How’s my (sex) driving?

Thanks to this post at TalkLeft, I see that Ohio has a new bill to require the worst sex offenders “to drive cars with a special license plate denoting their offense.”  As this article details, the parents of a child victim are pushing the bill and have big aspirations: “‘We want this to go national,’ Mark Jackson said. ‘They’re not just in Ohio, they’re everywhere.'”

As share Jeralyn’s instinct that this is “just another shaming punishment and one that will have no effect on the number of sex offenses.”  Moreover, I would hope that any license pate scheme would start with drunk driving before sex offenses.  Though I have not seen any detailed studies, my gut tells me that a drunk-diving license plate system could be much more effective in the promotion of public safety than a sex-offender license plate system.

Some related posts:

• Why do we worry so much more about sex offenders than drunk drivers?
• Intriguing reaction to sex offender panic
• Technology versus toughness to combat drunk driving
• Liberty versus security in the war on … sex offenders