Creative problem-solving — NOT

12 March 2007

So you’re a probation officer, and you have to find a place for slome just-paroled sex offenders to live. But there are laws about sex offenders living too close to schools, parks, day care centers, etc., and every residence you look at turns out to be in violations. No homeless shelter will take them, either. So what do you do? If you’re in Miami, you direct the fellows to live in a cardboard box under a bridge. Really. Literally.

Money quote #1:

They live a block away from Kristi House, a treatment center for victims of child sexual assault. They’re also within 1000 feet of two day-care centers — a violation of state law — and less than 2500 feet from eight schools, a breach of county ordinance.

Whoops.

Money quote #2:

Carrasquillo claims that Circuit Court Judge Cristina Pereyra-Shuminer, who didn’t return phone messages, knew he was being sent to the muddy location. “I told the judge to let me back into prison,” Carrasquillo says. “If I’d have known this was going to happen, I’d have finished my eight years there.”

The obvious solution to this problem is to make rape of a minor and similarly scary crimes punishable by life in prison. Of course, if the prisons filled up with pedophiles, there wouldn’t be any room left for our captives from the War On [Some People Who Use Certain] Drugs…

via Michael Froomkin, invoking Anatole France

• Later: A timely observation
• Earlier: Lack o’ the Irish