Laws Based on Emotion

The other day, I put up a post about Iowa's stringent new sex offender residency law. Today, the Des Moines Register takes an interesting and fairly unusual look back at how other high-emotion events have led to quick passage of bills that haven't worked out so well.

The story briefly examines the way in which earlier laws regulating sex offenders and drug abusers have played out. These are "laws that create more problems than safeguards," says one criminal justice expert.

The story is a good look at both the law of unintended consequences and the difficulty of standing up in opposition to a popular idea that purports to solve a big problem. It's another argument for the value of slow, deliberative legislative process--however frustrating that can be.