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Bravely I started reading through the text. It’s a pretty sweeping set of changes to our laws on sex crimes. Probably the most controversial aspect of the bill is the residency requirement, which apparently is ripe for legal challenges if the bill passes. Basically, it says if you are convicted of a felony sex crime, you can’t live within 2000 feet of schools or parks. That basically means you can’t live in most urban areas (maybe time to buy some real estate out in the desert?). It is worth pointing out that current California law requires that those who’ve committed sex offenses against children are grouped in to two categories: “high risk to reoffend” and not. Those who are deemed high risk to reoffend have to stay 2,640 feet (half a mile) away from a school, so they aren’t going to be significantly impacted by this law. The “low risk to reoffend” child sex offenders can get within a quarter mile of a school, so they would have to move some ways away. The killer though is people who’ve never committed sex crimes against any child will also have to move. Now none of these people are exactly deeming a great deal of compassion, but you have to wonder if it is society’s best interests to drive away people who could very well be zero risk to children away from schools.

The LA Times has a story on how a similar law is playing out in Iowa, with the story appearing to be that most everyone on the law enforcement side recognizing that it has been a disastrous debacle, and they’d really like to change the law, but they are worried about attack ads making them look like they are helping out sex offenders in an election year.

I would encourage anyone who is seriously considering voting yes on this bill to take a look at the Megan’s Law website, and in particular their FAQ. The key here is that the vast majority of sex offenders are not some creepy guy hanging out by the school yard you grabs kids and runs off with them. 90% of sex offenders have some kind of relationship with their victim, usually as a family member, a friend of the family, or someone the victim knows socially. Moving those sex offenders out in to rural areas which have fewer law enforcement resources to keep tabs on them hardly seems like a wise idea. Sex offenders can be anyone from an insane repeat child rapist to some grandfather who fifty years ago took advantage of the wrong drunk classmate. I like that the existing laws focus on the most dangerous offenders, specifically based on the likelihood that they’ll commit a sex crime again.

Then there’s the GPS requirement. You commit a sex crime, we hook you up to a GPS unit… for life. That’s right, even if your that seventy year old grandfather, trapped in a wheel chair (or even better, in a coma in the hospital!), we the tax payers of California need to know exactly where you are. The proponents of the law point out that Jessica Lunsford could have been protected if the convicted sex offender who kidnapped, assaulted and buried here alive had been hooked up to a GPS device (because surely he wouldn’t have dumped it when he decided to commit his crime, right?). This is a lame argument. If we strapped on GPS devices to everyone who ever took a pilots training course we might have had a better chance of preventing 9/11, but that hardly seems like a practical response now does it?

There are some other fun aspects to this law that aren’t getting highlighted much. It redefines various sex crimes from misdemeanors to felonies (including sodomy apparently). It shaves three years off the age difference for statutory rape. A lot of this seems like just a good overhaul of the state’s penal code for sex offenses, but I imagine those bits could easily be addressed by the legislature (you can’t honestly convince me that you could round up a majority of state legislators that would vote against needed reforms to such a bill).

One highly questionable part of the bill addresses pornography. It significantly broadens what qualifies as a felony offense with regards to pornography, particularly if minors are involved, so much so that there is a special exemption for “drawings, figurines, statues, or any film rated by the Motion Picture Association of America” and “live or recorded telephone messages when transmitted, disseminated, or distributed as part of a commercial transaction” (I love that part: if you pay for it, it’s legal, but if you are just talking dirty to your SO, it may be a crime). Now I’m sorry, but if you have to make a special exemption for the movie makers and phone sex operators, but you don’t make one for say a parent talking about a bad date with their child over the phone, something is seriously messed up. This might seem crazy, but part of the bill says, “It is not necessary to prove that the matter is obscene in order to establish a violation of this section.” Given that this applies to even simulated sex involving a minor, this might apply to old episodes of “Saved By the Bell” (admittedly, possession of such tapes might be considered a crime, but not a sex crime ;-).

Voter beware: propositions that target appear to target specific unwanted elements of society may very well have all kinds of unintended consequences under the covers. The question you have to ask yourself is: “why can’t my state legislature address this problem?”

Honestly, I can’t think of a good reason, and in this case there appear to be plenty of bad ones.