What to do about the sex offenders

This post has been percolating in the back of my brain for awhile. Right now, it's very popular among some circles to say, "I am not defending sex offenders, but the new law isn't fair because they can't live anywhere." And it's probably true. The law isn't very fair. But it has a lot of support. Why is that exactly?

Because we're all scared to death of a sex offender hurting someone we love. Obviously.

Let's face it - short of killing a person or horrible physical torture, there's really no worse crime than being violated sexually. The effects linger forever, especially in children. There's no way to quantify the damage done, but I don't think it's exaggerating to say that damage is life changing. And when we're talking about children, for me at least, it's a hundred times more despicable.

So people came up with the sex offender registry. And now the "can't live near children" laws. Here's my problem with them: they are not attacking the root of the problem. We don't want people who commit these crimes living among us. We want them behind bars. So the real problem is the length of sentences. I've been trying to find the punishment for these crimes in Iowa through Google searches and have had zero luck . (Kris, can you help me out?) But there's plenty of sex offenders out there, so clearly the punishments need to be more severe.

First offense: minimum 25 years, no parole. And let's go up from there depending on the severity of the crime and the effect on the victim. Life in prison for a serial sex offender sounds right to me. (Here's a campaign slogan for a tough on crime candidate: Life in prison: it's not just for murderers anymore.)

Some might say that's harsh.

That's right. I think we need to start talking about just how serious these crime are. While sex crimes do not take away someone's life, they greatly affect the quality of the rest of that person's life. That needs to be taken into account. And if we do the right thing in the first place, we won't have to worry about where sex offenders are living because they'll be living in jail.

(And let me just say I am not advocating this sort of thing for the 18-year-old kid who has consensual sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend. I'm talking about the sicko who has sex with an 8-year-old, for instance.)