How Much Civil Liberty is Enough for a Child Molester?

There is no more illuminating example of our broken and inadequate penal system than Megan's Law. Federally enacted in 1996, it requires all 50 states to register, make public and keep track of the residences, occupations and any other data deemed pertinent, of citizens convicted of sex crimes. Most states have opted to disclose this information to the public via internet databases, though some have taken more extreme measures-in Texas, for example, judges have ordered sex crime convicts to display signs on their homes and automobiles announcing their status as registered sex offenders.[1]

The arguments in favor of such measures are charged with emotion and initially very difficult to deny. The law itself is named for Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old girl from Hamilton Township, New Jersey who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender living across the street from her. It was reasoned that Megan's death could have been prevented had her parents and others in the neighborhood been made aware that a convicted sex offender (three convicted sex offenders, actually) lived in the house across the street.

How, then, is anybody supposed to argue against this? Most opponents of Megan's Law, be they liberal or libertarian, are shouted down as barbarians who take the side of child molesters over the innocent children they would prey on. Most states impose Megan's Law on all sex offenders, not just those convicted of crimes against children; but since the issue is most heatedly contested when the safety of the children is supposedly at stake, I'll try to narrow my focus to the law as it pertains to those convicted of child sex offenses.

Parents have a right to know if a sex offender lives in their neighborhood, Megan's Law proponents say, because it is essential information for them to protect their children. If we assume that child molesters released at the end of their prison terms deserve no civil liberty, this sounds perfectly reasonable. But if parents are entitled to know where the sex offenders are to protect their children, shouldn't automobile owners have the right to know where the convicted car thieves are? Shouldn't homeowners be able to get online and instantly learn whether or not their neighbor is a convicted burglar? There are many who would answer "yes," I'm sure, but I find it curious there hasn't been a nationwide grassroots movement for these laws as there was for Megan's Law.

The difference between burglars and car thieves, and child molesters, supporters of the law argue, is that child molesters cannot be rehabilitated. The rate of recidivism among convicted sex offenders is higher than among those convicted of other crimes-child advocate Andrew Vacchs wrote an article in the New York Daily News not long after Megan Kanka's murder in which he says "only the most deluded" would claim the rate of recidivism among child sex offenders to be under 50 percent.[2] According to statistics released by the Department of Justice in November 2003, the percentage of convicted child molesters rearrested is actually around 40; the recidivism rate of statutory rapists is ten points higher.[3] The statistics count rearrests for any crime, not just sex crimes, so how many child molesters actually go on to prey on more children after getting out of prison still seems to be an open subject.

Still, this raises another question, and brings us back to where we started, with Megan's Law exemplifying the sorry state of the penal system in the United States: if child sex offenders are so dangerous and prone to return to their old habits after release from prison, why are we letting them out of prison in the first place?

The prison system ought to be practical as well as punitive; we don't lock up criminals merely to punish them, but to protect society from them. If child molesters are so dangerous that the government must keep track of them after they are released (for the rest of their lives in most Megan's Law states), would it not be a much simpler solution to keep them in prison in the first place? If the purpose of the law is to protect children, this is the only sensible way to go about it. Instead of lobbying in the mid-1990s for mandatory registration and disclosure of convicted sex offenders, why didn't concerned parents and child advocates insist on mandatory life sentences for these people? Wouldn't that have made a much better Megan's Law?

But I'm being unrealistic, my girlfriend, an emphatic Megan's Law supporter, tells me. Often sex offenders are released because their sentences have been served and there is no other choice. Until more severe mandatory sentences are in place, allowing parents to know where the convicted child molesters are is the next best thing, I'm told. I'm also told that the rights of a convicted child molester are secondary to the rights of a parent to protect a child, and of a child to be free from the predation of a pedophile. This makes sense if we assume that sex offender registration laws exist purely to enhance public safety and are not punitive to the individuals forced to register and publicly disclose their sex crime convictions, which is a tremendously asinine assumption.

The state databases of sex convicts are built on information provided by offenders who complying with the law. The percentage of convicted sex offenders who do not comply with registration requirements could be as high as 20%, meaning that the names, faces and addresses on sex offender websites across the country are those of the 80% who are obeying the law and presumably trying to live as law-abiding citizens.[4] Why should they, who have paid their legal debt to society and been released from prison, be punished further by public disclosure of their crimes, exposing them to the scorn of the community and possible retaliation from misguided vigilantes? Perhaps Megan's Law was not intended to be punitive, but clearly it is.

Registration and public disclosure of convicted sex offenders creates a population of second-class citizens. Those trying to do the right thing and lead decent, law-abiding lives following their release confront an uphill climb which freed convicts of other crimes don't have to face. Many see no problem with this and view it as a justifiable consequence of the crime, but I disagree. If a person is released from prison, their debt has been paid. Their punishment is complete. It is not for others to decide the punishment was insufficient. If the freed convict reverts to a life of crime s/he should be returned to prison, but absent such a relapse s/he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

But then comes the inevitable question, "Is giving a child molester the benefit of the doubt worth the life of a child?" Like I said, this is an emotional issue. Logic and reason understandably take a backseat to parental passion. The recent case of Christopher Barrios, a six-year-old boy raped and murdered by convicted child molester George Edenfield with help from Edenfield's parents, is an obvious one to cite. Does the right to privacy of evil people like the Edenfields really trump the right of parents to know who lives near their child's bus stop? In a free society, the difficult answer is yes.

"But wouldn't you want to know if there was a child rapist living down the block if you had children?" my girlfriend asks me. Of course I would. But the question is irrelevant. The real question is, "Do I have a right to know?" And I don't think I do. I understand the desire to protect children. I share it. But the rights of individuals must also be protected. If sex offenders are too dangerous to be released, let us change the necessary laws to keep them in prison. Curtailing the civil liberties of men and women who have done their time is not the answer.

[1] "Texas Judge Orders Notices Warning of Sex Offenders," New York Times, 5/29/2001

(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C00E5DB153CF93AA15756C0A9679C8B63)

[2] "How Many Dead Children Are Needed to End the Rhetoric?" Andrew Vacchs, New York Daily News, 8/12/1994

(http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9408_b.html)

[3] "Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released From Prison in 1994," Bureau of Justice Statistics, 11/2003

(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf)

[4] "Megan's Law," ExpertLaw.com, 8/2003

(http://www.expertlaw.com/library/criminal/megans_law.html)