Google Maps + Sex Offenders = A Useful Service We Wish We Didn't Know About

Bleeding-heart, privacy-loving, pinko-communist civil libertarian that we are, Bostonist has sometimes harbored doubts about sex offender registries. But we have also long been a map nerd (our bedroom in high school was decorated from floor to ceiling in bus and subway maps from around the world), and Google Maps is, in our humble opinion, the best thing on the internet since HotOrNot.com. So we can't help but be morbidly intrigued by MapSexOffenders.com, a service that (surprise) maps sex offenders using Google Maps (and will notify you by e-mail when a sex-offender moves into the neighborhood). The Commonwealth already provided comprehensive listings (with pictures) of level three sex offenders (and level two in some communities) by city or town, but that's not nearly as convenient as seeing a handy visual representation of the fact that a man twice convicted of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 lives in a house we pass every time we walk to Target.

We'll sleep a lot easier now.

Stupid internet.

There's no image that goes well with a post about sex offenders, so we went with this extra-paunchy and awkward-looking McGruff the Crime Dog