Sen. George Runner is a fan of spending the state’s money. No, he won’t spend money on educating children or giving Californians opportunities, he’s more interested in locking people up and making them into better criminals when they are eventually released. But one of Runner’s greatest successes, or failures depending on how you look at it, was the disaster known as Jessica’s Law.

In a report released this week(PDF), the California Sex Offender Management Board cited housing as a major source of recidivism amongst sex offenders. Jessica’s Law, passed as Prop 83 in 2006, banned registered sex offenders from living within 2000 feet of a school, park, or other children gathering area.  This has severely limited housing availability for these paroled offenders. Since the law has been in place, homelessness amongst this population has increased by a factor of 12.  The SOMB has found housing for some of the offenders, but the problem has far outstripped their resources. And given the budget crisis, who knows how long we can keep even a modicum of a housing program.

Homeless sex offenders do not make us safer, just the opposite.  They are difficult to track, they are likely to live near schools anyway, and there is always the fact that the homeless are far more likely to commit crimes than those with stable housing.  

The SOMB is now calling for Jessica’s Law to be revised.  

Robert Coombs, a spokesman for the board’s chairwoman, said the members found it infeasible to call for abolishing the residency restrictions, given the sweeping voter approval of Proposition 83. He said state and local officials have the power to interpret the law to allow more housing for sex offenders, but the board believes that the likelihood of legislators fixing the problems in more comprehensive ways — at least in the short term — is slim.

“I can’t imagine a policymaker who would put their name on something that says we want to make it easier for sex offenders to find housing,” Coombs said. “Even though it’s a strong public safety concept,” lawmakers would be setting themselves up for political attack.(LAT 1/14/09)

This would require a 2/3 vote, as it was passed by the voters. Good luck getting a Republican to vote based on public policy rather than red meat to his base on this issue.   Apparently he is “going with his gut” over actually looking at what is really happening.  You see, he thought about this one night, and it seemed like a good idea, and he’s going to stick with it. Real world results be damned!

Meanwhile, Arnold’s people seem to be somewhat open to changing the residency restrictions.  Former Corrections Secretary Jeanne Woodford has even called for the complete abolition of the residency requirements. And the underlying facts behind Jessica’s Law are rarely put better than she put it:

“The bottom line is, this is really what happens when we allow our emotions to get the best of us, as opposed to dealing with the facts,” she said. (LAT 1/14/09)

This is the impact of lawmaking by emotion instead of reason.  Jessica’s Law, the initiative passed by the voters in 2006, could increase the risk of crime.  No one could have anticipated that, right?  I mean, when you force ex-cons to sleep under bridges and give them no hope of rehabilitation, and you hobble police departments and sap their ability to actually track sex offenders, how could crime go up, right?

In the 15 months since voters approved Jessica’s Law, which restricts where paroled offenders may live and requires electronic monitoring of their whereabouts, the state has recorded a 44% increase in those registered as transients, according to a report released by California’s Sex Offender Management Board.

The law prohibits ex-offenders from living within 2,000 feet of places where children gather, but it lacks adequate definitions of such places, the report says. And in some counties and cities, the law’s residency restrictions make large swaths of housing off-limits.

Unresolved questions about major parts of the law make it impossible to determine whether the state is safer now from sex offenders, panel member said. Some said the law could be making things worse.

Tom Tobin, the board’s vice-chairman and a psychologist, said that homelessness removes offenders from their support systems, such as family members, which increases the chances they will commit new crimes.

“I see homelessness as increasing overall risk to public safety, and as a very, very undesirable consequence of probably a well-intended law,” he said.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the connection between homelessness and public safety, certainly THIS kind of homelessness, of former sex offenders, is not desirable.  But it falls along the same stupid, shortsighted, Tough On Crime ™ policies we’ve seen in California for 30 years.  We extend sentences longer and longer and then try to build our way out of the inevitable overcrowding problem (by the way, that building plan was wildly optimistic; they’re now talking about 6,900 less beds and a longer time to get them constructed); we punish sex offenders with an unrealistic law that actually endangers the state’s citizens instead of protects them.  This is the legacy of a failure of leadership.

So now we learn that the implementation for Jessica’s Law is completely impossible and will likely never happen.

