Sex offenders are a frequent topic of discussion in the news here in Florida. We have all kinds of laws about where they can and cannot live, which is good, to a point. The thing is, unless we plan to keep them in jail for life, then we have to allow them to live somewhere.
A registered sex offender can be anyone from a man who took a drunken dare and publicly flashed to a hard-core, repeat rapist. A recent phenomenon is older teenage boys who receive, via their cell phones, a naked or near naked photo from an underage girl. The girl willingly sends the photo, which might or might not have been requested. The boy is caught with the photo and arrested for a sex crime. He is then forced to register, for the rest of his life, as a sex offender. Fair? I don’t think so. But it happens. And these kids are lumped in with the rapists and true child molesters.
In Florida, not only do sex offenders have to register where they live but they are also prohibited from living in certain areas. We have what are called “buffer zones” that surround schools, parks, daycares and other areas where children would be. These buffer zones are off limits for sex offenders.
Depending on the county, the buffer zone can be anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 feet. Because there are so many schools, parks, and daycares, the buffer zones overlap and take up huge amounts of the cities and towns. This is what the government officials want. They are trying to run the sex offenders out of Florida. No one wants them in their neighborhood, after all. The government is only doing what the people want.
Is it working? In a way, yes. Many neighborhoods now have no registered sex offenders. However, these men are not leaving Florida. They are living in congregated spaces; a sort of sex offender commune. Rather than having a dozen of these men (or women) spread out in one city, we have them all in one apartment building or home. They now have a support network. I’m not sure I find it comforting that 20 sex offenders are all living together in one place. That’s sort of like having a bunch of murderers living together, sharing ideas. A little unnerving.
We also have sex offenders among the homeless. We’ve effectively run them out onto the streets. They live under bridges, in the woods, in tent cities. We’ve managed to make them angrier, desperate, helpless. We’ve stuck them all together where they can vent about the injustice. We haven’t helped them. We certainly haven’t rehabilitated them.
I don’t personally have an answer. I do think it’s time we distinguished between a man whose crime was indecent exposure and a man who raped a 10-year-old. These men do have to live somewhere. Unless we are willing to fund halfway houses where these men can live – and be supervised – then we need to deal with the fact that they exist in our cities. We’ll either have a few scattered around or a commune full of them in one localized spot. I guess your viewpoint depends on whether you live in the protected buffer zones or beside the commune.
Tags: crime, Florida law, sex offenders
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