The city may limit where ex-offenders can live, because many surrounding communities have done so, resulting in a high rate of placement in the city.
When sex offenders leave prison, state law demands that they return to the county where they had lived prior to incarceration. Nearly 90 percent of the sex offenders who came from Milwaukee County, now live in the City of Milwaukee, because of restrictions suburbs enacted.
Ald. Michael Murphy says the city asked the state to intervene, but because it has not, leaders here may also limit the neighborhoods where ex-offenders can live.
“You will have 117 locations to consider for your future placement, and in reality it will be more like 15 or less and what that impact will be to your operations,” Murphy says.
Under legislation a Common Council committee advanced Thursday, sex offenders could not live within 2,000 feet of a daycare, school, playground and other places where children congregate.
Murphy says if the full council agrees, there will only be one square mile within city limits where sex offenders could live.
Ald. Bob Bauman says while he has opposed residency limits in the past, they will now get his full support, for one reason.
“It increases the perception of Milwaukee as a crime infested second rate place to live and the suburbs are great and look, we can keep out all the undesirable people. And I’m just sick and tired of that paradigm being in place. And the state seems unconcerned because these are Republican suburbs by in large, and heaven forbid those representatives are going to take on these uniform residency rules. So enough is enough the city is going to join the party and it’s your problem now,” Bauman says.
The state Department of Corrections had a representative on hand at Thursday’s hearing, Melissa Roberts. She says if the map for placements changes, authorities could lose track of sex offenders. Right now, many do reside in the city, and police know where.
“The intent of the sex offender registry is to know where sex offenders live and to be able to provide that information to the general public and to law enforcement. Where there are registry restrictions in place and sex offenders don’t have a place to live we obviously have increased homelessness. So we do not know where they live and cannot follow them,” Roberts says.
Roberts says sex offenders are more of a danger to the public when they’re off the grid versus being monitored. When it comes to complaints about the high concentration of sex offenders placed in Milwaukee, Roberts says the majority are from the city.
The issue will come before the full board on July 22.
Concerned your child is chatting with a sex offender? There’s a new tool to help you check.
A new function on the Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification (eSORN) Database will allow parents to input phone numbers, email addresses, social media screen names and video game handles to check if they are linked to a registered sex offender, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced at a news conference Thursday.
If the information is linked to a registered sex offender, a screen will advise parents to contact the local sheriff’s office or the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, DeWine said. Specific information about the sex offender will not be listed, according to a news release from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
From there, deputies can investigate whether sex offenders have violated the law by contacting children, DeWine said.
Sheriffs in Ohio’s 88 counties already collect detailed information about registered sex offenders, but now it will be available for the public to check.
“Our communication capabilities are better than ever before. We can talk on our smart phones, we can email people, we can post pictures and share our experiences through social media. But it’s that kind of access that can open the door for predators to have access to our children,” DeWine said.
Ohio joins seven other states that allow residents to investigate whether sex offenders are contacting their children electronically. The eSORN database contains nearly 18,000 people required to register as sex offenders after convictions for offenses from soliciting sex to rape.
California is one of four states that require lifetime registration of all sex offenders. The current registry holds close to 100,000, a number the California Sex Offender Management Board says is too large to handle. The board is recommending an overhaul of the system that would change the criteria for lifetime registration, taking into account the severity of the crime and the likely risk posed by the offender.
Host: Dave Iverson
Guests:
Marc Klaas, president of the Klaas Kids Foundation
Tom Tobin, vice-chair of the California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) and a licensed clinical psychologist
Special guest: Dennis Sobin, award-winning activist, author and playwright Dennis Sobin entitled Sex Registrant: How I Ended Up on the Sex Offender Registry—for Life. Based on a true story, this is a side-splitting (and taboo challenging) musical comedy that deals with Sobin’s actual experiences with the Sex Registry.
But he dosen't take all of that by just laying around. He has now gone on the offensive: For example, at www.IdiotsRegistry.info you will find the names of politicians and public figures who have encouraged the creation of, or have refused to denounce, government registration websites that target citizens for harassment. In the tradition of Nazi registration of Jews and Gypsies and the Salem lists of alleged witches, modern government registries are unfair and un-American.
They seek to punish citizens, many of whom have been falsely accused or improperly convicted of violating minor sex- or drug-related laws, by placing them on website registries after those citizens have paid their debt to society.
If you know of politicians or public figures in your region who have encouraged the creation of, or have refused to denounce, government registration websites that target citizens for harassment, please let us know and we will add their names to this list. You can email these names to Staff@SafeStreetsArts.org. We invite you to preview a new musical comedy by award-winning author and playwright Dennis Sobin about the Sex Offender Registry www.SexOffenderRegistry.info also see his art website at www.SafeStreetsArts.Org.
