CHEYENNE — A Wyoming legislative committee on Monday defeated a bill that would have banned sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of child care facilities. The House Judiciary Committee voted 7-2 against the bill sponsored by Rep. John Eklund, R-Cheyenne.
“The intention of this bill is to have the same protection for under school aged children that we do for school children,” Eklund said. He said there have been instances were sex offenders have moved in next to established day care facilities. Steve Corsi, director of the Wyoming Department of Family Services, said his agency didn’t see any weaknesses with the bill.
However, Linda Burt, director of the ACLU in Wyoming, said that putting the bill’s proposed restrictions together with existing restrictions on sex offenders living near schools would drastically restrict where offenders could live in many communities. Full Article
If only ALL of California would come around and realize what other states/counties, etc. are realizing.
“Rep. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs, spoke against the bill. A former police officer, he has a problem with the state imposing continuing punishment on sex offenders after they’ve served their prison time.”
He may still be a Republican, but he’s on the correct side of this one!
Any feint at rationalism in re RSO issues comes with tremendous political risk. In this case, we have a legislator with real police experience fronting the main issue: continues criminal control.
There is no science, statistic nor legitimate reason for the States to persist in ‘continued criminal control’ over REGISTERED ex-offenders. We are bye-and-large non-criminals, living as much of a law-abiding life as is possible these days, who would no more abuse, assault or molest a child as would we violate our own wives.
Progress is good.
Anything we accomplish in the effort to combat the monster serves to protect all America. We are not evil people, just citizen soldiers called into a different war.