Critics rake inaction on offender law

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04/24/2007

Legislators need to fix a law that does more harm than good, some say.

Iowa sheriffs and prosecutors on Monday blasted lawmakers for failing to roll back a controversial and politically charged law restricting where sex offenders can live.

"They're just afraid to take action, and the people of Iowa should be ashamed," said Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald. "It's absolutely politics at its worst."

A legislative subcommittee examining possible changes to the state's sex offender statutes will meet at 8 a.m. today to mull what some hope will be a compromise before the end of the legislative session.

Earlier this year, the bipartisan panel heard during a series of public meetings from a number of groups - sex offender experts, statewide law enforcement associations, prevention experts and victims - who uniformly criticized the state law banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or child care centers.

Residency requirement laws, which have been passed by more than 20 states - often in the wake of high-profile child sex crimes - poll well with the public, researchers say.

But law enforcement officials and other experts counter that the restrictions offer the public a false sense of security. Iowa and other Midwestern states, they say, have found that many more offenders tend to lie about their living arrangements or cease reporting their whereabouts altogether.

Several lawmakers said Monday that they thought the Legislature ultimately would pass a measure prohibiting registered offenders from entering "safe zones" around schools and other places where children gather, as well as other law changes. But Senate Minority Leader Mary Lundby of Marion said Republicans would resist any attempt to repeal the 2,000-foot law, which went into effect in 2005. Lundby said her belief is that people do not support such a move.

"My message hasn't changed since the beginning of the session," she said. "We will support additional spending for monitoring (sex offenders) and additional assessment, but people across the aisle don't want them in their neighborhoods, period."

Lundby said Republicans do support better assessments of sex offenders, so that anyone convicted of a relatively minor crime can be pulled off the sex offender registry.

"If they are not pedophiles or people of concern to society, then get them off the list," she said.

In spite of pledges by legislators to let the public know earlier what the final legislation for sex offenders would be, several conceded Monday that Iowans might not know what legislation, if any, will pass until the body's final hours. The session is scheduled to end Friday.

"I think people are concerned about political liability," said Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal of Council Bluffs. While legislators in both parties worked hard this year to come up with a measure that "focuses the administrative resources of the state on things that will actually enhance public safety," Gronstal said, "some people are primarily interested in pursuing a political advantage."

Corwin Ritchie, executive director of the Iowa County Attorneys Association, said he was "astonished" that a repeal had been dubbed by some as out of the question.

"There were about five weeks of testimony presented by knowledgeable Iowa people who work with sex offender issues," he said of the subcommittee's work. "There was not one, not one shred of evidence presented that the residency law provides safety for children. In fact, there was a significant amount of evidence presented that the law might actually decrease child safety. Even the clear evidence that enforcement of the law is wasting valuable law enforcement resources has had no effect."

Fitzgerald and other sheriffs said they, too, were upset that legislators might fail to act after some of Iowa's largest law enforcement and prevention groups, as well as 64 counties and cities, lined up in support of a repeal. Groups even pledged to stand with lawmakers at election time to confront any political backlash, he said.

"But by refusing to take a stand, it almost makes them looks like they're coddling sex offenders," Fitzgerald charged.

Clay County Sheriff Randy Krukow, president of the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association, said he hoped "common sense would prevail" by the end of the legislative session.
- Common sense does not exist when it comes to politics.