The California State Supreme Court is reviewing restrictions on sex-offenders as listed in Prop 83.  The SF Chronicle reported on this recently:

The state Supreme Court took up the incendiary issue of sex criminals’ residency requirements Wednesday, agreeing to decide the constitutionality of a voter-approved law prohibiting paroled rapists and other sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.

The justices voted unanimously to review legal claims by four registered sex offenders, two of them from the Bay Area, who could be returned to prison for parole violations because of where they lived after being released. The court blocked the state from acting against the four men when it first intervened in their case two months ago, but parole officials have started to arrest others in similar circumstances.

The ballot measure, Proposition 83, was approved by 70 percent of California voters in November 2006. One of its provisions barred all registered sex offenders - whose crimes range from forcible rape to indecent exposure - from living within 2,000 feet of a public or private school or a park where children regularly gather.

State law previously prohibited only convicted child molesters from living within a quarter-mile of a school. The new law makes most densely populated areas of California off limits to many recent parolees.

I think that this law really just gives people a false sense of security like many other laws.  If someone is going to molest a child they will travel many miles, and go to no ends to do so.

Telling them they can’t live somewhere probably makes them more bitter and insecure, and hence, increases the likeliness to molest again,  What about therapy in prison?  How is the system trying to help these child molesters?  Or, are they just trying to extend punishment for life?

I don’t necessarily have pity for these molesters but I also have no sympathy for a system that puts fear into everyone to get their agenda passed.  This fear-based policy-making sure doesn’t end  with child molesters and where they live either.   It creeps into everything this government does.