Brace yourselves; I’m about to stand up for sex offenders. Americans have a growing cache of weapons in the war on sexual predators. To supplement prison, state and federal governments have recently added new ammunition such as mandated registration and online databases.
But as we come up with more and more creative ways to restrict sex offenders, the line has to be drawn somewhere. That somewhere is high school English class.
The Ohio Legislature, taking a page from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel “”The Scarlet Letter,”” has drafted a bill requiring registered sex offenders to put fluorescent green license plates on their cars. The plates would be limited to sex offenders who used violence or preyed on children.
Yes, the public absolutely needs to keep tabs on convicted sex offenders, as many of them leave prison with their sexual urges still active. But a specially colored license plate would do almost nothing to protect the public, and it may pose a physical danger to sex offenders and their families.
The biggest problem with the proposed law lies in its fundamental misunderstanding of the behavior of pedophiles.
According to the California Attorney General’s office, very few child abusers find their victims by lurking around schools and parks. Rather, they offend against children they know and with whom they have a relationship. Ninety percent of child victims know their offender, and almost half the time it’s a family member. So for most child abuse cases, the plates would be useless.
The same goes for other sexual offenses. Of sexual assaults against people age 12 and up, approximately 80 percent of the victims know the offender.
So when acquaintances are a much greater threat than strangers in cars, how exactly is a green license plate supposed to protect people?
“”It’s about giving people the tools they need to make informed decisions for themselves and their children,”” Ohio State Sen. Kevin Coughlin (R-Cuyahoga Falls) told the New York Times.
Presumably, Coughlin means decisions like notifying the police if you spot a green plated car parked next to a school.
But even then, there’s another problem. Sex offenders often still have families and children. Want proof Watch “”Dog: The Bounty Hunter”” or “”Cops”” to see the wives who stick with their violent rapist husbands.
What happens when the family only has the green-plated car and the wife, the uncle or the grandfather needs to pick up the kids from school Putting a green plate’s driver between anxious parents and their kindergarteners would be like putting him between a mother grizzly and her cub. They’ll need dental records to identify the shreds.
Even if a child abuser lurked around schools and parks for victims, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to bring his marked car. He would walk, take the bus, borrow a friend’s car or find some other way to separate himself from the plate. Pedophiles are sick people, but they’re not stupid.
Then there’s the issue of vigilante justice. Once in a while, the local news will report on a protest over a convicted sex offender moving into the neighborhood. The uproar eventually dies down after residents adjust to the situation and the worry fades from the forefront of their minds.
But if the neighbors see that green plate parked on the street day after day, it’s going to make their anxiety harder to forget, especially if it’s parked along little Billy’s route to the bus stop. This constant reminder of danger would antagonize the neighbors, making them prone to use violence against the offender to relieve their frustration.
But this is all Ohio’s problem, right Well, even though it’s Ohio debating this legislation, this is very much a California issue, as California has a history of one-upping Ohio’s sex offender laws. In 2003, Ohio passed legislation that prohibited sex offenders from living within a thousand feet of a school. Not to be outdone, in November of this year, Californians passed Proposition 83, a similar law that extended the prohibited zone to two thousand feet, included any park “”where children regularly gather”” and applied even if the offender’s convictions were not child-related.
So it should be no surprise when, on the 2010 ballot, there’s a California proposition trying to one-up Ohio on the green plates. My prediction Mandatory flashing red license plates personalized with names like “”SXOFNDR”” and “”PDOPHLE.””
It would probably pass by a landslide. Just about every proposed sex offender law does. The public wants to do everything possible to stop sexual abuse, and that drive makes any proposed restriction palatable.
As a man with no children, I couldn’t possibly understand how strongly parents feel about the threat of sexual predators. Still, that doesn’t mean we should automatically pass every sex offender law that’s put on the table. We must recognize that some of these proposals, like the green plate law, don’t make a lot of sense and shouldn’t be enacted.
Unfortunately, the “”Scarlet Letter”” law isn’t a great idea. But it’s good to know our legislators are reading.