Op-Ed: Residency Restrictions Don't Help

Newsday has an interesting new editorial explaining the obvious: sex offender residency restrictions don't make kids safer. From the editorial:

Conventional wisdom is a powerful force that often leads the well-intentioned astray. For example, there's the widespread belief that we can make children safer by restricting where known sex offenders are allowed to live. The notion is enticing in its simplicity. Make sure offenders don't lay their heads near schools or parks or other places where children congregate, and kids will be safely ensconced in a predator-free bubble. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy.

Residency restrictions don't make children safer. In fact, they may make communities more dangerous by pushing offenders underground. No one wants a sex offender living nearby. And the effort to protect kids is important and heartfelt. But the public, and elected officials, shouldn't waste their time and energy on ever more exclusionary residency laws.

Having a kid snatched by a stranger skulking around a school yard is a nightmarish prospect. But that's not how it usually happens. Nine out of 10 children who are sexually abused know and trust their abusers. They aren't strangers. They're a relative or babysitter, a coach or Mom's boyfriend. It's proximity through those and other relationships that puts children in harm's way.

Even when the attacker is a stranger, victims are increasingly likely to have met them on the Internet. Besides, residency restrictions limit where offenders sleep, but not where they go. So they provide a false sense of security, while doing nothing to prevent most dangerous encounters.

What these restrictions do instead is cluster offenders in fewer and fewer places - too often in poor, politically powerless communities. And as it becomes harder for offenders to find legal housing, more will drop off the grid. They'll report false addresses, or stop reporting any address at all. Some will become homeless and virtually impossible to monitor. And when the restrictions force offenders away from the support of relatives and counselors, or make it difficult for them to work, those laws increase the likelihood that they will reoffend.