Your roommate’s bedroom is full of garbage bags. They’re supposed to be full of paper, but it smells like a rotting burrito. One day, you find his garbage piled up in front of your door. "Me and my girlfriend enacted a new policy to keep our room from smelling so bad," he responds to your yelling. "No new garbage allowed within 15 feet of my room." If you’re really clever you’ll respond, "What are you, Green Bay?"
The difference between this simple analogy and Green Bay’s recent sex offender ordinance is that people aren’t garbage. Still, city officials embrace your roommate’s logic. The Green Bay City Council voted to bar sex offenders from moving in within 2,000 feet of schools, parks and "any other place designated by the city as a place where children are known to congregate." In practice, it bans sex offenders from the city.
Of course, Green Bay is just part of a trend that has been sweeping the nation. In the absence of substantive evidence that the restrictions actually work, maybe we can blame lazy cable news coverage. After all, the 24-hour outlet handbook for slow news days has only two pages: good looking missing people and car chases (here’s looking at you, MSNBC). Indeed, America is experiencing a bout of paranoia over sex offenders. While some of the reforms are common sense, others are just common politics.
Time for a quick case study: In 2005, Gov. Jim Doyle signed "Amie’s Law," which allowed police to release information about sex offenders who committed crimes as juveniles. That was a common sense measure that enabled law enforcement to warn the community about criminals who have to be released, but haven’t been rehabilitated. Back then, the chief of staff for Amie’s Law co-sponsor Rep. Donald Friske, R-Merrill, told me they were confident police wouldn’t abuse the directive.
"Law enforcement does not have an interest in crying wolf over a nonthreatening registrant on the sex offender list," Tim Gary said.
On the other end of the spectrum, all Mayor Jim Schmitt could say in defense of Green Bay’s law is that the city houses more than its fair share of sex offenders. There is no moral fortitude in locking these people out and pawning them onto more considerate communities. What if everyone followed this example? Do we create a sex offenders' island? Or do city councils with common decency get stuck with a glut of offenders?
Plus, Human Rights Watch recently completed a two-year report that criticizes measures like Green Bay’s. In practice, these municipalities only strip offenders of the ability to rehabilitate in the communities where they have personal connections.
Still, it's easy to understand why public figures are uncomfortable mounting any defense of sexual predators. It's uncomfortable to me, and I once endorsed Donald Trump for president (just to make a point, mind you. Feel free to scan the archives). Nonetheless, there is no greater calling for a democracy than to craft justice that the citizenry accepts and to guarantee liberty for those who abide by those rules. On these counts, Green Bay’s government has failed miserably. These people have paid off their debt to society, and if offenders are still dangerous, communities should take steps to keep these people in jail longer by lobbying for changes in sentencing guidelines.
Of course, these bills are popular with politicians who use irresponsible rhetoric to cow opposition into silence. They don’t consider the long-term impact of their legislation, and of course, offering real solutions that are harder to explain — like rehabilitation — is rarely politically expedient. Protecting children will always be popular, and I don’t doubt the motives of Green Bay’s city council, but lawmakers have an obligation to be responsible stewards, even in the midst of a public scare.
Innovation hasn’t exactly been a hallmark of our government of late. We pump money into cavernous facilities where dangerous criminals stew only to exit more jaded and hardened. Still, we can’t figure out why our crime rates are skyrocketing.
That said, the media has largely left this issue derelict. It is our job to negotiate uncomfortable terrain and discover truth with facts. Yet this debate has been one-sided, with TV and newspapers for the most part taking the easy way out by telling horror stories about repeat offenders, while ignoring why it happens in the first place. I love hearing about the lives Amber Alerts save, but how many lives has the failure of our correctional system to rehabilitate cost? It is not as marketable a story, but it's just as important.
Bassey Etim ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and journalism.
