Southernillinoisan.com : Lawmakers seeking even more restrictions on sex offenders.
SPRINGFIELD -- Every year, Illinois’ list of registered sex offenders grows. And every year, the Legislature introduces a new crop of bills to restrict where they can live, where they can walk or stand, what they can drive, even what they can wear.
New bills would crack down on sex offenders who try to sign up for Internet dating sites, would prohibit them from driving ice cream trucks or donning Santa costumes and would prevent them from visiting nursing homes. One bill mandates that their movements be monitored for life by satellite.
Those bills, if ultimately passed into law, would join a long list of boundaries already encircling the state’s roughly 23,400 (and counting) registered sex offenders. On the books in Illinois now are laws prohibiting more than one sex offender from living in the same household while on parole; requiring that they have their names and images posted online, generally for life; and barring them from living within 500 feet of schools, from loitering near playgrounds, or from working in youth programs.
Lawmakers in Illinois say the special nature of sex crimes makes tighter restrictions on them necessary.
(Have you ever read our Constitution which requires Equal Protection under the law?? )
“If you look at the recidivism rate of sex offenders, it’s over 50 percent,” said state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock, sponsor of the new satellite monitoring legislation. “These people can’t be cured.”
(Obviously, Rep. Jack Franks is an idiot. He needs to visit the U.S. Department of Justice official statistics on sex crime recidivism ; it's under 6% ..but he was close .
The proliferation of restrictions concerns even some of lawmakers filing the bills. Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, has sponsored a measure (HB637) that would prohibit sex offenders from visiting nursing homes.
(What will you do when a sex offender sues the state because he is not allowed to visit his dying mother?)
Among other new bills pending in Springfield this month are:
• HB249: Would create the “Internet Dating Disclosure and Safety Awareness Act,” requiring that Internet dating services tell their Illinois customers whether they screen clients through sex-offender registries.
• HB435: Would prohibit sex offenders from participating in holiday events involving minors, and from being employed as a department store Santa Claus or wearing an Easter Bunny costume near Easter.
• HB463: Would require that sex offenders whose crimes involved computers submit to restrictions on Internet usage, electronic monitoring of their computers, and random searches of their computers.
• HB550: Would bar sex offenders from using any computer “scrub” software designed to hide what websites have been visited.
• SB62: Makes if a Class 4 felony for a convicted child sex offender to operate an emergency vehicle or ice cream truck “for the purpose of attracting or enticing a person under 18 years of age to be in the presence of the offender.”
• SB1294: Bars convicted sex offenders from entering any part of a public library that has been designated as a children’s area.
