By FRANK PHILLIPS
• SB 6 would require convicted molesters to be put on lifetime parole and be required to wear a GPS monitoring device.
A problem for Clay County and probably every other county in the state is being addressed in a bill before the Indiana Senate early next year. So far, in 2005, there have been at least five arrests on child molestation charges, as reported in The Brazil Times.
SB 6 is scheduled to receive its first reading in January.
At least one Indiana city is getting serious about child molesters, but its law is being challenged in court. Plainfield passed an ordinance in 2002 prohibiting anyone listed on the Indiana Sex Offender Registry from entering parks and recreation areas operated by the town. But that ordinance is being challenged in court by the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. The ICLU filed a lawsuit in Hendricks Superior Court on behalf of a man only identified as John Doe.
The lawsuit says a portion of the town ordinance banning anyone listed on the state sex offense registry from Plainfield parks is unconstitutional.
“He should have the same rights as all citizens, absent of a showing that he is a risk,” ICLU Legal Director Kenneth Falk said Dec. 13.
The man was convicted in 2001 of child exploitation and possession of child pornography. He served time in jail and was placed on probation until August 2004.
“Our ordinance doesn’t taint anyone,” said Town Council President Robin Brandgard. “They are already tainted because they are on the sex registry.”
It is not known how many towns and cities have passed similar ordinances, but Plainfield is not alone. The Lafayette Parks and Recreation Department has a ban against a specific person who was convicted of child molesting. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld that ban in 2004.
Next month, on Jan. 9, the Indiana Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters will consider a bill by State Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford.
SB 6 would place convicted child molesters on lifetime parole. The bill says a molester “must be placed on lifetime parole when the person’s term of imprisonment is completed” and the molester “must be required to wear a GPS (global positioning satellite) monitoring device.” If the convicted molester violates a lifetime parole and is convicted of a crime, the punishment would be increased because of his (or her) sex offender status.
The bill may never leave committee, could be amended or could fail in either the Indiana Senate or the Indiana House of Representatives.
The cost of enforcing it will undoubtedly be a factor when it is considered.
According to the Fiscal Impact Statement prepared for the bill, the cost of monitoring the offender on probation is expected to cost as much as $10 per day, based on current costs for 24-hour surveillance.
If the convicted child molester is found guilty of violating probation, under the bill he may receive a stiffer sentence because of his status as a sex offender.
The average cost of housing an adult prisoner is $5 per day, according to the bill’s Fiscal Impact Statement.
“There are no financial data available to indicate the average cost of parole supervision,” wrote Fiscal Analyst Karen Firestone in the statement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
On the Web:Senate Bill 0006
http://www.IN.gov/apps/lsa/session/billwatch/billinfo?year=2006&session=1&request=getBill&doctype=SB&docno=0006
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
A toy train for the holidays
What this Christmas needs is a good electric train set.
Did you see the remake of “Holiday Affair” on TV? The original starred Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh and Wendell Corey. It was about a war veteran working in a department store toy department. He sells an electric train to a young widow who is working as a comparative shopper. She secretly learns the prices of items being sold in competing stores for the department store that is her employer.
Robert Mitchum loses his job as a result of the transaction and, naturally, ends up marrying the lady who has a cute little boy and a lovesick suitor (Corey).
The gimmick at the beginning and end of “Holiday Affair” was the toy train, a big-selling Christmas item when the movie came out in 1949.
So, when the revised movie came on TV Wednesday night, I had to see if it had a train. It does! A beautiful Lionel passenger train that runs over mountains and dodges through tunnels, just like the train displays at our local Sears store in South Bend during the month of December. Wow, I miss Christmas toy trains.
We have a little, battery powered plastic toy train we run around the Christmas tree each year, but it just isn't the same.
One reason kids probably don't ask for toy trains any more is the price (and the competition from video games, yeah, yeah).
As I recall, in the 1949 “Holiday Affair”, the train cost less than $200. In the new movie, it costs more than $1,200. Considering the new movie was made at least 50 years after its namesake, the price is probably very reasonable. But, can you buy Lionel train sets from any department stores any more?
They used to sell them at a craft store in Terre Haute, along with the big G scale trains and the tiny HO and smaller trains. The store still has the Lionel sign posted, but I don't think they carry the items any longer.
One of the reasons toy trains have gone by the way side is that the small trains became models and gradually lost their toy designation. You can find “Model Railroader” and other magazines devoted to building realistic looking train layouts in any bookstore. But try to find “Classic Toy Trains” magazine and you had better just go to the Internet and do a Google search. That's what I did.
"Classic Toy Trains" magazine caters to Lionel and American Flyer afficionados.
The difference between toy trains and model trains is in the attention to scale and detail. A toy train may have a whistle; it usually has a tunnel and may have signs and a billboard (the whistle was built into the billboard on my old American Flyer layout).
But model trains are usually built to depict the real world; a specific time and place. And that's OK if you care about that sort of thing, but I just love to remember watching those shiny new, beautifully colored toy trains go round and round on those layouts in the Sears Toyland at South Bend.
After reading an ongoing debate in a model railroad magazine, an old timer hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Why can't we just hook up a transformer to a circle of track on the living room floor and play trains with our grandkids?”
Hurrah for toys trains and hurrah to RKO pictures for keeping the toy train in their remake of “Holiday Affair”.