Law enforcement leaders who pushed for a ballot initiative requiring sex offenders in California to be tracked by satellite for life are now saying that the sweeping surveillance program voters endorsed is not feasible and is unlikely to be fully implemented for years, if ever […]

The difficulties include the impracticality of tracking sex offenders who no longer must report to parole or probation officers, the lack of any penalty for those who refuse to cooperate with monitoring and the question of whether such widespread tracking is effective in protecting the public.

The biggest issue, however, is that the law does not specify which agency or government should monitor felony sex offenders — and shoulder hundreds of millions of dollars a year in related costs.

That said, these same law enforcement officials claim that the law is worthwhile, mainly because they don’t want the egg on their face for the next 20 years, and they can quietly put the whole thing to rest once everyone forgets about it.

In truth, the unworkability of this law, which trades liberty for security and provides neither, making it far more difficult to track sex offenders while beginning a slippery slope toward lifetime surveillance of anyone who commits a crime we collectively decide not to like in the future, was obvious from the beginning.  It was written poorly, and maybe some of that can be fixed.  But the restrictions on housing have caused ex-cons to live under bridges, which seems to me to set the table for them to commit more crimes so they can get some shelter.  The lack of reporting to parole officers, too, just drops these offenders off the map – when the point is supposed to be to FURTHER track them so they don’t molest again.

This is also about the dangers of ballot-box budgeting.  With the vague nature of the funding in the law, everyone’s trying to force payment on somebody else.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state law enforcement leaders, who were allied in backing the measure, are engaged in a standoff over who should bear its financial burden.

“I don’t know of any agency that has the resources to track and monitor . . . in real time,” said Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. “You’ll need an air traffic controller to track these folks.” […]

Corrections analysts estimate that it costs the state up to $33 a day in equipment and labor to monitor a sex offender by GPS, and it would take nearly $90 million a year just to track the 9,000 now on parole if all were subject to Proposition 83.

Once offenders are discharged from parole, the state will no longer monitor them electronically, Corrections Secretary James Tilton said last month, because his department lacks jurisdiction at that point. The agency also is overextended, with an overcrowded prison system under review by the federal courts.

Nick Warner, a lobbyist and spokesman for the California State Sheriffs’ Assn., said the state’s refusal to monitor sex offenders after parole “passes the buck to local law enforcement, who are not equipped to handle them.” He said the state was “setting up communities to fail” and predicted that the matter would end up in court.

Schwarzenegger, who faces a $10-billion state budget gap next year, said through spokesman Bill Maile that he would wait for the sex offender board to address the question of who should fund lifetime GPS tracking before taking a position on the issue.

The law is clearly unworkable and unsuccessful.  Yet it got 70% of the vote because these flaws were hidden from public scrutiny.  And as a result, everyone is afraid to say we should scrap it, due to political factors.

Welcome to your direct democracy in action!

See also:
Jessica’s Law Tag
What California should learn from the Genarlow Wilson case (but almost certainly won’t)
 

I will admit that I'm occasionally a bit of a policy wonk. Not always, but you know, I have a degree in the whole “policy field” and I sometimes like to talk policy (or write as the case may be). One policy that I know reeks of fear-based politics with little to show in return: Jessica's Law. Sure, it won easily, and even Phil Angelides endorsed it.  Really, only a very select few spoke out against it. Fear is a bad poliy basis, and there seemed to be little reason for this law other than FEAR. Sen. Jackie Speier's bill had already passed and provided most of the protections of Prop 83. And the provisions that it lacked were just plain bad policy.

 But, at this point, the law is on the books. There's still some question about its constitutionality, with the latest court wranglings seeing the law enforced on 850 sex offenders. But, as the AP points out, many have found a loophole: the “transient exemption.” AKA being homeless. If a sex offender is homeless, well it's hard to prohibit them from living under a bridge. And as I pointed out in the past, the 2000-foot rule (away from schools, parks, etc.) will keep people away from services they need, and from basically all metropolitan areas. So, you want to live in San Francisco? Sorry, but you're always within 2000 feet of one of those places, so, go try Yreka.

