More Goofiness in the Garden State

The Lord of Truth sends us the latest from the great state of New Jersey...

Acting Gov. Richard Codey yesterday proposed that New Jersey's most dangerous sexual predators be prohibited from going near schools or playgrounds, and that police use satellite technology to make sure they don't.

Codey announced his backing for legislation to use bracelets equipped with global positioning system technology to monitor the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders deemed most likely to commit new crimes. The bill would set up a one-year pilot program in three counties that would let authorities know if an offender was in the vicinity when a crime was committed.

The acting governor took that proposal a step further, saying satellite tracking should be used to keep predators away from places where children gather.

"If one of these offenders were to wander into a playground ... the police would send an officer there to let them know in no uncertain terms to get their rear ends out of there," Codey said. "They're not going to wait until he enters a playground. As soon as he gets close to it, they'll respond."

Current law does not limit where convicted sex offenders who have completed their sentences can go. Megan's Law requires them to register their addresses, and for authorities to notify neighbors if certain high- and moderate-risk offenders live nearby.

Following yesterday's news conference, spokespeople for Codey and for Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), the bill's sponsor, said it will be amended to include new restrictions on the movements of those offenders classified as the highest risk, who currently number 207.

"This system is pretty simple: It's tracking," said Sweeney. "When you're dealing with someone who has a goal in mind, and that is to get someone and do ... great harm .. This stops them from doing that. The main thing is to keep the predator away from the child."

Sweeney and Codey spoke of keeping offenders from approaching within 500 feet of a school or playground.

West Trenton lawyer Jack Furlong, a critic of Megan's Law, called the governor's latest plan a "ridiculous waste of time and taxpayers' money" that "offends the Constitution and our common sense of decency and individual liberty."

"This effectively rules a substantial portion of urban America off limits," Furlong said. "If you want to put these guys on Devil's Island, why not just have the nerve to come out and say that?"

Tom Rosenthal, spokesman for state Public Defender Yvonne Smith Segars, said the office would wait until the amendment is introduced before commenting. "But we want to make people aware that ... if you move someone 500 feet from a school, you have to realize you're moving them somewhere else," where they may not be watched over as well, Rosenthal said.

As the Minister of War noted, that last quote is one of the worst criticisms I've ever heard against a policy position. That aside, this idea is bordering on the absurd.

First of all, I don't want sex offenders near schools. I don't want them near anything but a prison cell. But changing the rules after someone's been convicted and served their sentance is wrong. There's a difference between requiring a person to register with local authorities as a former convict and forcing them to wear a monitoring device -- I can see the former as an impostion but not a punishment, but the latter really does involve a fundamental violation of one's privacy. Maybe we can do this for those who commit sex crimes going forward, but it's beyond the realm of both our Constitution and fairness to punish someone after they've served their time.

Next, can we really trust the government to create an effective monitoring system? This is New Jersey, where some contractor will take the contract and have cost overruns until 2009, when they'll need more money to finish the work. I don't even want to get into the fact that the monitoring would be done by government employees.

Look, if we're this worried about sex offenders hitting playgrounds, let's post cops there. And if we're this worried about sex offenders in general, let's give them longer jail sentences. Sometimes new technology isn't as good an answer as common sense.