Happy Halloween (Unless You're a Registered Sex Offender)

by Matt Kelley · 2008-10-31 05:33:00 UTC
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Each year, cities and states get more hysterical about protecting children from sex offenders on Halloween. This year, Missouri passed a law banning sex offenders from having "Halloween-related contact" with children and requiring that they stay inside from 5:30 to 10:30 pm. tonight. This sounds like imprisonment to me, for people who have been sentenced, finished serving their time, and now may or may not be on parole.

After the law was passed, U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson struck it down as unconstitutionally vague. Then, yesterday, a federal appeals court issued a stay, meaning the law is back in effect. It's a tough night to make dinner plans for registered sex offenders in Missouri.

The Missouri law is one of several around the country. Illinois and Louisiana have similar laws. Waco, Texas, round up sex offenders and keeps them under supervision on Halloween night. Scott Henson writes on the blog Grits for Breakfast that there has only been one instance in the U.S. - ever - of a child abducted on Halloween while trick-or-treating, and the perpetrator didn't have a record, so wouldn't have been on any registry had they existed back then.

Some Texas jurisdictions actually round up every sex offender and keep them in one place during trick or treating hours. This year, the latest gimmick is requiring sex offenders to post a "Scarlet Pumpkin" on their door instead of just turning the lights off. Such foolishness mistargets resources on a night with one of the year's highest youth crime rates, plus it increases to the burdens of sex offender registration with no discernible public safety payoff, making the public less safe and registration more burdensome so sex offenders are more likely to recidivate. Friggin genius.

And then he writes in another post:

How many drunk drivers are out on Halloween? How much vandalism and other youth crime occurs that night while police attention is focused on tracking sex offenders?

They can say this is all about protecting children, but if authorities really wanted to protect kids they'd protect them from actual, demonstrable risks that occur in the real world.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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