[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]
[Justice] Kennedy’s “frightening and high” line was based on a 1988 Department of Justice guide for treating sex offenders, which cited an unfounded conjecture in the magazine Psychology Today. Further studies have shown the ineffectiveness of residency restrictions. In 2003, the Minnesota Department of Corrections collected data on nearly 100 sex offenders who had been released from prison and concluded, “There is no evidence in Minnesota that residential proximity to schools or parks affects reoffense.” As many as 90 percent of child victims know their rapists, but residency restrictions are meant to stop sexual assaults by strangers, a much rarer scenario. The California Sex Offender Management Board, a state agency, concluded in 2008 that restrictions had led more sex offenders to become homeless, and in turn more likely to reoffend.
Read the article by Maurice Chammah in the Texas Observer.