Did you see the remake of “Holiday Affair” on TV? The original starred Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh and Wendell Corey. It was about a war veteran working in a department store toy department. He sells an electric train to a young widow who is working as a comparative shopper. She secretly learns the prices of items being sold in competing stores for the department store that is her employer.
Robert Mitchum loses his job as a result of the transaction and, naturally, ends up marrying the lady who has a cute little boy and a lovesick suitor (Corey).
The gimmick at the beginning and end of “Holiday Affair” was the toy train, a big-selling Christmas item when the movie came out in 1949.
So, when the revised movie came on TV Wednesday night, I had to see if it had a train. It does! A beautiful Lionel passenger train that runs over mountains and dodges through tunnels, just like the train displays at our local Sears store in South Bend during the month of December. Wow, I miss Christmas toy trains.
We have a little, battery powered plastic toy train we run around the Christmas tree each year, but it just isn't the same.
One reason kids probably don't ask for toy trains any more is the price (and the competition from video games, yeah, yeah).
As I recall, in the 1949 “Holiday Affair”, the train cost less than $200. In the new movie, it costs more than $1,200. Considering the new movie was made at least 50 years after its namesake, the price is probably very reasonable. But, can you buy Lionel train sets from any department stores any more?
They used to sell them at a craft store in Terre Haute, along with the big G scale trains and the tiny HO and smaller trains. The store still has the Lionel sign posted, but I don't think they carry the items any longer.
One of the reasons toy trains have gone by the way side is that the small trains became models and gradually lost their toy designation. You can find “Model Railroader” and other magazines devoted to building realistic looking train layouts in any bookstore. But try to find “Classic Toy Trains” magazine and you had better just go to the Internet and do a Google search. That's what I did.
"Classic Toy Trains" magazine caters to Lionel and American Flyer afficionados.
The difference between toy trains and model trains is in the attention to scale and detail. A toy train may have a whistle; it usually has a tunnel and may have signs and a billboard (the whistle was built into the billboard on my old American Flyer layout).
But model trains are usually built to depict the real world; a specific time and place. And that's OK if you care about that sort of thing, but I just love to remember watching those shiny new, beautifully colored toy trains go round and round on those layouts in the Sears Toyland at South Bend.
After reading an ongoing debate in a model railroad magazine, an old timer hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Why can't we just hook up a transformer to a circle of track on the living room floor and play trains with our grandkids?”
Hurrah for toys trains and hurrah to RKO pictures for keeping the toy train in their remake of “Holiday Affair”.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Christmas is a comin'
By Terry Franklin Phillips Sr.
It is definitely winter here in central Indiana. It seems the past few Decembers we have had snow storms, but the current cold (9 degrees above zero this morning) and the snow-covered ground more days than not seems unusual after the relatively mild winters we have been experiencing. But, all this whiteness makes for Christmas card snowscapes outside our windows.
It is beautiful. Take Sunday, for example. We drove north to the church we attend through fields of green. The only snow to be seen was piled up from the 6-inch snow we receive several days ago. The rest had melted in 40-degree temperatures. By the time we returned home Sunday afternoon, snow covered the ground everywhere. The snow had begun falling while we traveled north, making the trip delightful, indeed.
Contrast the typical Amercan Christmas season we are enjoying with the the war in Iraq and recent revelations at home. There is a world of difference and maybe the world hasn't shrunk as much as we thought it had in our Internet age.
President George W. Bush was on TV last night. He spoke from the Oval Office and it seemed he was speaking from his heart. He is undoubtedly (as far as I could tell) sincere in his belief we are doing the right thing in Iraq and in fighting terrorism at home. And that is scary.
It is scary because Mr. Bush's view is so different from my own and, apparently, from the view of many of my friends.
I found myself asking my wife, "What IS the color of the sky in his world?"
How can one believe that invading another country is the American way? How do wiretaps initiated by the President, apart from any court action, become a part of our landscape?
It is as foreign to traditional America as the hot dry sand in Iraq is foreign to our picture postcard Christmas in Indiana with snow and cold temperatures.
It is definitely winter here in central Indiana. It seems the past few Decembers we have had snow storms, but the current cold (9 degrees above zero this morning) and the snow-covered ground more days than not seems unusual after the relatively mild winters we have been experiencing. But, all this whiteness makes for Christmas card snowscapes outside our windows.
It is beautiful. Take Sunday, for example. We drove north to the church we attend through fields of green. The only snow to be seen was piled up from the 6-inch snow we receive several days ago. The rest had melted in 40-degree temperatures. By the time we returned home Sunday afternoon, snow covered the ground everywhere. The snow had begun falling while we traveled north, making the trip delightful, indeed.
Contrast the typical Amercan Christmas season we are enjoying with the the war in Iraq and recent revelations at home. There is a world of difference and maybe the world hasn't shrunk as much as we thought it had in our Internet age.
President George W. Bush was on TV last night. He spoke from the Oval Office and it seemed he was speaking from his heart. He is undoubtedly (as far as I could tell) sincere in his belief we are doing the right thing in Iraq and in fighting terrorism at home. And that is scary.
It is scary because Mr. Bush's view is so different from my own and, apparently, from the view of many of my friends.
I found myself asking my wife, "What IS the color of the sky in his world?"
How can one believe that invading another country is the American way? How do wiretaps initiated by the President, apart from any court action, become a part of our landscape?
It is as foreign to traditional America as the hot dry sand in Iraq is foreign to our picture postcard Christmas in Indiana with snow and cold temperatures.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)