Second Class Citizens

If they can even be considered citizens at all . . .

Drivers speed over a busy causeway on their way to relaxation and partying in Miami Beach, the quintessential spring break trip.

Below the pavement, far from nightclubs, five sex offenders are living in conditions not much better than prison.

They have made their homes under the bridge with grudging state approval — some for several weeks — because an ordinance keeps them from living almost anywhere else. . . .

The conditions are a consequence of laws passed here and elsewhere around the country to bar sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places where children gather. Miami-Dade County’s 2005 ordinance says sex offenders must live at least 2,500 feet from schools. . . .

The men must stay at the bridge between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. because a parole officer checks on them nearly every night, Plessinger said.

They have fishing poles to catch food, cook with small stoves, use battery-powered TVs and radios, and keep their belongings in plastic bags.

Javier Diaz has trouble charging the GPS tracking device that he is required to wear because there are no power outlets nearby. . . .

The state moved the men under the bridge from their previous home — a lot next to a center for sexually abused children and close to a day-care center — after they were unable to find affordable housing that did not violate the sex-offender ordinance.

The thing about sex offender registry is that it seems to invalidate the justice system. These are all people who have been convicted and completed their sentences, right? They've served their time and been punished/rehabilitated and then released as free. Except they're not free because they must now spend the rest of their lives publicly labeled in a way that guarantees discrimination. And not just discrimination in terms of nasty looks and name-calling, but the inability to find work and housing, to even survive. We are making them into literal outcasts. I know they are guilty of heinous crimes and trusting them is an iffy proposition, but does this kind of mob mentality make us any better? Surely there's a better solution than this.