When laws go bad

Posted at 4:05 PM on July 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

It seemed like a good idea to someone at the time. In Miami, Dade County passed an ordinance prohibiting registered sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of anywhere kids gather.

This is that place:

The bulk of the felons living under the bridge -- and in tents lining the side of a causeway, in full view of tourists headed to the beach -- are on state probation, the Associated Press reports today.

Homeless advocates and county officials today said the homeless sexual offenders could be moved soon, although it's not clear to where. One building said to be under consideration is an abandoned jail.

(Photo: Dagoberto Duran, 32, listens to radio under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Miami, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

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Comments (3)

///Homeless advocates and county officials today said the homeless sexual offenders could be moved soon, although it's not clear to where.

I heard that it is somewhere over in Woodbury, Mn

Posted by Dagobert | July 22, 2009 4:20 PM

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I think we have the answer to why God made the Aleutian Islands.

Seriously, maybe we should be thinking about reinstituting thevery old, very sane concept of exile. Why should people who are a danger to children be allowed to wander freely in society?

Please don't say "but they have served their time" without understanding what "time" is, in other words what a sentencing commission does.......which goes something like this "we got N number of prison beds and N number of murderers and rapists, okay, now let's apply the following formula to see how long we can keep very bad people tucked away"

How about we keep predators away from innocents......forever.

Posted by GregS | July 22, 2009 7:47 PM

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We will never be able to keep sexual predators away from every single children. So what if they're sleeping within a mile of a "gathering place"? That pales in comparison to them sleeping next door.

This is yet another feel-good law that does diddly to effect society, other than making sex offenders homeless. Does it make you feel safer? maybe. Does it actually make you (or your kids) safer? No.

Does this apply to sexual offenders whose victims are adults? or only pedophiles?

Laws like this seem to make law enforcement harder. Harder means less consistently enforced.

Posted by Elizabeth T | July 23, 2009 12:07 PM

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