A crime crackdown is the first trick by governments in electoral strife. New NSW Premier Iemma started the ball rolling last week by sending convicted pedophile Otto Darcy-Searle back to WA, claiming that NSW “will not be a dumping ground for convicted pedophiles and high-risk offenders from other states” – and signifying that where the Daily Tele and tabloid TV lead, the Premier will follow.

The State’s prison bureaucracy is moving swiftly to implement the Telegraph’s crackdown. Crikey has received a memo sent last Thursday by corrective services commissioner Ron Woodham outlining new procedures for handling pedophile parolees: “No interstate transfer of convicted child sex offender parolees will be approved for supervision in NSW,” is the blunt message from the top.

The ten-point memo outlines a new system of checks, with all parolee transfers to be co-ordinated centrally – the commissioner is leaving nothing to chance in the heated environment. This will please the Daily Tele, which sent off Darcy-Searle with this friendly farewell: “Good Riddance.”

Beating up pedophiles is a political no-brainer. But the parole system didn’t develop in a vacuum, and there are policy implications for the cheap populism at work here. NSW paroled pedophiles go to other states and territories as part of an interstate transfer mechanism that’s been in place for 30 years. This is now being effectively scrapped thanks to popularity politics on the run.

And on the weekend, Victoria’s Opposition got in on the act, generating some cheap tabloid headlines, like the Herald Sun’s: “Sex fiend sent here – Bracks accepts interstate pedophiles” “What are we in Victoria, the dumping ground for the other states’ worst pedophiles?” is the helpful contribution from Opposition leader Robert Doyle.

Today’s Herald Sun calls on Bracks to follow Iemma’s lead and stop receiving interstate transfers: “Charles Alan Smith is a serial pedophile on parole, living anonymously in a Victorian community. But he should not be our problem – or risk,” editorialises the Hun. What’s more: “Now, even worse, the Bracks Government is importing the problem and refuses to give details where this man is.”

So vigilante groups can raise a mob and chase the parolee out of town? Or, fuelled by a shock jock’s venom, attack the wrong house in their search for vengeance, as we saw in Melbourne in the case of “Mr Baldy” this month? Laura Norder is an attractive short term alternative to sensible policy, but the ramifications can be ugly.