Sex Offenders, Residency Laws and Definitional Problems

The Washington Post is carrying a story on a Georgia law that bars sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school,playground, church or school bus stop. Sounds like a pretty good law, right? Well not so fast.

The impact would be that many counties in the state would be completely off limits to sex offenders as a place of residence. While that may not, in and of itself, seem like a bad thing, the definition of sex offender in Georgia is not confined to pedophiles or those convicted of statutory rape. Rather the law includes people

registered for sexual crimes, including men and women convicted of having underage consensual sex while in high school.

[snip]

Among those swept up under its definition of sex offender are a 26-year-old woman who was caught engaging in oral sex when she was in high school, and a mother of five who was convicted of being a party to a crime of statutory rape because, her indictment alleged, she did not do enough to stop her 15-year-old daughter's sexual activity.

So if two high school kids are caught having sex and charged with a sex crime, under this law not only are they not allowed to live within 1,000 feet of a school, playground, chruch or bus stop, apparently they would also be barred from attending their own high school.

While I don't think teenagers should be having sex, teenagers have done so in the past, are doing so right now as you read this, and will continue to have sex in the future. But I strongly object to labeling them a sex offender. And as for the woman who was convicted because she didn't stop her daughter's sexual activity, unless the woman was pimping her daughter out for sex, why is this a crime?

The definitional details of this law and the intent behind it,

"My intent personally is to make it so onerous on those that are convicted of these offenses . . . they will want to move to another state," Georgia House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R), who sponsored the bill, told reporters.

border on the violation of the rights of sex offenders in too extreme a fashion. While I don't want pedophiles living around my daughters any more than the next father, I also understand that there is a limit to what the state can do. Forcing sex predators to register is a step, that while the libertarian in me finds offensive if the criminal has served his/her sentence, the father in me finds reasonably acceptable. However, you cannot define sex offender so broadly and expect to have the law stand up to a challenge.

The Post story talks about the problem of having such exclusionary zones set up around schools and churches, specifically that offenders will register false addresses, forcing the sheriff's office to spend precious man-hours tracking down offenders.

Many police officers, prosecutors and children's advocates also question whether such measures are effective. Most predators are mobile, after all, and by upending their lives, the law may make them more likely to commit other offenses, critics say.

[snip]

In Iowa, which in 2002 became one of the first states to impose residency restrictions, police and prosecutors have united in opposition to the law, saying that it drives offenders underground and that there is "no demonstrated protective effect," according to a statement by the Iowa County Attorneys Association, which represents prosecutors.

"The law was well-intentioned, but we don't see any evidence of a connection between where a person lives and where they might offend," said Corwin R. Ritchie, executive director of the group.

Enforcing the law consumes lots of law enforcement time, he said, and leads some offenders to list interstate rest stops or Wal-Mart parking lots as their addresses.

Thus the problem with definitions in laws. An overly broad sex offender definition has lead to a vast waste of resources, dislocation of the very people the law is intended to monitor and now the butt of a legal joke nationwide. Is this really what Georgia intended?