How close is too close?

In California, the state parole director has been fired, the Los Angeles Times reports, because 23 sex offenders on parole have been found to have been housed near Disneyland.
Parole and Community Services Division Director Jim L'Etoile was removed from his job Wednesday

How near were they? They were within eleven miles of Disneyland, and some were as close as three miles from the park.

This is absurd. The city of Washington, DC, for example, is a square 10 miles on a side.

Imagine a circle in a large metropolitan area with a diameter of 22 miles -- a circle of 34.5 square miles. At the center of that circle is some facility that children are interested in: a zoo, a playground, an amusement park. If not within that circle or in similar circles around other sites, where could the the released ex-offenders possibly live in a metropolitan area?

Does anyone believe that you can create a cordon sanitaire 11 miles out from some place that children will go?

There may have been reasons to fire the parole director, but this can't be a reasonable one of them.

Tags: parole, sex offenders, California, corrections, criminal justice, law enforcement, prison, politics

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