The purpose of today’s prison systems is to successfully rehabilitate inmates and make them socially acceptable for the outside world. They have therapy programs, education programs, and even work programs to help inmates become upstanding citizens in the community. Rehabilitation programs are great ways to help mentally unwell people get better, such as sex offenders. However, recent legislation will make it illegal for sex offenders to live within a 2000 feet of a school, playground, or other child care facility, seriously undermining the strides made by those individuals to become functioning roles in today’s society. To make life harder for these individuals is unfair to them. According to a study done by the Univeristy of Ottawa, 70% of sex offenders were abused themselves during childhood. Along with that on their mental load, legislation such as the famous Megan’s Law requires them to register their name and address on the internet. Sex Offenders are people that committed a crime and paid their dues to society for what they did in the form of jail time. Jail time is never easy. They have spent years in prison facilities hoping to make amends for their crimes. To alienate these people is just an extension of their sentance time. Sex offenders are put under such scrutiny that it is mentally damaging for those individuals. I am not saying that limits on sex offenders are not necessary, but to say that they can’t live peacefully within a certain distance of a park is not a proactive solution. I personally believe that this legislation is just a smoke screen to make mass amounts of people happy to know that they can alienate another group of people by watching their every move. An interesting statistic is that 87% of these people do not go on to commit a second offense. What needs to happen is a push for prevention of sex offender laws. We can track all the known offenders we want. We need to prevent those first time offenders.