By Seamus McGraw

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Iowa prosecutors, others decry get-tough laws

Supporters of tougher laws governing sex offenders have acknowledge some of the shortcomings, and several states have responded with even more stringent requirements, including placing restrictions on where convicted sex offenders might live. Iowa recently adopted such a regulation — a lifetime ban barring convicted sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or similar institution. But that law, too has drawn fire, and from an unlikely source; the Iowa County Attorney's Association which represents the state's prosecutors. The association earlier this year formally asked the legislature to repeal the law, or at least to modify it, arguing that it did virtually nothing to protect children from potential predators, and instead raised the risk by, among other things, driving potentially more dangerous offenders underground. The Iowa law, they said, also had the unintended consequence of making it less likely that suspects in sex attacks will cooperate with authorities. Historically, the vast majority of cases involving alleged pedophiles are resolved through confessions or plea bargains, and the Iowa prosecutors have complained that the added burden of a lifetime residency restriction is likely to make those deals less attractive, meaning that in at least some cases, suspects may go free.

Other states are also considering or have adopted more rigorous sentencing for convicted sex offenders, ranging from forcing convicted pedophiles to wear monitoring devices to calling for them to be committed to specialized institutions and they have their champions. Television pundit Bill O'Reilly, for one, has supported a mandatory 25-year minimum sentence for twice convicted sex offenders who commit their crimes against children, and other, often Draconian measures have been suggested elsewhere. In South Carolina, for example, lawmakers are considering a measure that would make second time sex offenders eligible for the death penalty.

Critics, however contend such broad measures will be destined to failure unless greater resources are devoted to assessing individual offenders, using current methods and developing new ones to determine how likely a particular sex offender is to reoffend, or to become worse. To be sure, there is a minority of sex offenders who are dangerous predators, usually men, whose dark compulsions are so powerful that they will always pose a threat. But currently, Levenson says, too little attention is paid to identifying those most threatening predators through risk assessment, Instead, she said, most of the emphasis is given to punishment with little distinction drawn between the young adult who has sex with his teen age girlfriend, and is not likely to commit another sex crime, and the monsters.

If is, of course, not always possible to predict when a dangerous sex offender will emerge. In some cases, they simply spring up, apparently without warning. By all accounts, that seems to be the case with Kevin Underwood, the 26-year-old grocery store clerk who, authorities say, confessed last week to luring a 10-year-old girl to his Purcell, Oklahoma home, sexually abusing her, strangling her, and stashing her body in a plastic tub. Authorities have said that the young man had attempted to decapitate the girl with a saw and had planned to eat her remains. He had even purchased meat tenderizer and metal skewers for that purpose, they have said.

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Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net