Sex Offenders
The issue of what rights the government can take away from someone NOT directly as part of their sentence, but rather as a non-punitive public safety measure that can be applied ex post facto, is likely to come up in the appellate courts of this state pretty soon, over the new leglislation passed about "sex offenders" and where they can and cannot live.
The newspaper reports that a new law that takes effect July 01, 2006 requires all people who are "registered sex offenders" to not live within 1000 feet of any school, church, park, arcade, bus stop, etc. Many liberal / libertarian organizations and politicians have looked at the maps and drawn the circles and publicly announced that this makes virtually every community, city, town, and village in Georgia off-limits. These people will be forced to live in trailer homes out in the woods on in farmhouses in very rural, agricultrual areas.
This law applies retroactively to anybody who has been declared a sex offender in the last 10 years, even though that person's prior list of restrictions and conditions as a "sex offender" did not have such a long list of places that were off-limits to reside at.
Keep in mind that "sex offender registration" is mandated either for life or for 10 years after the person is otherwise totally free from supervision-- they're not incarcerated, not on parole, and not on probation. And yet the law imposes a registration duty on them for at least 10 more years, and now it's not just registration, but banishment from all developed areas.
P.S. I'm not real sympathetic to child molesters, but keep in mind that most (probably 99%) of all sex offenders are friends / relatives to the victim, not stranger-on-stranger encounters. The stereotypical "dirty old man" in a trench coat loitering near a school yard, offering candy to little kids if they will just get into his car is largely a myth, an urban legend. The real danger comes from the kid's father, uncle, and mom's new boyfriend, and the location of the molestation is most likely to be the kid's own bedroom. Therefore, this new law can be expected to be completely ineffective at protecting people, unless the intent is just to set up unrealistic conditions that nobody will comply with, the violation of which will send them to prison for another several years.
