Nearly two dozen towns and counties in Iowa, including the city of Des Moines, have passed additional restrictions that make off limit areas around parks, swimming pools, libraries, and recreational trails. Polk County, which includes Des Moines, is debating the same measure the city passed. According to the Des Moines Register, if the county supervisors approve the law, 97 percent of all homes in the county will be off limit.

In some cases families are forced to split up when one parent has to move out because of this legislation. “They might as well just exile all of them…banish them from the state,” Don Santee, 30, told the Sioux City Journal. He was forced to move out of his Shellsburg home he shares with his wife and three children because he had been convicted 13 years earlier, when he was 17, of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. “I am being punished again,” he said.

When the state law here was passed in 2002, the Iowa Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) sued and a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional. A three-judge federal appeals court panel reversed that decision last summer and local police began enforcing the law. People convicted of proscribed sex offenses were told to either move out or be arrested. At least two individuals have surrendered to police and are in jail without bond because they cannot find a place to live allowed by the new law.

In Des Moines, 73-year-old John Chapman was supposed to be exempt because he lived in his apartment building prior to 2002. He recently moved across the hall, however, to accommodate the electric scooter he now needs to get around. He is now being evicted because authorities say his move puts him in violation of the law. He had been convicted 10 years ago, served five years in jail, and was placed on the Iowa Sex Offenders Registry. “I’m at the end of this road,” he told the Des Moines Register. “I’ve never been so scared…. Please just find me a place to die.”

Ely, a town of 1,200 located near Cedar Rapids, did not have a school or day care in town and did not come under the state law. The town council, however, voted that Ely is a “predator-free zone,” so no convicted sex offenders can live there.

Edwin Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Des Moines city council at-large, spoke against the ordinance November 8 at the Polk County Supervisors’ hearing to enact the same housing restrictions for the county. Interviewed by City View, Fruit explained that Democratic and Republican politicians target sex offenders, adding new crimes to the list of punishable offenses the federal, state, and city authorities have already instituted to press for broader attacks on working people. “It’s part of the continuing attack on democratic rights,” he said.

Several groups and individuals in Iowa have protested the new law. Most call for treatment programs that demand the person admit to being a sexual offender and often require consent to psychiatric care. In the Iowa state prisons if a convicted sex offender “volunteers” to enter such a treatment program they are given special consideration at their parole hearing for early release. Fruit said the SWP opposes these programs as they demean people and attempt to break individuals, not reintegrate them into society.

The ICLU asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state law. “Our jails and prisons likely are going to be filled with law-abiding citizens who served their sentence years ago, but who will be incarcerated again simply because they cannot find a place to live under this law,” said ICLU executive director Ben Stone. On November 28 the Supreme Court announced its refusal to review the law.  
 
 
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