So, into this fray steps SD-03 candidate Joe Alioto-Veronese. He's raising a resolution at today's Police Commission hearing for stronger enforcement of Jessica's Law. He apparently doesn't want to charge all offenders with crimes, he just wants to know where these people are. The problem is that once you know where they are, the city/state is obliged to remove them from their location if it violates the law. Sure, we could just be lax on the enforcement part, I suppose, but that seems a strange study in contrasts. Furthermore, the resolution wants to a) find all these homeless people and demands that they respond or b) face jail time for parole violation if they don't respond.

This, at best, puts a bit of lipstick on a pig. It doesn't substantively address any of the problems that were recently raised, and it punishes the homeless. Mr. Alioto-Veronese recognizes the deficiencies of Jessica's Law, but when I asked him whether he supports the 2000-foot rule, all I got was that he supports “protecting our children from sexuasl predators.” 

UPDATE: One more thing. I should point out this map (PDF) from the California Senate. Take a look at San Francisco. Or LA, too. What do you see? The only places that offenders would be allowed to live in SF would be primarily minority areas concentrated in the Southeast of the City. Just one more reason why this law was wrong in the first place, and is still wrong.

UPDATE 2: Apparently, it seems that some are trying to take some sort of moral high ground, that they are more true defenders of children. But, I'll not yield that to anybody. I believe we must protect children, but we must do it sensibly. We must do it in a manner that actually works. I'll also point out that we require less of released murderers than we do of  “sex offenders” (an overly broad category by the way). Prop 83 was bad policy when it passed, and it still is. (Oh, and btw, SF was the only county to reject Prop 83) More from the Chronicle:

But despite its visceral appeal, Prop. 83 is a terrible initiative that does not stand up to close scrutiny. One of its most obvious flaws is the ban on sex offenders living within 2,000 feet of any school or park. What this will mean is that most urban areas in California will be placed off limits to sex offenders. They will instead be forced into living in rural areas — an unfair burden to those communities and a barrier for those ex-offenders who are making an effort to find employment and straighten out their lives. In addition, understaffed law enforcement and social service agencies in remote parts of the state might not have the resources to adequately monitor these individuals. Public safety may be endangered rather than enhanced.

***
Ideas that are presented as “tough on crime” are not necessarily the most effective against crime — especially when resources are limited. Vote no on 83.

Resolution over the flip

RESOLUTION REQUIRING IMMEDIATE ACTION TO IDENTIFY CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER LOCATIONS

 

 

Whereas the San Francisco Police Commission and the San Francisco Police Department are 100% committed to maintaining the safety of all children and families in our City; and,

 

Whereas Jessica’s law (Penal Code 3000.07 et. seq- named in honor of Jessica Lunsford)  was enacted in 2006 to protect California Children from child predators.  Jessica’s law requires certain registered sex offenders to report to law enforcement agencies their address of residence;

 

Whereas, knowing the exact address of residence and location of parolees subject to such registration is in the interest of protecting California children and further assists the San Francisco Police Department to this end;

 

Whereas, California Penal Code Section 3003(e)(1)(J) requires that the California Department of Corrections report to local law enforcement agencies certain identifying information of sex offender registrants including their (1) exact address of residence, and (2) A geographic coordinate for the parolee's residence.

 

Whereas, the California Department of Corrections issued policy 07-48 notifying parolees unable to secure housing compliant with prop 83 to declare transience in order to avoid incarceration.

 

Whereas, according to a recent report by the California Attorney General, up to 166 parolees have newly registered as transient or homeless.

 

Whereas the public deserves to know the true locations these offenders; and not knowing  such information poses a danger to the children of San Francisco;

 

Be it therefore resolved, that the San Francisco Police Commission shall issue a letter to the California Department of Correction condemning policy 07-48, as it relates to registering as transient or homeless; requesting that they comply with California Penal Code Section 3003.

 

Be it therefore resolved that the San Francisco Police Commission request the Chief of Police of San Francisco Police Department take immediate action to prevent and reverse the trend of sex offenders registering as “homeless” by:

 (1) No later that November 25, 2007, or within one week of the passage of this resolution (whichever is later), the Chief of Police of the San Francisco Police Department shall send a letter to all registrants notifying them that it is the Policy of the San Francisco Police Department to comply the registration components of Jessica’s law.  The letter shall give registrants one month to register their correct address.  For all registrants listed as “transient” notification shall be sent to their prior address.

