by Dish Staff
Jesse Singal argues that registered sex offenders should be able to live wherever they please:
[L]aws designed to restrict where sex offenders can live are really and truly useless, except as a means of politicians scoring easy political points by ratcheting up hysteria. There are many tricky social-scientific issues on which there are a range of opinions and some degree of debate among experts, but this isn’t one of them. Among those whose job it is to figure out how to reduce the rate at which sex offenders commit crimes (as opposed to those whose job it is to get reelected, in part by hammering away at phantom threats), there is zero controversy: These laws don’t work, and may actually increase sexual offenders’ recidivism rates.
As for where sex offenders do live, Alyssa Coppelman interviews Noah Rabinowitz, who photographed a Florida religious community the majority of whose residents are part of that population:
I read that there’s quite a demand from sex offenders to live there. Have many of the community members lived there long, or do they move on at a certain point?
“The smallest infraction of the community’s rules by one the residents will get them kicked out. Though, it very rarely happens. Only a few miles away, there is a community of sex-offenders, not allowed to inhabit Miracle Village, living under a bridge. Only a small fraction of housing in the state of Florida is available for a convinced sex-offender. Application numbers are very high and admission, based on a voting system, is very selective. Moral and ethical judgments aside, the residents are trying to live out their American Dream, in the only way the law and society will allow. Some discuss their hopes for life after their time in Miracle Village, but many find it to be a safe place and wish to stay.”
The Dish 