Governor's Proposals for Sex Offenders

In the 2006 State of the State message, Kathleen Sebelius recommended two legislative acts to deal with the Kansas sex offender problem, particularly those criminals who hurt children. Her "…common sense steps to make (our) families safer…" are: (1) double prison sentences for sex offenders, and (2) require all repeat sex offenders (to) wear electronic tracking devices. Well, what is "common sense"? It is "sense", that is, understanding, judgement or opinion, etc., which is supposedly "common", that is, usual, standard, ordinary, conventional, shared, etc. And, if her solutions were "common sense', that is, something everyone can understand and agree with, wouldn't they have already been implemented? "Common sense" apparently is not as pervasive as one might believe. Perhaps telling the Kansas Legislature a proposal is "common sense" makes them less resistant to an idea.

Within several days of her speech, a Senate committee approved new punishments for sexual offenders - life sentences without parole for violent sexual offenders and, for other sexual offenders, long sentences and lifetime electronic monitoring for parolees. It remains to be seen what the full Senate and House of Representatives will do with this proposal; one that lawmakers are reported as calling a "priority". I guess its priority comes from the "common sense" of this approach not being previously recognized.

If we have to pay for more prisons to house sexual offenders forever and for longer, I have a suggestion. House them in wooden barracks without amenities and within fenced compounds, like the POW stalags of World War II. Each jailed offender could wear a GPS transmitter to alert a minimal security staff of any attempted escape and, if the escape were successful, of their whereabouts. At least, this rudimentary facility would keep costs down and provide a place to train the staff for the new agency, Kansas Electronic Monitoring of Repeat Sex Offenders Bureau (KEMORSOB), which will be needed to keep track of all the released sex offenders. Without a special state unit, each of 105 counties will have to set up their own monitoring divisions or add staff to their law enforcement dispatch systems to handle the new workload. Now, there are some common sense proposals to mull over.

What makes sense, common or not, is not to throw the book at all sex offenders. Rather, the sexual predator program ran by SRS at Larned State Hospital, which has been in effect since 1994, should be expanded (but housed in stalag-type compounds). Already, sex offenders who are termed predators, non-violent or violent, are confined indefinitely (which is the same as life without parole proposed for the violent ones) for care and treatment. We merely need to sentence all sexual offenders to the sexual predator program first, with a prison sentence to follow their cure or whatever conversion from perversion to normality is called. Because few sexual predators are cured and returned to society, this would eliminate the expense of electronic monitoring of released repeat sexual offenders and, by providing more subjects, create the opportunity for an in-depth study of sexual perversion, so that its causes can be better understood. We really need to understand the difference between simple bad sexual behavior, deserving punishment, and uncontrollable predatory sexual behavior, deserving isolation. The solution to protecting children is to reduce the number of sexual offenders, a proactive solution, rather than jailing those who harm children, a reactive solution. Let's use common sense and take a proactive stance to head off damage to a child.