Think before leaping
It’s understandable that in the wake of the Brooke Bennett tragedy, lawmakers and citizens around the state are rushing to urge enactment of far-reaching legislation to better control, in their opinion, persons found guilty of committing one of the crimes typically grouped in the category of sexual offense.
The death of the young 12 year-old girl was a senseless tragedy that has many people asking if it could have been prevented, or the chances of it occurring lessened, if Vermont had had a tougher law governing sex offenders. “Jessica’s Law, ” a statute enacted initially in Florida in 2005, which calls for a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in jail and lifetime electronic monitoring of adults convicted of lewd and lascivious acts against a victim less than 12 years-old, has been frequently invoked over the past month as a piece of legislation that ought to be part of the state’s penal code. Governor Douglas says he supports the concept. Petitions have been circulated. At one point state leaders seemed to be on the verge of calling a special session to consider enactment of either Jessica’s law, or something like it. However, that idea didn’t pan out, but we can be certain that the issue is far from dead, and that legislators will be asked to consider something new, and more stringent, in the way of sex offender legislation.
Lawmaking in the midst of an election season is rarely a good idea, and given the emotions that an issue such as this releases, it was fortunate such a special legislative session didn’t work out.
Sex crimes, rightly, are a hyper sensitive subject. For that precise reason, lawmakers should be very careful when they sit down in Montpelier next year to write new rules on the appropriate punishments.
Vermont may not have the “toughest” laws on the books regarding sex offenders of the 50 states, but on the surface they seem pretty stiff. Right now those found guilty face a mandatory five-year minimum sentence, along with long term placement on the state’s sex offender registry, which they have to check in with by mail once or year, or notify if they move.
While many people today may not be overly concerned about protecting the privacy rights of convicted sex offenders, the fact remains that they are still citizens entitled to constitutional protections. Some sex offenders may be so hardened that rehabilitation is impossible or difficult at best. Others may be sincerely remorseful about their transgressions and want to make a fresh start after they’ve paid their debt to society. Any new rules and regulations should not remove all possibility of this occurring.
The real issue lawmakers ought to address is why aren’t the rules currently on the books aren’t good enough, if in fact they are not. Ensuring adequate enforcement of existing sex offender laws should be the first priority.
For instance, if you log on to the state’s current sex offender registry and pull up the list of names for Bennington County — 32 in all — you will find that 16 of them — half the total — have the “treatment status” listed as “unavailable” or, more disturbingly, as “non-compliant.” What does that mean?
Before we go rushing off to urge passage of new, supposedly tougher sex offender legislation, maybe we should fix what may be broken or not working well, or not funded enough.
For instance, perhaps sex offenders could be required to check in with authorities in person more than once or twice a year. Maybe, it should also be mandatory when a convicted sex offender is released from prison into society, local police officials should be required to make a direct, in-person contact — just so the former felons knows they’re on the radar screen and the police get an opportunity to make an assessment of the risk level they pose.
And when it comes to the funding side of all of this, voters should remember that tougher sentencing, more jail space, more supervision, all cost money which is not is overflowing abundance right now. Many would say that protecting one innocent child from the depraved actions of a sex offender is worth every penny we can possibly throw at it. But, you could say the same thing about health insurance, or education reform and probably a dozen other things, and you would be right — but even in prosperous times there’s only so much money to go around. Choices have to get made.
Sex crimes grow from multiple complex sources and no one piece of legislation, as Senator Dick Sears, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and someone who has been at the center of criminal justice issues in the state for a long time has observed, will adequately provide a solution to the problem. These are heinous, disgusting crimes, which deserve harsh punishment, but a lock ‘em up and throw away the key approach may not be the answer either.