The Power of Fear

"Not in my back yard."

There's an insidious problem creeping in to the neighborhoods of this country. Neighbors are looking around, and seeing large concentrations of sex offenders living in their midst. Two decades of political fear-mongering, of convincing the public of the "danger" represent by sex offenders, has lead to this:

LA Building Pocket Parks To Force Sex Offenders To Move

Los Angeles is but the latest city to follow the lead set by Miami of setting residency restrictions so tight that sex offenders are forced to live in tighter and tighter clusters, and then establishing so-called "pocket parks" in the middle of the cluster, effectively removing the last vestige of legally habitable space. Many times, these "pocket parks" are little more than a housing lot, spruced up with nominal play-equipment and a sign. Sometimes, they're even smaller than that. With very little, if any, actual room for children to play, the "pocket park" strategy is exposed for what it is: a return to the colonial-era practice of exile.

Even with decades of research, enough studies to decimate a forest, and a mountain of data to choke a supercomputer, the myth continues, feeding the politics of fear:

"Sex offenders are incurable, will offend again, and they're coming for your children."

And so, we shun these people, push them to the margins of society, exile them to the fringes of our cities and towns, deny them employment. Then, when they lose all hope, all shreds of dignity, and finally become the criminal we've left them no choice but to be (by stealing, selling drugs, assuming false identities and living in prohibited areas) in an effort to merely survive, we hold them up to the light and say, "See? I told you! They're worthless!"

We respond, not with understanding the very thing that forced them underground (or into clusters of living areas); instead, we respond with stricter laws and establish things like "pocket parks". To use a medical analogy, it's like trying to cure a disease without understanding the cause of the infection. To quote Princess Leia in Star Wars: "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers", as sex offenders, left with little choice, go underground with assumed identities and are lost to the very system that's supposed to track them, in order to live in decent housing and support themselves with a job.

If we truly cared about justice, if we really want to monitor sex offenders, we wouldn't drive them from our midst with the glaring spotlight of public shaming and fear-based community notifications. We would help them re-integrate into society, with stable jobs and secure housing. But, if we are honest without ourselves, we will admit that our current policies, attitudes, and laws about sex offenders aren't about justice and monitoring - they're about vengeance and humiliation.

And that speaks volumes about our society.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Abraham Lincoln