WWJD? Run A Sex Offender Boarding House, Perhaps

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports today about Tom Armstrong, a Lancaster County man - and former Republican state legislator - who is putting up three individuals convicted of various sex offenses (rape, indecent assault, and child porn) is his home.  It's a temporary fix as he works to get them a long-term housing option nearby.  The community is up in arms about having these individuals in the neighborhood.  And because Pennsylvania law prohibits the rapist from living with a child, Armstrong's 16 year old daughter has to stay away.  (No problem, apparently: she's living with her mom in her late grandmother's old house, as they wrap up the estate.) 

This is Armstrong's faith based initiative, compelled in part by his own experience: his brother was arrested eight years ago for exposing himself.  The story is a little weird, but the background isn't.  Sex offenders are having a tough time finding a place to live in Lancaster County - and everywhere else, it seems.  Many communities are throwing up residential restrictions on individuals convicted of sex crimes.  And even where they don't adopt formal laws, communities rise up against individuals who find homes in the neighborhood. 

I understand the impulse of the neighbors but, writ large, I suspect that this NIMBY approach will not reduce crime.  By detaching individuals from communities, by engaging in disintegrative rather than reintegrative shaming, we loose individuals from any remaining social structures that would rein in misbehavior.  And as for the deeper moral questions - WWJD, or the like - it seems to me that Tom Armstrong, odd as he may be, is worthy of some respect.  Every one of these people is a human being, a fact that often gets lost in the rhetoric.

Photo of Armstrong's home, from the Inquirer. 

H/T David Cohen.

Update: Corey Yung blogged on this topic at Sex Crimes previously - my bad, I missed it.

Comments

[John C]

I am reminded of the European concept (in Germany at least, and I think elsewhere) of incarceration by "approximation" - the idea that the physical conditions of confinement should approximate as closely as possible those of normal society so as to re-educate, essentially, inmates as to how to function in society. So - no bars on the cells, no prison uniforms, respectful guards (to the extent possible), etc.

Certainly, if one wishes to neutralize the possibility of sex offenders re-offending, ostracizing them from civil society is not likely to teach them how to behave according to that society's laws and mores. Mr. Armstrong seems like he is onto something.

[jimbino]

I am reminded of a moving story I read some years ago in Reader's Digest about a town, somewhere in the American West, where, in reaction to an event in which someone had thrown a brick through the only picture window in the town displaying a menorah instead of a Christmas tree, the neighbors all reacted by putting menoras in their windows too.

Maybe it's time we all put up signs in our yards declaring, "Sex offender lives here."