...)
You are correct. I try to lead a hopeful, forgiving, Christian life, but adults who mess with kids (and the age difference here is very important to the recidivist calculation), can never be trusted. In their zeal, the “authorities” have hurt us all by lumping the drunk guy who urinates on a tree with a 50 year old who abuses a 10 year old.
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