Michael Roston has wisest words on Jaycee Case

But I think the real problem in the Dugard case is America’s patchwork of sex offender laws which are designed to stigmatize and ostracize people convicted of rape, molestation, and many lesser sex crimes. And it seems like this dynamic was at work in the Garrido-Dugard case. The neighborhood all knew that Garrido was a convicted rapist. And how did they respond? By keeping their distance from him and having no idea what was going on in his daily life. There was no effort on the part of Garrido’s community to make sure that this guy wasn’t again doing the thing that had made him so offensive in the first place. The way you might engage a recovering alcoholic or drug abuser to make sure that they know there’s always someone they can turn to if they have a problem was never at work in Garrido’s case. And when you read about his websites, you know this was a very sick man.

A recent article in the Economist explained that beyond the fact that many sex offender laws don’t distinguish between a serial child rapist and someone caught urinating in public, the money spent on them also makes recidivism more likely:

That is obviously still too high. Whether or not treatment can help is disputed. A Californian study of sex offenders who underwent “relapse prevention”, counselling of the sort that alcoholics get from Alcoholics Anonymous, found that it was useless. But a meta-analysis of 23 studies by Karl Hanson of Canada’s department of public safety found that psychological therapy was associated with a 43% drop in recidivism. Some offenders—particularly men who rape boys—are extremely hard to treat. Some will never change until they are too old to feel sexual urges. But some types of treatment appear to work for some people and further research could yield more breakthroughs.. .

So there you have it: multiple residents of Antioch, California were concerned that something wasn’t right at the Garrido house, where they knew a registered sex offender lived. But because their impulse was to ostracize, and not engage a man with problems who might need a push to get more help, they looked the other way as he committed horrific crimes against a little girl and later a woman for 18 years.

In an America that focuses on punishment over rehabilitation, this sort of thing will happen over and over again.