Among the Sex Offenders

In the final episode of Louis Theroux's LA Stories, Louis spends time in the twilight world of the city's paroled sex offenders, whose crimes have made them pariahs living on the fringes of society.

The State of California has some of the toughest regulations anywhere in America controlling sex offenders. On leaving prison they can spend years on parole, tagged and tracked, and a lifetime on an online sex offenders register.

Louis spent several months at some of the hostels in Los Angeles where sex offenders live, talking in depth to sex offenders themselves as well as the people charged with monitoring them. The tough rules governing where they can live and who they can see make it hard for registered sex offenders to find work or even housing, and many are forced into homelessness.

Meeting these outcasts Louis asks whether these tough rules keep society safer and when, if ever, it is right to give sex offenders a second chance.