Catching Pokémon, and sex offenders: Against the frenzy to ban sex offenders from playing the new augmented reality game
The Pokémon Go craze is sweeping the nation and beyond, sending young people scurrying through the streets, phones in hand, frantically seeking these fictional little creatures.
It also has politicians scurrying to find heavy-handed answers to trumped-up fears.
That’s because it didn’t take long before someone realized that, horror of horrors, with all of these children, teenagers and twentysomethings scampering about, some of them ran the risk of coming close to one or more registered sex offenders.
Television anchors, like weathermen, have displayed maps of local areas with Pokémon stops — PokéStops is what they’re called — marked in one color and the homes of registered offenders marked in another, pointing out, with horrified faces but barely concealed glee, the places where one is within proximity to the other.
And now, following a report by state Sens. Jeff Klein and Diane Savino, showing Pokémon, PokéStops, and other Pokémon-related items appearing near residences occupied by registered offenders , Gov. Cuomo has made a first-in-the-nation move, ordering the state to make it a parole condition that no sex offender under supervision be allowed to download, access or play the game.
“Protecting New York’s children is priority No. 1,” said Cuomo, making a statement with which no one can argue.
But this latest prohibition will not help safeguard children any more than residency restrictions or Halloween prohibitions aimed at sex offenders, two other politically popular and drastically overused tools, do.
Studies of residency restrictions — forcing registered sex offenders to live in ever-narrower areas — show no benefit to public safety and no reduction in sexual crime against children.
Halloween laws — which prohibit sex offenders from wearing costumes or masks, visiting haunted houses and the like — are more cosmetic than effective.
The reason why they are ineffective, and why the Pokémon ban will be too, is that random assaults on children by registered citizens, especially in public places or places that are seldom frequented by the children, are so rare as to be statistically insignificant. Researchers have likened them to the chances of being hit by a lightning strike.
The FBI data on children abducted for nefarious purposes in 2010 show less than 1% of the abductors were registered sex offenders; in 2009, none were.
So what actually will work toward improving public safety and keeping children safe?
It begins with comprehensive education and prevention programs. A coalition that includes sexual assault prevention and victims’ groups, the National Coalition to Prevent Child Abuse and Exploitation, called for the creation of a stable funding stream dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The group asked for that funding to equal at least 1% of the millions currently spent on “after-the-fact” responses like sex registries and civil commitment. The group is still waiting for action.
We also need to acknowledge that approximately 96% of all new sex crimes are committed by first-time offenders, people never before convicted of such an offense and therefore not on the registry. And that child sexual abuse is committed almost exclusively by those in the victims’ lives — their family members, peers and authority figures, not random strangers they stumble across.
Telling those on the registry, those who as a group rarely commit another sexual offense, that they cannot have a jack-o’-lantern in their windows at Halloween or a Pokémon app on their phones is government by hysteria, not common sense.