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Banishment II
The Washington Post has an article today on sex offenders and banishment. Georgia is again the focus where a new law forbids offenders to live within 1,000 feet of a school, playground, church or school bus stop. As a result, there are many counties where not a single house meets the requirements. The sponsor of the bill is clear about his goals:
My intent personally is to make it so onerous on those that are convicted of these offenses...they will want to move to another state.
See my previous post on negative spillovers and federalism. And for those whose first thought is to roast sex offenders in hell it should be noted that the list includes "a 26-year-old woman who was caught engaging in oral sex when she was in high school, and a mother of five who was convicted of being a party to a crime of statutory rape because, her indictment alleged, she did not do enough to stop her 15-year-old daughter's sexual activity."
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on November 22, 2006 at 07:55 AM in Law | Permalink
Comments
Alex's examples always point to the seamy underbelly of these "get tough on obviously bad people" laws. Inevitably, some religious nuts lobby to preserve laws that throws fairly normal and harmless people into the same category as the real bad people. And for whatever reason, politicians just never find it advantageous to stand up for people's rights to engage in their relatively harmless little sins, or at least not to lump those people in with the real sickos.
Posted by: Keith at Nov 22, 2006 8:12:36 AM
Inevitably, some religious nuts lobby to preserve laws that throws fairly normal and harmless people into the same category as the real bad people.
Religious nuts or normal and virtually automatic creeping expansion of government requiring eternal vigilance to hold back? I think the latter.
politicians just never find it advantageous to stand up for people's rights
You are treating politicians as failed defenders and "religious nuts" as aggressors. But isn't it more simple to view the politicians as the aggressors? After all, they are the ones passing the laws.
Posted by: Constant at Nov 22, 2006 9:54:53 AM
At the current rate, 20 years from now, sex offenders will all be put on a ranch, and you'll be able to buy tickets to shoot them.
Posted by: dan at Nov 22, 2006 10:34:04 AM
Constant: Yeah, politicians are passing the laws, but it's only because they want re-election (see "religious nuts, electoral clout of in primaries", above). Politicians will do all kinds of crazy shit to get re-elected, not because they actually want it, but because their constituents or donors or grassroots volunteers want it.
Posted by: Dan Miller at Nov 22, 2006 10:47:53 AM
Maybe the ones you mention should move to another state! I would.
Posted by: jim at Nov 22, 2006 10:54:43 AM
So we are stuck with the fact that we need the state to affordably restrain some dangerous predators, but that the more affordable it is the more they will detain innocent folks who have habits they detest....
So, is this an argument for sticking with imprisonment at prices like $40 k per year and against banishment? How bad are the spill-over effects as compared with incarceration? Would banishment produce similarly horrid recidivism rates? If 600,000 thousand inmates are to be released back into the public this year.... and most will re-offend, these are important questions. Shapiro and Chen say we have almost doubled prison populations in 12 years but that we know very little of how prison effects later behavior !
And these questions are discussed mostly by males.... who don't really know what it is like to walk outside at night as a female alone. My girlfriend's passport looks just like mine, but it's not really good for safe passage at night, now is it? Would she be less free if government agents kept the streets safe but would arrest her if they caught her out at night.... like we saw in the movie" V for Vendetta"?
Posted by: Dave Meleney at Nov 22, 2006 11:29:08 AM
Politicians pandering to voters by looking "tough" on crime and demonizing all perpetrators, no matter how minor their offense ... gee, why does this sound familiar?
Posted by: Joe Grossberg at Nov 22, 2006 11:46:03 AM
I agree with Alex that the 26-year old and the mother of five should not be subject to these penalties. I have no problem, however, with subjecting serious sex offenders to such penalties. (i.e. the 40-year old child rapist).
I think that defenders of tough laws against sex offenders, like myself, need to make sure that these laws do not apply to relatively harmless people.
That said, the fact that the definition of sex offender needs to narrowed in some cases is not really an argument against tough laws against serious sex offenders.
Posted by: Ragerz at Nov 22, 2006 12:26:08 PM
Three things:
1. This is going to be the next war on drugs. Once it becomes nearly impossible for sex offenders to inhabit an area legally, I expect there will arise a black market in allowing sex offenders to live where they are prohibited by law. Since being forced to live more than 1000 feet from school bus stops pretty much compels sex offenders to live nowhere with any substantial economic activity, it seems to me the potential benefits to living in an illicit neighborhood have just shot way up, and so have the rents that can be captured by subverting the law.
