The fearful folk in Stafford, Connecticut, frantic to protect their kiddies from the hordes of pervs who ceaselessly roam their streets, are about to bar convicted sex offenders from the local parks.
Makes perfect sense if you’re one of those paranoids, and most of us in America are, who won’t be happy until the inevitable risks of life are reduced to zero. At which point we will, by definition, be dead.
Can we all stop gibbering in terror for a moment? Can we recognize the zero option for what it is, which is paranoia? Can we for once apply a little common sense and rational risk analysis to the funk in which we so love to wallow?
Let’s start with Stafford. The town’s proposed ordinance, like all similar laws, is aimed at the wrong target. Most children are not molested in public places by strangers. They are molested right in the bosom of the family, by family members or friends.
Still, proponents say, if the law saves even one child it will be worth it. This is the zero option, which carried to its logical conclusion would require us to kill every infant at birth. Only in that way would little Ken and little Barbie be spared the perils of life.
Moreover, the law is very unlikely to save even that one child. The Hartford Courant quotes Dennis Gibeau, program director of the Center for the Treatment of Problem Sexual Behavior: “I know of no case where it’s protected a child from being molested.”
And this from a Minnesota Department of Corrections study released this spring:
Not one of the 224 sex offenses would likely have been deterred by a residency restrictions law. Only 79 (35 percent) of the cases involved offenders who established direct contact with their victims. Of these, 28 initiated victim contact within one mile of their own residence, 21 within 0.5 miles (2,500 feet), and 16 within 0.2 miles (1,000 feet).But wait a minute, you will say if you are a normal, sex-haunted American, child molesters are walking time bombs that cannot be deactivated. They will go off again if we are not eternally vigilant. They never reform.
A juvenile was the victim in 16 of the 28 cases. But none of the 16 cases involved offenders who established victim contact near a school, park, or other prohibited area. Instead, the 16 offenders typically used a ruse to gain access to their victims, who were most often their neighbors.
This is the whole assumption underlying our savagely punitive laws on the sexual abuse of children…
(Digression: an immigrant day care worker in New York faces 25 years in prison for her conviction yesterday in the rape of a four-year-old boy. How — physically how — did she do that? Come on. The prosecutor and the cops and the judge and the jury went Salem on her. Read the story.)
…And that whole assumption is wrong. Only a small fraction of released child molesters go out and do it again. In fact the rate of recidivism for non-sexual offenders is a lot higher than that of child molesters. Don’t believe it? Go read this report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.
If the citizens of Stafford want to do something useful to protect their children from harm, they should forget about the pervs in the parks and think about putting seat belts in their school buses. Only three states mandate seat belts for the kiddies; Connecticut isn’t one of them.
If only one child is saved, it will be worth it.
Only a small fraction of released child molesters go out and do it again
that's not even what the headline says. it says 5 percent of sex offenders rearrested. you don't think there's a difference?
i quite agree with your indictment of our culture of hysteria and crime-phobia, but you should talk to mental health workers that work with sex offenders sometime. you will hear a vastly different angle on recidivism or the potential thereof.
Posted by: r@d@r on June 15, 2007 1:11 AM