These Are The People in Your Neighbourhood...

Sex offenders find it difficult to obtain housing and often list addresses as, "woods behind Wal-Mart" or the local homeless shelter as their dwelling place. There are concerns that the lack of a solid address will lead homeless sex offenders to re-offend because no one is really able to track them.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-18-homeless-offenders_N.htm

Hm.

So... it's better to have a sex offender live right next to a preschool, so that we know where he is, rather than "on the street" only God-knows-where and doing God-knows-what. I see both sides of the argument. But I would be more concerned about the TYPE of sex offender and where they live. Some 19-year-old who had sex with someone who was 16, thinking she was 18, is surely stupid. But I don't really fear for my childrens' safety around him. I wouldn't care if he were working as a bus driver or cashier at Wal-Mart. Someone aged 47 convicted for 3 counts of sodomy and molestation on a three-year-old deserves to be burned at the stake and nevermind the parole.

I do appreciate the web-pictures of local offenders, but as D has told me, they mostly have cars so don't feel *too* safe. I would rather have them tracked than not. I guess the real question in my mind is why medical science hasn't found a way to help these people to NEVER re-offend. You would think there would be some medication or method that would at least help most people.