A poster child for the problem of residency restrictions
Thanks to this post at the blog Iowa Champion, I saw this MSNBC article about a woman suffereing as the result of broad sex offenders residency restrictions. Here are some details:
Jennifer Lower was convicted of a misdemeanor sex offense in Ohio seven years ago. After moving to Iowa, and then moving her family to a town with no schools or day cares — which she can’t live near under Iowa law — she’s learned that she is still in violation of the law.
From the Cass County Jail, Lower, 29, said she’s frustrated. Lower is a married mother of three. She already moved her family to try to comply with Iowa’s sex-offender residency law that bans sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care. She said she can’t find a home that complies. “It’s not fair. My rights are basically gone, it seems like,” Lower said.
Forced out of Atlantic, Lower and her family moved 5 miles west to Marne, Iowa. There are no schools or day cares in Marne, so Lower said she thought she and her family were safe. Then Marne passed a new ordinance, making it illegal for sex offenders to live within 2,000 feet of a park or school bus stop. Lowers’ home was a couple blocks from the park and less than a block from a bus stop, so once again, a court ordered Lower to move.
She refused and a judge put her back in jail. “My landlord don’t even think I’m a threat,” Lower said. This time, she’s lost her children, who are now in foster care. “The only thing I need to get my kids back is have a stable home,” Lower said.
Cass County Attorney Daniel Feistner said Lower’s sex crime was a misdemeanor and she may not be much of a threat to the community, but he said he has to enforce the law consistently. “Unfortunately, as a prosecutor, I don’t have the luxury of looking at her individually and say I can apply the law to her or not to her and to someone else,” Feistner said.
Especially if Lower’s 2001 Ohio misdemeanor sex offense was really minor, her story could readily get new people sympathetic to the plight of relatively minor sex offenders being subject to relatively broad residency restrictions.
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