AUGUSTA – At least two Maine communities and as many as 22 other states have placed tight restrictions on where convicted sex offenders can live.

State Sen. Bill Diamond, a Windham Democrat, said the restrictions that force all sex offenders to live at least 2,000 feet from schools and other such public places are ineffective and possibly unconstitutional.

A better idea, according to Diamond, would be to create “child-safe zones” where high-risk sex offenders are prohibited.

“The residency restrictions create a false sense of security for the communities and may actually do more harm than good,” Diamond said.

The effect of the restrictions is to push sex offenders out of cities and into more rural communities where they are harder to monitor and where there are fewer police or to encourage offenders not to register their whereabouts as required by law, Diamond said.

“In some cities, it’s not possible to find a residence outside of the 2,000-foot zone,” Diamond said.

Detective Dan Stone of the Lewiston Police Department said he could understand why people might want to limit where sex offenders can live, but it could put much of the city off limits.

“There would be some challenges for offenders to find housing in Lewiston,” Stone said. “There are nine elementary schools, then you throw in the middle and high schools, that doesn’t leave a lot of room.”

Stone is part of the youth and family services unit of the police department and coordinates community notification when sex offenders move into a neighborhood.

Sex offenders often have residency restrictions as part of their conditions of release, Stone said. For example, some aren’t allowed to live in apartment buildings with children.

Diamond’s bill also would create a forensic board to judge which sex offenders are at the highest risk to repeat their crimes. The high-risk offenders would be barred from entering what Diamond calls “child-safe zones.”

“Residency restrictions don’t keep them from going to where children gather,” Diamond said. The child safe zones would.

Further, not every person considered a sex offender deserves the same type of high-level scrutiny and restrictions, Diamond said.

“The law I am proposing takes a pragmatic approach at targeting our highest-risk sex offenders and removing them from the proximity of our children,” Diamond said. “The bill also wisely acknowledges that not everyone in the sex offender registry is a high risk.”

The bill includes a recommendation to the judiciary that sentences for the worst sex offenders include electronic monitoring once they are released from custody.

Iowa has one of the toughest residency restriction laws in the country, but the statute has been challenged in court. In January 2006, the Iowa County Attorneys Association, an organization for prosecutors, urged the state’s legislature to repeal the law, saying it doesn’t work and has created unmanageable costs on local law enforcement agencies.

“Research shows that there is no correlation between residency restrictions and reducing sex offenses against children or improving the safety of children,” the group wrote to lawmakers.

The prosecutors, instead, recommended changes to the law that mirror Diamond’s proposal.

As the Senate chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, Diamond was part of a task force that met over the summer to investigate the sex offender problem in Maine.

“Several other communities are waiting to see if the Legislature addresses it,” Diamond said.

A 2005 study by Lynn University Professor Jill Levenson suggested the residency restrictions could actually increase the chances for recidivism among some sex offenders. Levenson surveyed sex offenders in Florida, which has a 1,000-foot residency restriction in state law and more aggressive restrictions in many municipalities.

The offenders told Levenson that the restrictions increased emotional and financial stress, isolation and instability.

“When we disrupt the stability of criminal offenders, whether they’re sex offenders or not, they are more likely to re-offend,” Levenson said Thursday.

Plus, Levenson said, the restrictions don’t work.

“There’s no empirical relationship between where sex offenders live and whether they recidivate,” Levenson said. “There were studies done in Minnesota and Colorado, and there’s no evidence that the restrictions reduce sex crimes.”

“We must avoid the temptation to pass feel-good legislation based on fear and frustration, which in the end will be doing a disservice to our citizens,” Diamond said.

Despite questions about the effectiveness and constitutionality of the restrictions, the residency limits are growing politically popular. In November, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 83, the state’s version of Jessica’s Law that, among other things, limits where sex offenders can live.

“We have a serious issue that demands our attention, and the people of Maine expect a reliable, well-thought-out solution to this problem,” Diamond said.