“Lights out for predators on Halloween”

Sometimes the depth of the ignorance of people in American society still amazes me, even after being so amazed so often in the past.
In the news today was the bold headline. “Lights out for predators on Halloween”, that was accompanied by an article boasting of “Operation Boo”, carried out by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (uh, isn't “Correction” and “Rehabilitation” supposed to be the same thing? I guess some genious state official figured that two lies were better than one, even if they are just different words for the same lie!) Apparently, all registered sex offenders who are on parole are forbidden to participate in Halloween. They must remain at home, with lights off, and are not even allowed to answer their door.
Talk about alienating sex offenders (which in most cases is exactly why they became sex offenders in the first place). This is a perfect example of how “the System” works against proven effective rehabilitation efforts (such as community re-integration) by imposing “media friendly” programs that do absolutely nothing to reduce criminal activity. Of course what “Operation Boo” does accomplish is that it gives “visibility” to a government agency's supposed efforts to “protect our children”. But, the only thing they are protecting of course is their jobs, and perhaps their delusion of heroic purpose.
I would be willing to bet dollars for dirt that if anyone did an effectiveness survey for “Operation Boo” (though not surprizingly there is considerable resistance by the System to all such surveys), they would find not only any significant reduction in sex crimes committed by the targetted sex offenders (parolees), but over the course of the few weeks that follow “Operation Boo”, they would discover a distinct increase in the number of sex offender parolee parole violations and re-offenses.
Of course, no one will ever do such a study, and I suppose that makes my prediction a safe one to make. Which makes a point not so much about the potential results of such a study as much as the point that so many operations are carried out by government agencies while the only ones reporting on the supposed effectiveness of the operations are the agencies themselves. And, they invariably use extremely slanted, controlled, and unscientific data to make their programs appear effective. Not even the press steps in (like it claims to do) to provide any “public oversight”, because then they would be cut off from getting so many lucrative headlines handed to them on a silver platter, like “Lights out for predators”. How juicy is that?