SACRAMENTO — A national movement to restrict where released sex offenders may live has swept into California this election season, with voters set to approve or reject a far-reaching crackdown on society's most loathed ex-convicts.
Proposition 83 on the Nov. 7 ballot -- dubbed Jessica's Law by proponents -- would lengthen prison and parole terms for the most violent sex offenders and make possession of child pornography a felony.
In addition, its most controversial provision would ban all released sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. Local governments could declare additional locations off-limits, and sex offenders would be monitored for life with an electronic tracking device.
If passed, the measure would cost the state at least $200 million annually within a decade, according to the nonpartisan legislative analyst, largely because of the satellite tracking and police needed to enforce it.
The initiative's sponsors, a husband-and-wife team of Republican legislators, say the measure is worth the expense. Although there are no studies showing that residency limits reduce the number of sex crimes, they say common sense and public anxiety make it a smart idea to ban former offenders from areas where children gather.
"When a child walks to school, he or she shouldn't have to walk by a molester's home to get there," said state Sen. George Runner of Lancaster, lead proponent of the proposition with his wife, Sharon, an assemblywoman.
Foes say the measure is based on hysteria, not facts, and ignores a central truth: that nine out of 10 sex offenders are not monsters lurking in the bushes but instead prey on people they know. Opponents, including a coalition representing victims, also note that the law would not forbid loitering near schools and say it could put children in greater danger by giving parents a false sense of security.
Citing the experience of other states, some scholars say the residency rule would banish the former convicts from urban settings that offer the services, jobs and family connections that help them remain law-abiding -- and dump them on rural communities ill-equipped to supervise them. In Iowa, prosecutors who once backed such a law said the residency limit had backfired, and they now want it repealed.
According to maps prepared by the state Senate, the initiative would bar sex offenders from living in nearly all of San Francisco and much of urban Los Angeles, while they would be allowed to live in many less densely populated suburbs around the state.