(2) After one month following the dispatch of such letter, the San Francisco Police Department shall verify the “transient” status of all registered offenders residing in the City and County of San Francisco, by investigating the residential address and taking appropriate law enforcement action, including taking that person into custody in violation of parole conditions if transience is not confirmed;

 

Be it finally resolved that the Chief of Police and any staff directly involved in this important effort report the result back to the Police Commission during the weekly Chief’s report to the Police Commission.

Cross-posted California Majority Report.

In 2005, Genarlow Wilson was sentenced to ten years in prison by a Georgia jury for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Wilson was only 17 when this “crime” was committed. Last week, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the case, deciding in a 4-3 decision that the conviction “constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

It would be easy for those of us in blue state California to look at this case from afar and see yet another miscarariage of Southern justice, but that would be a mistake. There is a lesson here for California, and it’s a lesson we’ll almost certainly ignore.

Before his conviction, Wilson was repeatedly offered plea deals that might have allowed him to avoid prison, but he refused because a plea would have forced him to register as a sex offender. “It might’ve been lesser time, but then again, I would have nowhere to go because I would have no home,” Wilson explained. “I wouldn’t be able to stay with my mother because I have a little sister. You know, when you’re a sex offender you can’t be around kids. Basically, I can’t even have kids myself, you know, so what is the point of life?”

Wilson, an Ivy League-recruited honor student who was homecoming king and one of his school’s best track and football athletes, lost two years of his life because of an inflexible sex offender registry that didn’t see many differences between sex crimes. Under Georgia law, Wilson was guilty of “aggravated child molestation.” No room for explanation. No room for context. Certainly no room for sympathy. So on the registry he goes.

To see why this matters to California, continue over the flip…

California isn’t all that different. To be registered as a sex offender in California is to be branded an undesirable for life. Our state’s Megan’s Law database includes many sex offenders of the Genarlow Wilson variety. People convicted of public urination, nude sunbathing, and mooning have had their names tarnished for life by being included in the same database as serial rapists and violent child molesters. And under last year’s unworkable Proposition 83, sex offenders were barred from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. As the San Francisco Chronicle explained:

“Prop. 83 is a terrible initiative that does not stand up to close scrutiny. One of its most obvious flaws is the ban on sex offenders living within 2,000 feet of any school or park. What this will mean is that most urban areas in California will be placed off limits to sex offenders. They will instead be forced into living in rural areas — an unfair burden to those communities and a barrier for those ex-offenders who are making an effort to find employment and straighten out their lives. In addition, understaffed law enforcement and social service agencies in remote parts of the state might not have the resources to adequately monitor these individuals. Public safety may be endangered rather than enhanced.”

Under Prop 83, which passed by an overwhelming 70.5-29.5 margin, the sex offenders with a high likelihood of repeat offense are now barred from the cities most capable of dealing with them, while everyday folks who make the stupid decision to piss on a tree one day are forced to go along for the ride. Oh, and regardless of their offense, they’re all forced to wear ankle monitoring bracelets for life — on the public dime of course.

Why is the California electorate so afraid of drunken frat boys who moon their chancellor? Because voters in California all too frequently reflexively support anything labeled “tough on crime,” even if it actually puts us at greater risk. Because any crime bill cravenly claimed to be for the children is like a scalding iron that none of the state’s more sensible politicians want to touch. Because anyone who dares approach public safety with an air of rationality is branded “pro-criminal” by those who would rather posture than make us safer. And because some of our state’s most powerful lobbying groups directly benefit from keeping more people in prison and under close scrutiny.

And there’s no reason to think any of this will change. It will always be easier to score cheap political points through scare tactics and code words than to actually work on the thankless task of creating real solutions to our crime problems, and the victims of the system are too disparate, too disorganized, and frequently too poor to have a voice at all.

So while we celebrate Genarlow Wilson’s release, and as we scorn the flaws of his state’s justice system, let’s not forget that California — us, the voters — have created our own generation of Genarlows, deprived of the freedoms we take for granted because we would rather be “tough on crime” than smart on crime.

On Sunday, The Union-Tribune reported on the simmering issue in San Diego of sex offenders concentrating in the downtown area.  Now that Jessica’s Law (Proposition 83) has been overwhelmingly approved by Californians, local officials have been given the greenlight to run sex offenders out of downtown.  But has anyone given any thought to where they’re supposed to go?

