The .Plan

Stories like this really anger me.

The offender, Larry W. Moore Jr. of Augusta, was convicted in North Carolina in 1994 of indecent liberty with a child, a felony. This week he was convicted for the second time of violating a requirement that he register. Under the new law, a second violation carries an automatic life sentence…

The law requires offenders to register their address and forbids them to live or work within 1,000 feet of not only schools and day care centers but also churches, swimming pools and school bus stops. It expanded the definition of a sex offender and raised penalties for violating registry requirements.

Homelessness is not an acceptable excuse. “One of the requirements when you become a sex offender is you have to have an address,” said Sgt. Ray Hardin of the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office in Augusta…

Georgia’s law is not the only one that has made it hard for offenders to maintain legal residences. In Florida, the state authorized five offenders to live under a bridge in Miami after they were unable to find suitable housing that they could afford. In Iowa, a victims’ group found that offenders tried to comply with the registry law by offering addresses like “rest area mile marker 149” or “RV in old Kmart parking lot.”
–Shaila Dewan, “Homelessness Could Mean Life in Prison for Offender”, New York Times, August 3, 2007

Or this one.

In a surprise to parent groups and their lawyers, a judge issued a statewide restraining order Friday prohibiting a self-described pedophile from coming closer than 10 yards to any minor in California…

Noting that it would be hard to walk down the street without running into a minor, Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert and law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, called the order “basically expulsion from the state or house arrest.”

“In the absence of legally adequate probable cause, you can’t tell somebody that he can’t walk down the street whenever there’s a child within 30 feet,” Mr. Volokh said.
–Michael Parrish, “State Puts Restrictions on Self-Described Pedophile”, New York Times, August 4, 2007