No Halloween for Maryland's sex offenders

About 1,200 violent or child sex offenders on probation or parole in Maryland have been ordered to hang these orange pumpkin signs -- or plain ones reading, "No candy" -- at their residences today. If they don't, the knock at the door will be from an officer of the law.

Maryland is one of a growing number of states that are expanding restrictions on sex offenders for Halloween, including required signage and curfews.

"We thought it would be helpful not just to our children, but to our offenders," said Wonda Adams, a field supervisor in Maryland's Department of Probation and Parole, who is coordinating the program. "This is a holiday where individuals are out and about in constant contact with people they don't know. It is just a prime time for our offenders to be accused of involvement in something."

Other states, such as Indiana and Missouri, also require some registered sex offenders to hang signs on Halloween. In years past, officials in New Mexico have asked that signs explicitly say: "Sex offender lives here." This year, Louisiana lawmakers also prohibited some convicted sex offenders from wearing masks at Halloween and during Carnival just before Mardi Gras.

In California -- where the program is known as Operation Boo -- and other states, officials will conduct nighttime checks on sex offenders to ensure that they are in their homes, without costume and candy and with the outside lights turned off to discourage trick-or-treaters.

A few states have taken these programs further: In Texas, for example, some sex offenders will be rounded up and detained.

In some cases, these expanded efforts have provoked lawsuits; in others, laughter.

In Missouri, the American Civil Liberties Union and four unidentified sex offenders sued state officials this year over Halloween restrictions that cover registered sex offenders, including those no longer on probation or parole. On Monday, a federal judge, ruling that the language was too vague, threw out part of the law that banned sex offenders from "all Halloween-related contact with children" and required them to stay inside unless they had a "just cause" to leave.