New Jersey has become the latest state to try to regulate how (and if) sex offenders can use social media, an increasingly tricky problem facing legislators around the country. But privacy experts say the laws are problematic, and probably unconstitutional.
The proposed bill would require all sex offenders in New Jersey to disclose the fact on all of their social media accounts.
A similar measure was introduced, but not passed, last year. The measure has been pre-filed for the 2014 legislative session. Donna Simon, an assemblywoman who sponsored the bill, said anyone caught violating the law, if passed, could face a $10,000 fine and 18 months in prison.
“Sex offenders are very sneaky and despicable,” she said. “What they will do is they will have a myriad of screen names and other identities to use for communicating to children.” - Underage children are not suppose to be on Facebook based on their terms of service. Why don't you teach kids in school, or better yet, the parents be parents and teach their own children about the sharing of personal information online or talking to people they do not know? A major study was done years ago that shows most children are approached by their peers about sex, not a stranger, although that does happen.
Of course, stopping even a small number of sexual assaults is a laudable goal, but in many cases, laws that limit social media access are quickly struck down in court, making the whole exercise nothing more than a waste of time and money. A year ago, a federal appeals judge ruled that an Indiana law that banned sex offenders from using instant messaging, social networking sites, and chat programs was unconstitutional. In that decision, a federal judge wrote that the law “targets substantially more activity than the evil it seeks to redress.”
Nathan Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU, says that New Jersey’s proposed law is a similar overreach. The law would require sex offenders to disclose all of their online accounts to law enforcement, including E-mail addresses, screen names, social media accounts, message board handles, and more. Similar provisions in laws passed in Indiana, Nebraska, Georgia, Utah, California, and Louisiana have been struck down. A law banning sex offenders from social media was struck down in North Carolina last year, but a New Jersey ban on social media for sex offenders that are out on parole was upheld.
“The reporting requirement is particularly problematic, because you have a right to engage in anonymous debate online,” Wessler said. “You have the right to ask about embarrassing medical matters online to write on the Facebook page of the Mayo Clinic or post on message boards. The government is requiring people to turn over these anonymous identities so they can watch what they’re doing online even when it’s protected anonymous political speech.”
Wessler says that besides being unconstitutional, the requirement is “onerous and impractical,” because it requires disclosure of things such as randomly-generated email addresses from Craiglist and disclosure of accounts that may have long-since been forgotten about.
The New Jersey law is modeled on a law passed in 2012 in Louisiana and goes a step further, too. It “requires person who are required to register as a sex offender to provide notification of that fact on social networking sites” and also has to include “notice of the crime for which he was convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of his physical characteristics, and his residential address.” The offender must also link to their sex offender profile on a social networking site.
That’s a lot of information, and a lot of it is impossible, logistically, to follow through with, Wessler says.
“It is literally impossible to include all that information in 140 characters, so anyone on the registry who wanted to use Twitter would be automatically violating the law,” he said, forcing people to “choose between complying with this restriction or giving up the ability to engage in conversation in what has become the new town square.”
Some social media networks, such as Facebook and Match.com, already ask that sex offenders not register for their sites in their terms of service.
All of this may sound overly sympathetic towards sex offenders, but laws that do mainly superficial things such as trying to ban sex offenders from social media run the risk of diverting attention from other prevention efforts. The stereotypical image of a creepy old man preying on unknowing children is a popular—and certainly scary—one, but in reality, few sex offenders use social media to perpetrate their crimes.
“Numbers suggest that Internet-initiated sex crimes account for a salient but small proportion of all statutory rape offenses and a relatively low number of sexual offenses committed against minors overall,” according to a 2008 study published in American Psychologist (PDF).
More than 90 percent of sex offenders personally know their child victims, and in over 50 percent of cases, the perpetrator is a family member—far from a creepy stranger they met online.
“These laws end up being counterproductive,” Wessler said. “They’re not tailored at all to addressing the harm the state should be concerned about. Anytime a legislature relies on inaccurate stereotypes of the problem, they’re diverting attention away from ways to address the real problem. It can create a false sense of security and divert law enforcement resources.”
And, if the goal is to rehabilitate sex offenders who have served their time in jail, requiring them to abstain from social media can seriously hinder that. Because sex offenders often have a difficult time finding jobs, many are self-employed and start their own businesses. If they want to start a social media page for their business, they’d be required to comply with the law.
“A lot of times, they’ll try to make their own goods and sell them online or start a business that you can’t successfully do without marketing online,” Wessler said. “Complying with this is probably going to completely destroy their ability to promote that business online.”
A legislative committee has issued a split decision on a bill requiring state residents convicted of sex offenses in foreign countries to register as a sex offenders here in Maine. Supporters say the bill is needed because current law provides a loophole for Maine sex offenders whose crimes are committed outside the country. But critics argue there are serious due process issues at stake because the standards for a conviction in a foreign country may not be the same as in the United States. A.J. Higgins has more.
