Town Scraps ‘Pervert-Free Zone’ Idea

The tiny borough of Trumbauersville, Bucks County (pop. roughly 1,000) apparently has a big problem with — get this! — sex criminals. They must! The borough recently considered restricting where registered sex offenders could live in town, so it’s clearly a big problem in town.

The idea was scrapped for various reasons, mainly because the borough doesn’t have the money to fight the inevitable lawsuit restricting those convicted of sex crimes from living in the town at all. (At 0.4 square miles, pretty much any law would restrict sex offenders from living anywhere.) Also, Borough Council President Ed Child realized the ridiculousness of such a “feel-good law”: “What difference does it make how far away from [schools or parks a sex offender] can live… when we can’t control where they go?”

Hey, that’s some top-notch thinking there, Eddie! It’s better to be sensible than to just follow what NBC scares you about. And… oh.

[T]he borough briefly considered enforcing what Child jokingly called a “pervert-free zone.” Instead of restricting registered sex offenders by residence, it would have restricted where they could go.

Trumbauersville scrapped the idea, realizing the “even murkier legal territory” it would be in with such a law, and not that the idea would be impossible to enforce. Won’t someone please think of the children and ban all perverts from America soon? That would solve the problem.

Restrictions for sex offenders on hold [The Intelligencer]
[Image via some ridiculous t-shirt store apparently from 1996]