Needed: A Common-Sense Crime Lobby : However horrible the offense, legislators must deal in more than emotionality

The crimes of the rapist and child molester horrify and anger the public so much that many would be happy to “lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” Sober second thoughts seldom temper that reaction.

The state already imposes extra conditions on those convicted of sex crimes, requiring child molesters, for instance, to report their whereabouts to local police after being released from prison. When a community learns it will be home to a sex criminal, the alarm bells ring. Claremont residents protested strenuously over the news that a convicted rapist would be paroled to their community. But then he failed a psychiatric test and remained behind bars.

At the same time Modoc County, despite protests, has become home to another rapist, after Hayward persuaded state officials not to put him in that Alameda County community. The rapist now is living at a prison work camp in Modoc County.

This week Gov. Pete Wilson campaigned in Claremont for a “one-strike” bill that would imprison rapists and child molesters for life after their first conviction. The bill will have a lot of support. It is something nearly impossible to oppose emotionally. But legislators are expected to bring more than emotions to the process of enacting laws. They must bring common sense and reason, too.

State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) has authored the bill requiring first-time convicted rapists and child molesters to spend life in prison without the possibility of parole. That is the same penalty long given to those convicted of first-degree murder, and recently it began to be applied to three-time felons.

Bergeson says her bill is needed because most perpetrators of sex crimes are repeat offenders who rarely respond to rehabilitation. But the evidence there is inconclusive. And if the bill became law, it surely would be challenged as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. Nor would it be likely to deter others from committing the same crimes, if, as experts argue, these crimes are not rational acts but psychological compulsions.

Critics also have questioned whether prosecutors would press charges as vigorously if they knew a person would go to jail for life, rather than only up to eight years for a first offense, as current law specifies. Knowing the penalty, would one family member turn in another?

In an election year, with crime such a hot issue, and given the despicable nature of rape and child molestation, the emotions are understandable. But more rationality is needed, before we have more laws on the books than we know what to do with, more prisoners than we know what to do with, and, despite all this campaign-year thrashing about, still more crime than we know what to do with.