Public Service Announcements In Minnesota Aimed At Sex Perverts

Grand Forks Herald – A new statewide ad campaign targets an unusual audience – people who sexually abuse children and those thinking about doing so.
Stop It Now! Minnesota, a St. Paul-based group that works to prevent child sex abuse, expects its campaign to generate some controversy because the ads are so frank. The ads will begin running Monday at bus stops, on billboards and in newspapers throughout the state.
“I’m not like those guys on the news who get caught being sexual with children,” a man says in one ad. “Or am I?” The campaign is the first of its kind in the country, said Yvonne Cournoyer, program director for Stop It Now! Minnesota.
“I think some people may be shocked by the content of the ads. At the same time, one of the themes we heard is that it’s such an important topic,” Cournoyer said. “It’s really important to get information out and to begin to have community conversations about this topic.”
Child sex abuse is a pervasive problem in Minnesota, she said. She said the group found in a random telephone survey last year that about one in five Twin Cities residents reported having been sexually abused as a child.

This sounds like a rather ridiculous waste of tax payer dollars to me. Does anybody really think that a pedophile (or even somebody thinking of committing a sex crime) is going to see one of these ads and change their ways? Not bloody likely, given what we know about sex criminals.
I wonder (but don’t know for sure) how much of Minnesota’s sex crime problem is caused by people who have already been in trouble for similar crimes? I suspect that it’s high as recidivism among sex criminals is a common theme throughout the country. Yet, because of lack of funding for detention space, a lot of these monsters are let back out into the general populace. So if this is true, wouldn’t it be wiser to spend tax dollars on keeping already-convicted sex criminals out on the street?
I think that makes more sense.