To recap, Proposition 83 prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of parks and schools (among other things).  It also happens to be the pet issue of Republican Assemblywoman Shirley Horton who represents many of my neighbors and who just rode it to a very expensive reelection to the State Assembly.  The constitutional applicability of Jessica’s Law is already being considered in U.S. District Court, but in the meantime, that would restrict all but a few blocks of the entire San Diego downtown area.  The reasoning from City Councilman Kevin Faulconer is that “downtown is a neighborhood now” which leads me to wonder what residential non-neighborhoods he’s imagining sex offenders moving into.  The NIMBYism that goes on in debates like this is perfectly understandable of course, but regardless of what ruling eventually comes from the courts, shouldn’t we be focusing on the bigger issues?  Like, for starters, how to prevent sex offenders who are potentially dangerous from being released in the first place?

Southern Californians for Jessica’s Law, right on the front page, presumably as the crux of their argument since they went to all the trouble of bolding it, announces the horrible reality that “many [sex offenders] are living in our communities and neighborhoods, near our schools and parks…”  Well geez, prisoners are being released and trying to integrate themselves back into communities and neighborhoods?  It would be much better if we could keep them all together somewhere, isolated from the rest of us.  Maybe we could call it jail or something.

Obviously, this is a complex issue with a lot of wrinkles that’s too much for any politician to take on with one bite.  It involves reconsidering penalties for non-violent and drug offenders, it involves the rate of prison construction, it involves reviewing and probably reforming the parole evaluation and tracking system.  And probably it involves treading a very careful course that many will see as soft on child predators.  You can’t get everything into a soundbite though, so we get crap laws like this that are wildly popular in San Diego and elsewhere because they glamorously treat symptoms but never dive into the root causes of the problems we face.

Which steers us to the essence of the issue.  In San Diego, in California, in DC, we’ve spent the past several (or more than several) years suffering through reactive legislation dressed up as proactive and visionary.  Sex offenders are being let out of prison while still potentially a threat?  Don’t keep them in jail or innovate treatment procedures, just don’t let them live anywhere except prison.  Corporations are outsourcing jobs overseas?  Don’t make American workers more desirable via advanced training and education, create tax penalties.  There are people who so hate the way in which the United States has conducted itself internationally that they’ll kill themselves and murder innocent people?  Don’t consider treating people who hold different beliefs with respect or consider dialing back the hegemonic drum-beating, just do your best to kill them.  While the stated goals of these policies will always be presented as exceedingly admirable, problems just don’t get solved.  At the local, state and federal level, we’ve spent years watching the whack-a-mole school of policy in action.

The application of Proposition 83 is in the hands of the courts now, and we’ll see what happens in the next couple of months.  In the meantime, is there such a thing as comprehensive politics anymore?  Are there politicians willing to take a swing at legitimate, large-scale reform?  And if they’re out there, is it even possible to accomplish something like this in the age of soundbites?

If there’s hope for comprehensive reform, it won’t come from the top down.  While it’s a bit much to expect actual legislation to be written and pushed from the grassroots, it’s increasingly clear that a comprehensive platform that reflects the rank and file of the Democratic Party at the local, state, and national level would be best driven by the grassroots, in particular a progressive version thereof.

So when you get a DFA invitation to participate in party elections, or when people talk about Taking Back The CA Democratic Party, it’s exactly this issue.  It’s giving the grassroots an opportunity to ensure that the party’s platform and the laws pursued and enacted make more sense from a functional level.  Ultimately, that our party and our government is working on sustainable progress with the minimum of wasted effort.

So if your district needs a good progressive to run, do it.  If your district already has one, vote for them.  It doesn’t save the world, but it’s a start.

This is culled from a comment by rocketman0621 on a diary about the federal court ruling against Jessica’s law.

