State Rep. Ed Fallon said Friday that lawmakers should reconsider controversial restrictions on where many convicted sex offenders can live and focus instead on more effective measures to protect children.
'You can't expect a knee-jerk political reaction to work. It's got to be an intelligent policy decision,' said Fallon, a Des Moines Democrat who will seek his party's nomination for governor."
Ed dares speak the truth. Good for him. It hurts him not at all - lawn order conservatives are scarcely going to be in his camp anyway - and it puts the issue on the table. Glover, Yepsen, et al. will have to ask Culver, Blouin and Judge the same question. I hope their answers are as realistic.
Our local headline this AM notes the arrest of a sex offender who was stalking students near West High. Buried in the last paragraph is his address: Western Hills trailer court in Coralville, well over 2000 feet away and one more indicator of the irrrelevance of the radius law.
So why do I care so much about perverts? I really don't. It's the same reason I care about the drinking age and drug war despite my advancing age and my 20 years of personal sobriety. I believe laws should be enforcable and realistic, and punishments shuld be appropriate to the crime. The vast majority of child molesters are not people who grab victims off the street; they come in through the front door as relatives or authority figures, or, as in the Jetseta Gage case, as mom's boyfriend.
I'm also contemputous of NIMBYism and hypocritical, passive-aggressive laws like this whack-a-mole game: "Oh, did we say you could live HERE? We meant no!"
Finally, I believe rehabilitation is a more important goal of the justice system than vengeance. This is tricky when it comes to pedophiles; if a person is sexually hardwired that way it's very hard to change. If society's real intent is to give such people a life without parole sentence, we should be up front about it.
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