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Second Chance Sex Offenders

Stacey Dooley travels to Florida - where sex offenders are punished forever. After serving their sentences, paedophiles and other sex offenders face legal restrictions for life.

But there is a battle raging in the American state about these laws. Do they truly protect children, or just make the public feel better? And the crucial question Stacey explores during her trip: do they ever deserve a second chance?

Stacey spends time with convicted sex offenders living in a homeless camp in Miami and an isolated community in the middle of nowhere - both consequences of strict laws preventing them from living less than 2,500ft from a place where children congregate. The offenders she meets hope to be fully reintegrated into society, having committed crimes ranging from watching child pornography to molesting children - but are blocked by the strict laws which restrict their movements for life.

She also meets with Senator Lauren Book, and her father, lawyer and lobbyist Ron Book, who have campaigned for more than 20 pieces of sex offender legislation - including the 2,500ft residency restrictions in Miami - discovering that Lauren herself was abused for six years as a child by the family's live-in nanny.

In Florida, Stacey struggles to come to a conclusion about whether sex offenders deserve a second chance, in the face of the harrowing experiences of victims and heinous crimes committed by offenders, especially when unexpected revelations along the way make her question everything she has learnt from the offenders she has got to know.

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