To the Editor,

Robeson County is often at or near the bottom of lists we should be at the top of and vice versa. Out of 100 counties, we are 10th for the number of registered sex offenders living among us.

Here are a few facts in no particular order based on information from past news reports and the NC Sex Offenders website.

As of Friday of last week, there were 277 sex offenders in our county. This list doesn’t include juvenile offenders or those offenders who are not required to register. No matter what your address is, there’s probably at least one living near you and your children.

As with many other crimes, many of them do not serve any prison time. They are required to live a whole 1,000 feet from schools or daycare facilities. There are more than 30 living within a five-mile radius of Seventh Street and Roberts Avenue, an area that includes numerous daycares, schools and churches, in addition to the number of women and children living there. We have one nearby who took indecent liberties with a minor and was rewarded with probation only. We have convicted rapists, and parents who sexually abused their own children living among us, including one who was convicted of three counts of rape that occurred in a single day.

At 950 square miles, we average 3.42 sex offenders per square mile. With 277 sex offenders and only one sheriff’s deputy assigned to monitor them, that’s an average of … boy, didn’t have to take off a shoe for that one.

Our spendthrift commissioners refused to give Sheriff Ken Sealey funding for a second one. Our lawmakers just don’t get it. Maybe none of them have loved ones. Sex offenders, like many other criminals, should get life sentences.

Just look at the Dru Sjodin story on the Internet. The national sex offender website is named after her. She was abducted and murdered by a registered sex offender who had been released after a 23-year prison term.

You cannot undo sex crimes, no more than you can murder, DWI or any other crime against humanity. It’s time to get angry people. Change our so-called representatives, get rid of the money-bag lobbyists who control many of them, and make our prisons standing room only.

Jeff Britt

Lumberton