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Deep reflections on sex offender residency restrictions

By Douglas A. Berman

Now available via this link at SSRN is a new piece by Shelley Ross Saxer, titled "Banishment of Sex Offenders: Individual Liberties, National Rights and the Dormant Commerce Clause, Environmental Justice, and Alternatives." Here is the abstract: Sex offender residency restrictions effectively banish these locally undesirable and dangerous individuals from our communities because we fear that they may reoffend in our neighborhoods. The practical effect of banishment through residency restrictions must be understood in the context that there are few places in modern day America to which a sex offender may be banished that is isolated from the rest of society.  Rather than being excluded and thrust into some undeveloped wilderness, sex offenders are banished through residency restrictions to neighboring counties or states and into poor, minority neighborhoods where they often live in boarding houses with other sex offenders...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 20, 2008 (boomark / email).