2. This is going to lead to much more clustering of sex offenders. Since there will be few areas for them to live, sex offenders will tend to live in close quarters to each other. As mentioned, those areas will probably have little economic activity. Grouping together large numbers of convicted criminals without opportunities for gainful employment sounds exactly like what we need to do to decrease crime!
3. This is going to compel judges to hand down fewer convictions for sex offenses, or to find alternative charges that aren't subject to these restrictions. For future offenders, this at least mitigates some of the concern over who will be subject to these living restrictions.
In short, I'm not only unconvinced that this is a fair policy, but I'm unconvinced that it will lead to a reduction in the number of sex crimes. In fact, based on the clustering factor alone, I wouldn't be the least surprised if it leads to an increase.
Posted by: Lee at Nov 22, 2006 1:33:22 PM
I don't think that Ragerz's use of self-referencing reads the way he would like.
Posted by: eriks at Nov 22, 2006 1:37:55 PM
And libertarians wonder why they are not more popular?
First let me clear something up. In this context, religious nut = all parents (except for the vanishingly small subset of people who remain ideologically pure libertarians after marriage and childrearing). Second, there are two possible responses:
Response #1: look at the religious nuts!
Response #2: Whoa! Some people are being put on these lists that do not belong. Lets try to get them sorted out.
When it comes to child abuse, the dangers of a false negative are much greater than the dangers of a false positive. Most parents know this, libertarians do not.
Posted by: Justin at Nov 22, 2006 1:47:53 PM
And these questions are discussed mostly by males.... who don't really know what it is like to walk outside at night as a female alone. My girlfriend's passport looks just like mine, but it's not really good for safe passage at night, now is it?
Neither is yours.
Have you looked at the stats on stranger violence? Women are more likely to be raped by strangers than men, but for pretty much everything else, but men are quite a bit more likely to be mugged, assaulted or murdered. And women are *far* more likely to be raped or assaulted by acquaintances, family, exes, etc. than they are strangers.
The image of the streets as unsafe for women (at least any more unsafe than they are for men) is an illusory image that keeps women in fear and in their homes and looking to men for protection. A useful element if you're into promoting a male or traditional side in the gender or culture wars, but it strains accuracy to do so. It's also a very useful image for those who want the police/government to have more authority to control our behavior on the grounds of "making us safe".
In general, the streets of major cities are much safer than most people realize -- as long as you aren't there to buy or sell drugs. I'm not saying one can afford to be stupid, but walking anywhere with significant foot traffic in the city is not notably more dangerous than walking down random streets in the burbs.
Posted by: Michael Sullivan at Nov 22, 2006 1:59:25 PM
Justin, you are right that libertarianism doesn't appeal to many parents. It seems that many parents lose all ability to do a cost benefit analysis when they value their children as much as they do. This is a good reason to prevent parents from voting. That said, banishment should be seen as an option for some crimes. It gives the problem to someone else, but so does giving homeless people bus tickets to SF... Just because the solution stops working once everyone does it doesn't mean that first movers shouldn't try it as a solution while it works. Enforcement problems might exist, but it is different from drugs - (assuming it is total banishment and not a distance from school ban) in order to stay in the state the banished people will have to find a job in the informal sector when many of them have skills more suited to the formal sector.
Posted by: agent00yak at Nov 22, 2006 3:44:40 PM
"It seems that many parents lose all ability to do a cost benefit analysis when they value their children as much as they do. This is a good reason to prevent parents from voting."
The purpose of any organism is to pass along its genes. Only those who have reproduced are capable of making decisions for the REALLY long term (generations). Thus, unless you have had children, you should not be permitted to vote.
Posted by: bristlecone at Nov 22, 2006 4:06:01 PM
There are many elements to this. But one element being ignored is that by raising the cost of sex offenses, it is attempting to increase the related stigma costs, which we hope should also have a deterrent effect on these crimes. What is missing from this is an empirical study estimating the deterrence effect of "stigma" laws like these (sort of the modern equivalent to the Scarlet Letter it sounds like). Do they deter sex offenses, or do they as Alex suggests simply cause sex offenders to move out of state? And if both, what is the effect on net?
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Nov 22, 2006 4:52:56 PM
Lee, sex offenders [unlike muggers and the like] do not offend because of lack of economic opportunity. Therefore the danger of forcing sex offenders into small clusters without vital economies does not compare with the danger of, say, doing the same for muggers.
I do NOT commend inclusions of soft sex offenses, and the conviction of that mother as a party to her daughter's sex is atrocious. Did it really stand appeal? Perhaps she didn't appeal because the penalties were -- at the time -- relatively minor and I would hope that these laws retroactively increasing the penalty are soon found ex post facto. If a future jury decides not to convict some future mother of five whose underage daughter engages in sex because of the severity of the minimum penalty, I wouldn't consider that a bad result.
