what to do with sex offenders

there is much conversation in the legal "blawgs" (e.g., here) these days on sex offender post-release residency restrictions. i am mostly watching and listening, but i am struck by this:

this may be the best solution the political/legal world can come up with, but as a society, we can and need to do better.

can we (the public) take advantage of the current outrage against sex offenders to demand that our departments of correction actually begin to provide some sort of correction? here again, we act as if the only tool we have is a hammer. if someone breaks the law, we incarcerate them and that is supposed to deter future crime on the part of the offender and others. this seems to work for some crimes, but certainly not for others. we need to see this.

it is in our national interest, and is our responsibility to our children, to recognize that this incarceration-only approach has no effect on future sex offenses. we need to face up to what is. we are holding them, and we are squandering this chance to have an impact, instead releasing them back into society when the strong evidence is that they remain dangerous. insisting that these people live a certain distance from schools will not solve this. locking them up forever will not solve it. more rules and increased punishment will not solve it. we need to look in a different tool-kit.

for a long time, we have been content to let our corrections systems be only punitive, and to consider anything constructive (education, treatment) as "coddling." but there is another way to see this. we need to demand that -- for our sakes -- our departments of correction develop and provide effective treatment for sex offenders. we need to figure out what works and do it.

and once we do this, it is possible that we can focus on solving other problems which incarceration alone is not solving: substance abuse and violence, for example.