Why Sex Offender Residency Restrictions Are A Bad Idea

• There’s no evidence that they work.
  
  
• There’s no correlation between residency restrictions and reducing sex offenses against children or improving the safety of children. Most sex crimes against kids are committed by family or acquaintances. They are crimes of relationship, not geography.
  
• There’s no research that shows children are more likely to be victimized by strangers in the areas usually covered by restrictions than in other places.


• They may be unconstitutional – violations of due process (5 th and 14 th amendments), violations of unlawful takings (5 th amendment), violation of cruel and unusual punishment prohibition (8 th amendment), violation of right of association (1 st amendment), and violation of the ex post facto prohibition (Article 1 Sections 9 and 10). They also raise questions of whether a municipality can take from the state the power to dictate where someone may and may not live.
  
  
• They may drive sex offenders underground, with the result that law enforcement officers no longer know where offenders are -- which is exactly contrary to the idea behind sex offender registries.
  
  
• Restrictions can create a snowball effect among communities --more and more communities pass more and more restrictive ordinances in an effort to keep sex offenders out as other communities restrict where they can live. In Iowa, after more and more restrictive ordinances, sex offenders were sleeping in cars. They became homeless; some would show up in sheriffs’ offices asking if they could spend the night there because they needed a bed.
  
  
• This is what led the Iowa County Attorneys Association to issue a statement in January 2006 stating Iowa’s restrictions law (2,000 feet) “does not provide the protection that was originally intended and that the cost of enforcing the requirement and the unintended effects on families of offenders warrant replacing the restrictions with more effective protective measures.”
  
  
• Residency restrictions give a false sense of security. Parents think that if they know where the "bad man" is on the street and protect their children from him, their children are safe. That’s an illusion of safety because most sexual crimes against children are committed by family members or people who are known to the victim.

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