-dk
Posted by: Dick King at Nov 22, 2006 6:28:35 PM
Dick - I am unfamiliar with the literature on the characteristics of sex offenders. You say they do not offend because of lack of economic opportunity. Is there a survey article that talks about the offenders' characteristics?
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Nov 22, 2006 6:45:21 PM
> In this context, religious nut = all parents
I have two kids, and I have a problem with forcing sex offenders to identify themselves. We're telling these people "this is who you are; no matter how hard you work and how hard you try, this is who you will always be". Why work? Why try? Why not just accept who you are and do what you do?
I think urges like this need legal outlets. Child rape has no legitimate legal outlet. What is wrong with giving these people computer-generated kiddie porn? I don't care if Chester the molester sits in his basement jacking off all day. I rather prefer that to having him stare out the window at neighborhood children.
Posted by: CDarklock at Nov 22, 2006 6:55:22 PM
>Women are more likely to be raped by strangers than men, but for pretty much
>everything else, but men are quite a bit more likely to be mugged, assaulted or
>murdered.
Michael, that's only if use the wrong denominator of the set of all men or all women. If you measure it against the denominator of "men willing to walk the street alone" and "women willing to walk the street alone", men almost certainly come out safer.
For example, 20 year olds are more likely to be mugged, assaulted, or murdered, but that doesn't mean that it's safer for an elderly person to walk through a bad neighborhood at night than for a young male.
Posted by: Ted at Nov 22, 2006 8:13:29 PM
"Dick - I am unfamiliar with the literature on the characteristics of sex offenders. You say they do not offend because of lack of economic opportunity. Is there a survey article that talks about the offenders' characteristics?"
I did not say anything like "sex offenders have about the same average amount of economic opportunity as the general population." I don't believe that, especially post-conviction since I doubt they get blue-chip job offers. I did say "sex offenders ... do not offend because of lack of economic opportunity." In other words, lack of economic opportunity is not the reason they offend, and therefore reducing their opportunity is unlikely to increase re-offenses.
Since there are few ways you can get money by sex offending, this seems to me to be just common sense. I do concede that prostitutes is one class of sex offender where the members are rationally responding to lack of better economic opportunity. Do you believe that prostitution is behind the enactment of such laws and initiatives?
-dk
Posted by: Dick King at Nov 22, 2006 9:07:08 PM
I quoted you correctly it looks like upon reading your clarification. You wrote as though you had seen something about the correlates of these offenses, and I was just curious where I could find material on that. I suspect you are right that pathologies, rather than economic opportunities, mainly drive sex offense, like peophilia, but I have never seen anything on it and was hoping you had. That's all.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Nov 22, 2006 10:59:38 PM
--Since being forced to live more than 1000 feet from school bus stops pretty much compels sex offenders to live nowhere with any substantial economic activity, --
Or,
They could move to SF. The mayor wanted a program to retain families cos they were moving out.
Doesn't MA somewhat have the same problem?????
Which northeast state is old?
Posted by: Sandy P at Nov 22, 2006 11:33:14 PM
Prof. AT,
‘Although the legal actions have focused attention on the rights of convicted sex offenders, he noted, the victims "have been given a life sentence."’
If the courts agree with that reasoning, the new law is valid.
Otherwise, it seems to be excessive. I am particularly disturbed by the idea that consensual sex between minors and poor/negligent parenting can be considered sex offenses.
A searchable Internet database that includes rapists and pedophiles seems reasonable.
What is the economic motive for such stringent action?
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Nov 22, 2006 11:59:21 PM
The problem with laws like this is that once the machinery is in place to enforce it, it's easy to add categories to it based on the political winds of the moment (like right after a particularly heinous crime) and very difficult to remove categories that have been added. Government tends to ratchet towards more severity and broader categories, and most people are not willing to stand up against it. And yes, I am the parent of a young girl.
Posted by: HankP at Nov 23, 2006 4:00:18 AM
That all of these rules apply to sex offenders no matter what the offense and not to other more serious violent criminals suggests that maybe we are not doing these things to actually make society safer but as a reaction to sexual paranoia. That a crime is sexual in nature does not necessarily make it more severe than other crimes. It does not necessarily make it more useful or necessary for the community to know about it. This all strikes me as a bizarre manifestation of peoples natural fascination of other peoples sex lives and not a pragmatic tool for having a safer society.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Nov 23, 2006 10:13:43 AM
