At Sentencing Law & Policy, Professor Berman has a post about an Ohio community considering adopting work restrictions on sex offenders. From the Columbus Dispatch:
Upper Arlington is proposing tough restrictions on sexual offenders that would limit not only where they can live, but also where they can work.
State law already forbids sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school.
While this is a new type of restriction in Ohio, other communities across the country have implemented work restrictions for some time. I am actually a bigger fan (on a relative scale) of work restrictions than I am of residency restrictions. At least work restrictions limit sex offender locations when they are awake (as opposed to residency restrictions which just limit where a sex offender sleeps at night). Work restrictions also have less of a banishment effect than residency restrictions because the "safe" areas outside of residency exclusion zones often include primarily commercial and industrial areas. With that being said, supplementing residency restrictions with work restrictions, as is the case in Ohio, is the worst of both worlds since it just reinforces the banishment effect and further undermines the ability of sex offenders to reintegrate into society. And while I think work restrictions alone are better than residency restrictions alone, that is hardly a ringing endorsement.
I suppose it should cease to amaze me that lawmakers consistently enact policies that actually increase the known risk-of-recidivism factors--but it doesn't. "Sounds good" trumps "knows better."
Posted by: Ilah | January 17, 2007 at 10:31 AM