Editorial: Keeping sex offenders away

Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2006 | 7:06 a.m.

Convicted sex offenders are the neighbors nobody wants, for obvious reasons.

But a New Jersey public defender's office is suing a town over its ordinance that has barred a convicted pedophile from living in the home he has owned for 37 years.

According to a story in The New York Times, the 77-year-old man moved back to Franklin Township, N.J., last year after serving a seven-year prison term for molesting three youngsters. The man now may be forced to leave the house he has owned since 1969 because it sits inside the township's recently created "child safety zone."

The New Jersey public defender's office claims that the ordinance not only violates the man's right to due process, but it also contradicts a state law that says parole officers are the ones who must decide where registered sex offenders must live. Parole officers are charged with making sure that offenders have access to housing and to the social services they may need - such as counseling.

It isn't likely that Franklin Township, N.J., will be the only place such issues will be raised. More than 100 such "safe" zones exist in New Jersey, the Times reports, and such ordinances also have gained widespread popularity in many cities across the nation.

The problem, of course, is that while these zones protect some communities, they foist the problem of where to allow sex offenders to lawfully live onto smaller - often rural - communities that lack adequate resources and services to deal with sex offenders. Instability and vagrancy only make these offenders tougher to track.

We fully support Web sites that let residents know where sex offenders live, and also laws that require them to register with local authorities and rules that ban them from areas immediately near or where children congregate, such as schools and parks. We also support efforts by parole officers to keep track of these offenders and make certain that they receive the services needed to prevent future attacks on children.

But it doesn't make sense to ban these offenders from one community if it means they will only become some other community's problem. Such guidelines, zones and rules should be worked out with parole and law enforcement officials who know best where they can place convicted sex offenders and keep an eye on them.