The need for the bill seemed obvious to state Rep. Joyce Maker, a Republican from Calais, a stone's throw from the Canadian border. She says the issue came to her attention during a conversation with someone from Homeland Security, who told her an American convicted of child sexual assault in Canada had been deported back Maine.
But Maker says state law enforcement agencies were not authorized to add his name to the sex offender registry because his conviction occurred outside the U.S.
"It's going to be my focus, I guess here in the Legislature, to try to protect those children that are being sexually abused," she told colleagues, "and this is just one other avenue that they're getting to."
Maker's solution would be to require Maine residents convicted of sex offenses in foreign countries to comply with the provisions of the state Sex Offender Registry Notification Act. The bill received the support of the Calais Police Department last year, but the legislation was carried over to this year's session.
"I think the arguments around due process are significant enough that this could get tied up in courts, when what the police chief wants to do tomorrow is make sure his community has been put on notice," Dion said.
The due process issues are very real for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine that has gone on record against Maker's bill. The ACLU says that, unlike others convicted in Maine and required to register as sex offenders, those with convictions in other countries have not gone through the American criminal justice system and not afforded the same constitutional protections.
As pointed out by the ACLU's Oami Amarasingham, not only would there be concerns that a foreign court would not include adequate criminal defense provisions, in some countries, there might not even be a trial. Those real concerns created a lot of doubt for Dion and other members of the panel, prompting the Portland Democrat to try to find an alternative remedy.
"So rather than see this fall down some sort of legal wormhole, we worked with the chiefs and said, look, they can develop notification policies, they can advise us as to what criteria they would use from the other police agencies in determining whether or not to make a notification," Dion says. "So I think we protect the public safety, we get the word out where it's appropriate. But we don't get hung up being in court trying to determine if it's fair to put somebody on a registry in this state."
Rep. Corey Wilson, an Augusta Republican, says Dion's compromise could provide the kind of protections law enforcement agencies want. But Wilson also worries that without a strong enough message, police agencies might simply choose to avoid community notifications all together.
"I'm afraid that there are going to be police chiefs or county sheriffs that are going to be reluctant to take on this for fear of litigation purposes, where we're dealing with foreign jurisdictions and sort of uncharted territory, where we're not dealing with convictions within this country," Wilson said.
Dion says a minority report on the bill is expected, setting the stage for further debate when the measure reaches the House floor.
The Supreme Court is weighing how much defendants convicted of possessing images of child pornography should have to pay in restitution to the victims depicted in those images. The case involves a woman known as “Amy,” whose uncle raped her when she was a young girl and circulated photographs of the abuse online. He eventually went to jail, but those photos became among the most widely viewed child porn in the world. Karen Duffin reports on Amy’s quest for restitution.
House lawmakers Wednesday attempted to square the state’s sex offender laws with the prospect of what to do with juveniles who break them.
Fourth Circuit Public Defender Rob Mason argued before the subcommittee that trying minors in the adult justice system only makes it more likely that they will re-offend. What’s more, he claimed any children placed on sex offender registries become more likely, not less, to commit a similar crime again.
“Research shows that the re-offense rate of children who commit sex offenses is extremely low. However, the harm done by forcing a child to register for life – a juvenile sex offender, is great,” Mason said. - It's extremely low for adults as well.
Mason cited a recent Human Rights Watch study that showed children as young as twelve were registered as sex offenders in 20 states. Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice is currently one of only three agencies that can recommend a person be placed in the state’s sexually violent predator program.
Do you know who else is on most of the social media sites your children are using?
Convicted sex offenders are and one New Jersey lawmaker wants force everyone required to register under Megan’s Law to provide notification of that important fact on social networking websites. - And so are murderers, identity thieves, bullies, drug dealers, gang members, racist groups and others, so are they going to have to register their criminal pasts on social networks as well?
“Sex offenders are very sneaky and despicable,” says Assemblywoman Donna Simon who sponsors the measure. “What they will do is they will have a myriad of screen names and other identities to use for communicating to children.” - Some do this, but putting all ex-offenders into one group is wrong, but it's typical for ignorant politicians and the media to do so, and it's usually done, in our opinion, to help further ones own career or reputation.
The bill, which is modeled on recently enacted Louisiana legislation, expands sex offender registration requirements to include this disclosure on the offender’s profile on any social networking sites.
“It’s very similar to Megan’s Law,” explains Simon. “It protects children on the Internet. Anybody caught violating this could face a fine up to $10,000 and also jail time up to 18 months.” - How is it similar to Megan's Law?
Also under Simon’s measure, any person required to register as a sex offender must also provide the appropriate law enforcement agency with a list of e-mail addresses, screen names, or other identities used for web-based chats, instant messaging, or a social networking website.
