Friday, June 08, 2007

What the City Should Do About Sexual Predators

The News Sentinel posts a story about possible unintended consequences to the new sexual offender law:
New laws taking effect July 1 might have an unintended consequence: allowing about 60 “sexually violent predators” in Allen County to live or work wherever they want.

Sexually violent predators stay on the sex-offender registry for life unless a court decides otherwise. They also cannot work with children or live within 1,000 feet of a school or public park for life.

Convicted child molesters have no place in our city. They should be monitored and banned. Our county prosecutor and the judges that impose sentences are a joke. Just go to the registry and look at the sentencing for some of these people - I'm sure you'll be thoroughly outraged at the leniency we apply to these degenerates.

Call me a NIMBY but until the courts start to do something about these predators it's time the city council take action - the first step is to create a law that expands the school/park restriction to 1 mile. I understand they have to go somewhere but that should not be the concern of the city council as it's responsibility is to the people of this city. If we convince a business to open up shop in Fort Wayne we don't worry about how that might negatively effect other communities that lost out. It's every city for itself economically, and sadly I think it must become that way for sexual predator laws as well.

Ultimately if communities begin to remove these people then the prosecutors and judges will finally be forced to deal with the problem. Enough is enough - people should urge the council to remove these criminals from the city...

4 comments:

Craig said...

There would be more room in jails and prisons for violent sex offenders if there weren't so many non-violent drug offenders contributing to overcrowding.

But I guess reasonable solutions are out of the question.

Jeff Pruitt said...

You're right. Some drug offenders receive comparable sentences to sex offenders.

The priorities are out of whack. Don't try telling that to our Congressman though...

Jim Wetzel said...

It occurs to me that there's this inverse-square force law that sort of compels these people (the sex offenders) to stick to the planet's surface somewhere. I'm certainly not an enthusiast for sex offenders. But, if we think they should all be executed, why not say so straightforwardly? Why the "one mile" business? Why be so soft -- make it five, or ten miles.

I don't get it.

Jeff Pruitt said...

I suppose I chose the one mile law because that would effectively ban them from the city - I suppose I could do some analysis that would determine the exact number if needed.

The truth is that the easiest solution would be to just ban them from the city altogether but I fear most communities have gone down the school/park path because they've ran into legal trouble otherwise.

I'm not a supporter of the the dealth penalty so I don't want them executed - I simply don't want them living in my community. Since the government already thinks they are dangerous enough to require lifetime registration then perhaps our city should just force them out...