HELENA, Mont.
A plan to keep high-risk sex offenders from living near children advanced out of a Montana Senate panel Tuesday. The bill restricts adults who victimized young people from living within 300 feet of an established daycare center, playground, park, athletic facility or any place where children live.
Sponsor Rep. Jeff Essmann said his constituents have repeatedly told him they don’t want known predators living near elementary schools. One woman asked “‘Can you do something about the sex offender that lives right up there?’ and pointed to an apartment window right across the fence from the playground behind her Montessori school,” the Billings Republican said.
No one spoke for or against the bill on Tuesday. Full Article
I wonder if this will be applied retroactively and will registrants whose crimes were adjudicated decades ago will be impacted. If they are forced to move, will they be given assistance from the county or state? These are some of the factors that indicate that registration, and especially the hundreds of “regulatory” facets, is in fact punitive.
NIMBY is great, but what happens to the lives of children of registrants? Does this apartment also house the registrants children, who might be attending the school?