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This is something my mum has to deal with, particularly the News of the World being utter cocks about it. a while back they threatened to publish the addresses of everyone on their list, essentially all major hostels that have any links with sex offenders, which is pretty much all of them.
I don't know how it works in the USA but you guys have one thing we don't and that's space.
People coming out of prison need probation (parole) whether they're long term inmates, rehabilitated or not. It's a fact of the system to which the only alternative is the draconian 'lock them away forever'. Probation house people in hostels sometimes if they don't have a home or a place to start, or are still a risk, and the hostels are in residential areas because these people need to work like society so they can't be stuck in the middle of the country.
However unlike USA you would be hard-pressed to find a residential building in britain that isn't within 300ft of a nursery, school, daycare or community centre where children go. That's our problem.
The criminal justice system is not going to put a high risk sex offender in a nursery, they're not stupid or malicious as tabloids will try and make you think. Their job is a hard one though as they also have to judge how much a person is rehabilitated and based on numerous opinions judge how much 'risk' a person carries, and it is partly on that that they are assigned to the hostels. It's not perfect because inmates themselves are also not 'perfect' and rather than the reoffender getting the stick a lot of the time it's just blamed on the justice system. It's the demonising of government doing a good job that I don't like, and the hysteria that comes from trying to frighten people about it all that causes more harm than anything else.
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