The imagined security of more sex offender laws

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
October 2, 2005

The pressure is on for state lawmakers to do something - anything - to answer renewed fears about sex offenders living in our midst. The push stems from the story of Shasta Groene - the Idaho girl kidnapped allegedly by a sex offender who murdered her family. The suspect, former Lakewood resident Joseph Duncan, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Tacoma boy in 1980.

The case has spurred a new drive to track and segregate sex offenders in the hopes that it will keep them from finding new victims. Three months before Washington’s legislative session begins, the onslaught of bills has already begun. They include proposals to keep sex offenders from living in certain neighborhoods and to track them using GPS technology.

Sponsors have the right motive, but their legislation would make a dangerous brew, lulling people into complacency while blunting the protections already in place.

The common thread running through the proposals is an attempt to deliver a sense of safety, if not actual safety. Some members of a state task force on sex offender management admitted as much last week. “People don’t necessarily want statistical analysis. They want security for their children - real or imagined,” said state Rep. Jim Clements (R-Selah).

Washington already is a leader in the nation for dealing aggressively with sex offenders. Many of the laws on the books were adopted in 1990 after the vicious sexual mutilation and near-murder of a 7-year-old child in Tacoma. The changes then and others that followed filled gaps that allowed sex offenders to strike again and left communities defenseless.

The results of a recent study suggest existing laws are having their intended effect, either by keeping offenders in prison longer or making it harder for them to find new victims.

The Washington State Institute for Public Policy reported that 13 percent of sex offenders were convicted of another felony within five years, less than half the rate for other felons. Among sex offenders, child molesters reoffended the least.

Getting tougher isn’t likely to improve those numbers; it could do the opposite by pushing sex offenders underground. Issaquah city officials recently passed an ordinance that seeks to corral sex offenders deemed likely to reoffend on about 15 percent of the city’s developable land — most of it in commercial and industrial areas.

Such extreme measures encourage contempt and disregard of the law in exchange for little additional protection. If sex offenders find a place to live, there is nothing to prevent them from hopping a bus or driving to another neighborhood. Worse yet, they might just decide to forgo registering.

Even the current state system can boomerang. This summer, a man allegedly used Bellingham’s sex offender registry - which listed complete addresses instead of block numbers like other lists - to hunt down and kill two men who had served time for sex crimes.

Not all sex offenders register under the current system, but most of them do. The more the state tries to clamp down on sex offenders who already have served their prison time, the fewer of them will comply. Neighbors will be less safe for having lost a vital piece of information about the sex offenders living among them.

Lawmakers should restrain their urge to play to people’s fears with legislation that sounds good but makes no one truly any safer.

Copyright 2005 Tacoma News, Inc.