  Many politicians, especially Republicans, would like all of society to believe that ALL sex offenders are predators lurking in every corner of our communities ready to jump at every opportunity to abduct and assault our children. They try to twist reality by playing on our worst fears as parents by instigating rage in all of us with assistance from the media by sensationalizing child abduction cases as examples why we should banish ALL sex offenders. The truth, however, is that not all sex offenders are like the ones we see on TV. The great majority of them are first offenders who’s offenses are misdemeanors. After all, there is a legal basis why our justice system classifies certain offenses as misdemeanors and that is because they are much less serious than felonies. Check the legal dictionary if you don’t believe me. Now, don’t get me wrong. I hate sexual predators especially those who victimize children. Like most people, I absolutely believe that these sex predators should be monitored closely upon their release from prison or be it as Jessica’s Law put it – sent away to a place where they would not be able to harm children. My beef with this law is that it lumps all people in the registry as a predator and subjects them to a one-size-fits-all punishment.

When someone kills another, our justice system makes every effort to determine the degree and circumstances to which the slaying was carried out. Hence, there is murder one, passion killing, voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, etc. Why can’t we apply the same logic when we are dealing with sex offenders? Is it fair to treat sex offenders much worse than murderers, robbers, carjackers, drug dealers and the rest? I don’t think so because each of these other criminals are potential sex offenders also. If they have the will and audacity to commit these non-sex crimes, what makes you think they will never commit a sex crime? In fact, many sex offenders have other criminal records as well. Hence, it makes no sense whatsoever for our society to be cleansed of sex offenders while these other criminals live in our midst without any restrictions. Are our children really any safer?

Jessica’s Law attempts to punish again and again and again and again those who committed thier indiscretions decades ago with no regard to the level of seriousness in each offense. Most of these people have paid their debts to society, regretted their mistakes, and have lived law-abiding lives ever since. It must be difficult enough to find steady employment and to live a normal life when your face and private information are posted all over the Internet.  Had these past offenders known decades ago what their lives would be like under Jessica’s Law today, most of them might not even have the audacity to commit their crimes. It’s plain and simple. You cannot apply today’s rules to those who made an error in judgement in a different time.  It’s changing the rules in the middle (or in this case, in the end) of the game. That is simply not permitted in the Constitution. As a society, we simply cannot allow these twisted politicians who are using our children and playing with our fears to get elected to get away with these constitutional violations. Imagine what’s in store for us if Jessica’s Law becomes the precedent. Next thing we know, we’ll have new punishments for those who were convicted of DUI, theft, drug-offense, white-collar crimes, etc. Is that what we really want? Sex offense is a hot button issue now with all the media attention, but in a few years another crime will be the focus of modern persecution. Watch out illegal immigrants!

I’m not done. These same politicians who author these crazy laws offer children safety as their primary reason why they do it. Why is it then that they don’t try to be just as aggressive in combatting the murder of innocent children in the inner cities of America? Every year, hundreds of children are shot and killed in drug and gang violence in many metropolitan areas, but there doesn’t seem to be as much hysteria and call for crackdowns on these senseless killing compare to when one white suburban child is killed by a sex offender. Are the lives of rich suburban children more precious than those children in impoverished areas? There are just as many minority children that are molested and assaulted as their suburban counterparts. We have Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Adam’s Law, but why isn’t there a push to have a law named after any of the minority children killed? Perhaps Michael Richards can explain it to us better.

I’m afraid we are becoming a paranoid society paralyzed by our irrational fears over crimes that have not yet been committed. Our corrupt politicians want to punish offenders for their perceived future crimes based on their past records. There is, however, an alternative motive for these politicians to append their names in these stupid laws. It’s a great platform for them to win people’s admiration and votes come election time. It is something they can brag about to their contituents. Whether these laws actually save lives is questionable. In fact, lawmakers in places like Iowa who pioneered these residency restriction laws are now working to repeal it because it caused more problems rather than provide solutions. Think about it. When you have thousands of offenders who went underground due to the unreasonable provisions of the law, are our children any safer? When you have thousands of deranged, suicidal offenders who’s lives and families have been torn to pieces with nothing to look forward to and nothing to hold them back, are our children any safer?

It’s time to stop the persecution and allow those who are rehabitable to get their second chance to prove their humanity. After all, we all make mistakes. Some of us are just lucky enough to not have been caught with our indiscretions. Ironically, many of the lawmakers who work so diligently – and hypocritically – to pass these laws are themselves guilty of the very same offenses they are warning us about. I wonder how many more Mark Foleys are out there. Let us concentrate on the most dangerous and deserving of society’s wrath and remove these unconstitutional barriers on the minor offenders who have learned their lessons and are trying hard to re-integrate themselves into the society.