This story creeps me out

So I am struggling watching the Jets and the Patriots play (I am a Jets fan living in Boston and the Pats are in the lead in the 4th quarter 31-14 [ouch]) and reviewing the news and this little tidbit comes across thanks to Fox News.

Opening line is “More than 2,700 recently paroled sex offenders in California have been told they have to move because they are violating a new law that bars them from living near schools and parks.” This is based on the new law (entitled “Jessica’s Law) that requires in part that no sex offenders from living within 2000 ft of a school or park. Why the hell did it take California so long to get off its butt and get the offenders in compliance with the law? The Fox News story reports that the law was passed last November. Moreover, why did this take a special law to put restrictions such as this in place? Isn’t this sensible? Of course here in Massachusetts, we don’t have this law so I guess I am not one to point fingers. If you go to Bill O’Reilly’s website you can see where this law has been passed.

So this seems common sense right? Well there still folks who oppose Jessica’s law. I can’t fathom how someone can read the story of Jessica Lunford and not support a law such as this and moreover not look at current state law and see if there needs to be a “tightening up”. In reading some of the anti Jessica’s Law websites, there is a lot of concern for ex-sexual offender’s civil rights. What? Does this strike anyone else as an odd focus by opponents of this law? Jessica’s Law is not intended to continually punish sex offenders for the rest of their life but it is intended to offer at least a little more security to parents with the knowledge that the schools and parks are not within the living area of sex offenders and quite frankly I don’t care about the apparent low recidivism rate for sex offenders. If we would make the punishment more severe (see my post here on the punishment of Jessica Lunford’s killer) and not give this sort of deviant criminal behavior a slap on the wrist. We also need to recapture our sense of shame in this society and again be comfortable judging behavior as right and wrong. I don’t believe that the push for Jessica’s Law is a “witch hunt” or “politically motivated” as this opponent of the law notes. I believe instead we as a society have gotten used to explaining the why of something rather than exacting punishment for criminal behavior. This equivocation should not stand.