CARROLLTON - State law doesn't go far enough to keep sex offenders away from children, Carrollton City Council member Matthew Marchant says. So he's proposing a city ordinance with stricter provisions on where certain sex offenders can live.

The proposal would prohibit registered sex offenders, regardless of how long ago they committed a crime or completed community supervision, from living within 1,000 feet of places where children commonly congregate. Those locations include schools, child-care centers, parks, swimming pools and churches.

But it applies only to those on community supervision, such as parole or probation. Once off supervision, they usually have to continue registering as a sex offender, but the distance requirement no longer applies.

Some who deal with sex offender laws say that if the ordinance is adopted, it might be the first of its kind in Texas, though communities in other states have similar laws.

The proposed ordinance is intended "to provide a safe area for kids to not have to be watched and preyed upon by folks that have been convicted as sex offenders," Mr. Marchant said.

The proposal would not force sex offenders who already live within the safe zones to move. And because state law applies to offenders on parole or probation, it would not affect anyone convicted in the future of a sex crime against children until they are off probation or parole.

However, it would prevent convicted sex offenders from moving into certain areas of the city from elsewhere, or in some cases from changing residences within the city, Mr. Marchant said.

Iowa went a step further in 2002 with a law that prohibits sex offenders whose crimes involved victims under age 18 from living within 2,000 feet of schools and child-care centers. The law survived challenges all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court last fall declined to review the law.

The Iowa Civil Liberties Union fought to have the law struck down, saying it was difficult to enforce, forced families apart and effectively banished offenders from some communities. Opponents also said the law eliminated sources of stability for offenders, such as family, jobs and homes.

Ruth Epstein, who monitors sex offender legislation in Texas for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said she worries that laws like the one proposed in Carrollton and in effect in Iowa discourage sex offenders from registering their addresses with law enforcement.

"To the extent that there's no place for a sex offender to live, that drives them underground, which defeats the purpose" of the registration requirement, she said.

"In our culture, sex offenses against children are the worst crime there is, and certainly we need to protect our children," Ms. Epstein said. "On the other hand ... we don't want to drive them [sex offenders] underground."

Other Carrollton City Council members said they support the intent of Mr. Marchant's proposal but that the ordinance must be crafted carefully.

Mayor Becky Miller questions whether the law should apply to every category of sex offender or be applied on a case-by-case basis depending on the nature of each crime.

For example, she said, "There is a difference between a teenage boy who had consensual sex with a younger girl and was charged with statutory rape and a child molester."

And someone - probably police - would have to be responsible for making those judgments and enforcing the law. Dedicating police officers to that purpose would have financial implications, she said.

Council member Pat Malone said she supports the concept but worries that if the city adopts the ordinance, it may give residents a false sense of security.

"I don't want people to think if we do that, that our kids are safe," she said. "Even if that is done, our children are not safe to be unsupervised."

Ms. Shapiro was the author of what is known as Ashley's Laws, a 1995 package of laws that, among other things, required that information on registered sex offenders be made public and established the safe zones.

The senator, a former Plano mayor, said the city has the ability to pass laws that are stricter than the state law. But she questioned the impact of the proposed Carrollton ordinance.

She is concerned the proposed ordinance would lump sex offenders convicted of minor offenses with high-risk predators and that it would affect only a few people not covered by the state law.

"I'd much prefer to know someone's on the registry and I can look it up on the Internet and know someone has a past record of some kind than to have them go underground and not know where they're living, or falsify information because they fear the consequences," she said.

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