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Does Ed REALLY Support Sex Offenders?
On Tuesday, May 27th, one week before the Primary election, an independent group sent out a mailer to voters in the Third Congressional district telling voters that Ed Fallon thinks it’s ok for sex offenders to live next to schools and daycares.
Here’s the truth about the sex offender bill:
· The mailer is just dirty campaigning. It’s misleading and sleazy, and sent by a supporter of Congressman Boswell. Notice there is no return address given.
· As it happens, Ed’s endorsement by The Des Moines Register praised Ed for his vote on this bill, saying, “… he was frequently on the right side of issues…. He was the only House member to vote against the 2,000-foot residency restriction for certain sex offenders, a law that virtually banished them from many communities, making them harder to track, while driving up costs for law enforcement.”[i]
· Ed voted against the 2002 bill because he knew not only that it would not do anything to improve the situation, but that it was likely to make matters worse, and he has been proven right. And for that very reason, the Iowa County Attorneys Association – that is, the association of Iowa prosecutors – also opposed the bill, as do many others in law enforcement and those working with victims of sexual assault.
· First, as the Iowa prosecutors acknowledge, “The research shows that there is no correlation between residency restrictions and reducing sex offenses against children or improving the safety of children.”[ii] Scott County prosecutor Bill Davis put it clearly when he said of the law, “It’s the wrong path. It doesn’t make anyone safe….” Common sense tells you why. The law doesn’t keep sex offenders from visiting schools, as the mailer pictures; it doesn’t restrict their movements at all. It simply says they can’t reside within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare center. As one Republican state representative and retired state trooper said, “The residency restriction was passed on emotion and emotion has no intelligence.”[iii]
·
Second, not only has it not made our
children safer, it has actually made them less
safe. One of the unintended but foreseeable
effects of the law was that it drove a lot of
sex offenders underground. According to the
Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, since
the law went into effect, the number of sex
offenders that the system has lost track of has
more than doubled.
·
Third, the law didn’t discriminate
between sexual predators and people who have
been labeled as sex offenders for behavior that
has nothing to do with hurting children, such
as a college student who, as prank, urinated in
public. Bad behavior, but not something that
warrants keeping him from living near schools
or daycare centers for the rest of his life. Or
the boy just turned 18 who had sex with his
girlfriend who was 16 and about to turn 17.
·
So Ed opposed a bill that is now
generally agreed to be a mistake – by
prosecutors, sheriffs and police, and those who
work with the victims of sexual assault. He
stood up alone and told the truth, and The Des
Moines Register has now praised him for
that. But in a ugly example of cynical,
negative politics, Boswell supporters have sent
out a mailer only a week before the election to
make it look as if Ed supports sex offenders.