There's nothing like an election to bring out promises from politicians to lock 'em up and throw away the key, especially when the talk is of sex offenders who commit unspeakable crimes. But even as Gov. Martin O'Malley prepares to ask the legislature in Annapolis to impose tough new restrictions on sex offenders, some lawmakers are complaining that Maryland has done a less-than-stellar job of enforcing laws on the subject it already has on its books.

The Baltimore Sun's Julie Bykowicz reported Sunday that during the last four years the state has never used a law calling for enhanced supervision of convicted sex offenders once they have completed their sentences, and an advisory committee that was supposed to review the state's sex offender laws has never even met. Another law requiring judges to order mental health evaluations of all child sex offenders at the time of their sentencing has been employed just twice.

The laws in question were passed in 2006, just before another election. Politicians of both parties grandstanded about how tough they were going to be on crime. But after the votes were counted, Democrats, Republicans, legislators, the executive branch and the judiciary all dropped the ball. Judges deserve blame for not ordering the evaluations, the governor for not making sure the advisory committee met, the Parole Commission for failing to apply extended supervision, and the legislators for not following up sooner.

In fairness, there have been other advances since then. The legislature forbade parole for some sex offenders in 2007, and both the General Assembly and the O'Malley administration have worked to expand the use of DNA, causing more sex offenders to be locked up. The administration's use of GPS technology to track sex offenders is also an important advance.

But that doesn't excuse the other failures, and it clearly has not been enough to make Maryland's children safe. We have enacted restrictions on these offenders that are different from those applied to anyone else - even murderers - but we have yet to be able to stop monstrous acts like the abduction and killing last year of 11-year-old Sarah Foxwell of Salisbury. Even if the 2006 laws had been fully enforced, they almost certainly would not have succeeded in preventing that horrible crime.

It is troubling that now both the death of Sarah Foxwell and the failure to enforce existing laws are bound to be turned into election-year cudgels rather than calls for serious reflection about how to address a problem as weighty and worrisome as protecting the public from violent sexual predators. Some of these offenders can never be rehabilitated and will pose a danger for the rest of their lives. Our judicial system, which is premised on the notions of proportionate punishment and due process, cannot easily accommodate that hard reality.

What the situation requires is not election-year blathering but a calm and reasoned discussion about how to be as aggressive as the Constitution will allow in preventing such crimes - and then concerted action on the part of elected officials who are both willing and able to muster the sustained political will needed to follow up on the issue. Instead, it looks like what we're going to get is another election-year cycle of cynical political posturing. That may protect the interests of some politicians, but it will do little to protect our children.

Readers respond

I am all for tougher sentencing, but the problem is this one-size-fits-all approach. The registry is so inclusive, who can tell the really dangerous from the harmless? Remember when a judge could make decisions based on the circumstances of a case?

Sheeple Herder