In January 2007, Senate Bill 3 proposed extending Indiana's "drug-free" zones to include churches and other houses of worship. DePauw freshmen Keelin Kelly, Curtis Moore, Becky Murphy and Megan Tucker-Hall testified against SB 3 before the Senate Committee on Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters. Using maps that they created at DePauw's GIS Center, the four students demonstrated that the bill would result in "superzones" covering much of Indianapolis, especially predominately black and Hispanic neighborhoods where churches exist in great number. Although the bill was expected to pass without opposition and the students were the only ones to testify against it, the bill barely passed out of committee, was substantially diluted in the Senate, and died in the House.

The following year, House Bill 1134 proposed extending "sex offender exclusion zones" to include all childcare centers. Sophomore Ryan Keeley developed maps that illustrated a similar problem to adding churches to drug free zones: childcare centers are so numerous that virtually the entire county would have been off-limits to sex offenders. That bill, too, failed.

The maps below illustrate problems of creating too many protected areas.

Note: On the maps, churches and childcare centers are represented as single points rather than as buildings and surrounding land with area of their own. Thus the size of the zones around them is underestimated, especially for houses of worship, some of which are on sizeable pieces of property.

	Click on map at left to see 1,000 foot zones around churches in Marion County
	Click on map at left to see what zones would look like in Marion County if churches were added to schools, public parks and family housing complexes as protected areas
	Click on map at left to see existing Sex Offender Exclusion Zones in Marion County
	Click on map at left to see the effect of adding childcare centers to the Sex Offender Exclusion Zones in Marion County