Another bad law from the baying mob

Proposals in the UK to introduce a law enabling anyone to request details of the location of convicted paedophiles in their area are fraught with danger.

Danger from the public that demand the information.

For years now its been a vote-winning proposal and its even got its own name, "Sarahs Law" after a young girl who was murdered by a convicted paedophile in 2000, this follows the same course taken in the USA by "Megans Law", created after a similar incident.

The problem is that we have too many fekkwits in the UK who cannot control their urges to string offenders up from the nearest lamp post.

The last time that this issue was in the news a couple of irresponsible tabloid newspapers risked their own necks in the courts by publishing extensive lists of convicted paedophile home addresses - this information is currently only available to authorised individuals such as police and in limited cases headteachers - what happened after the publication of these lists only just stopped short of riots in some instances when whole estates full of outraged people (and some just along for the riot) beseiged addresses, erecting and painting signs to inform others of the presence of paedophiles and in some instances arson - all that this did was to drive out the convictees from their known address and send them elsewhere and in one instance a paediatrician was burned out of her house by ignorant fekkwits who didn't know the difference.

Thats what happens when mob law takes to the street and its what happens when the mob gets to invent new laws.

There is nothing wrong with the law as it stands, the only people who need the information is the police, it is they who are charged with the safety of the public at large and as a convicted sex offender has to report to them on a frequent basis and advise them when they change their location then that it is they who should own and control the information.

You cannot execute sex offenders, you cannot send them away to a deserted island, you cannot isolate them and much as the mob would like to you cannot string paedophiles up from the nearest lamp post, so given that, the next best thing is for a specific body to know and monitor their location - make that information public and the offender will disappear and while the mob on one estate may be happy to drive them out they will simply become someone elses problem, a problem that may not be known the next time because the offender is unlikely to register if he knows that the mob will be burning his door down again within days.

Mob rule and newspapers do not make good legislation.