“This is a total bi-partisan measure,” says Simon. “This is something that benefits everyone and I expect it to pass quickly.” - And we expect it to be shot down for constitutional issues!
The legislation also requires registered sex offenders to provide a list of any social networking websites of which they are a member.
The Assemblywoman hopes the bill will become law before the calendar flips to 2014.
“That’s something we’re pushing for,” explains Simon. “This is very important and one of the bills that should be part of the spotlight for the lame duck session.”
Several social networking sites, like Facebook and Match.com, already prohibit sex offenders from using their sites in their terms of service. - Doesn't make it right! And why don't they also prohibit all other ex-felons? Because it's against their constitutional rights, and the same applies to ex-sex offenders!
Of course it is, the data is entered by humans who are prone to making mistakes. But, it only shows you where they sleep for a couple hours per night and doesn't prevent crime or really protect anybody, it only opens people up to vigilantism.
10/22/2013
By Joce Sterman
ABC2 INVESTIGATORS UNCOVER A FLAW IN HOW THE STATE'S SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY TRACKS INMATES IN CUSTODY. THE MISTAKES WE'VE UNCOVERED SHOW NOT ONLY IS THE STATE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTIFYING WHEN OFFENDERS ARE RELEASED FROM LOCAL JAILS, BUT THAT THE FAILURES TO UPDATE THE REGISTRY PUT PEOPLE AT RISK.
In September people looking for convicted sex offender _____ wouldn't think they’d have to look hard to find him. The Maryland Sex Offender Registry said he was in jail. But ABC2 Investigators discovered the registry you rely on was wrong .
_____ himself helped us confirm the registry was incorrect. During a visit to his house in Glen Burnie, _____ told us, “I’ve been home. I haven't been locked up."
_____ had been living at home since records show he was released from the Anne Arundel County Detention Center on May 21. But that jail is exactly where the Maryland Sex Offender Registry said he was still living three and a half months later.
_____ is one of many sex offenders found on the streets and undetected on the registry. The news was disappointing to Anne Arundel’s Pat Parrish. She says she checks the state registry twice a week, looking for potential offenders in her neighborhood.
Paranoid person
"You've got to keep your eye on them, know where they're at," Parrish said.
The retiree is so familiar with the registry that over the summer she used it to identify and turn in a sex offender she saw taking a boy into the woods by her home. As Parrish scrolls through the pictures, she says she only takes comfort when she spots one word next to an offender: incarcerated.
"That person is in jail, so we don't have to worry about them," Parrish said.
But ABC2 Investigators found reason to worry, finding dozens of sex offenders whose registry pages were wrong about where they lived. Some of the offenders were listed as behind bars although they had actually been out of jail for weeks or months.
_____ is one example. He was convicted of a third-degree sex offense and was listed as living at the Prince George’s County Detention Center. But multiple records show he was actually free.
The profile for _____ was also incorrect. _____ a convicted rapist who will be on the registry for life, was listed in the Baltimore County Detention Center as of early September. But we found he’d been on the street since his release in July.
_____ is a lost inmate who still hasn't been found. The registry shows there’s now a warrant for his arrest. He’s been labeled as an absconder.
We took our findings from cases like _____ and _____ to Lisae Jordan, the Executive Director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. - So why them and not the police?
“With the registry, the errors you've uncovered here, we're grateful that you found them because that's really a problem," Jordan said.
It’s a systematic problem ABC2 News discovered by putting a sampling of Maryland's 1,500 incarcerated offenders through various government databases. The state's registry may have listed them as being in jail, but we used the Maryland Inmate Locator, Maryland Judiciary Case Search, the victim notification service VINE and even individual phone calls to detention centers to determine offenders we believed were no longer in custody were in fact out on the street.
"When we tell the public here's information about where these sex offenders are, that information should be correct and it's really appalling that it's not," Jordan said.
Russell Butler, the Executive Director of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, says he was disturbed by our findings. He believes the failure to give victims, and the public, current and correct information about offenders could put people at risk.
“If this is a person who has harmed you, they may want retribution," he said. "They may want to re-victimize you, so you need to know they are out on the street."
Jordan also expressed confusion as to why it was so difficult to keep track of offenders, telling ABC2, "I don't understand why this is happening. These are people who are in state custody. We should know where they are."
In the sample group we supplied to the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, 20 percent of the inmates we found were actually on the street had been in state facilities, so there should have been little problem updating the registry.
A federal appeals court is getting ready to hear the case of a boy who was prosecuted for engaging in sex acts with other boys when he was just 10 years old, The Wall Street Journal reports. - Experimenting with sex is, or was, a normal part of growing up. Now it's a crime that can ruin your life!
Lawyers for the unnamed boy are appealing a court's ruling that found him "delinquent" — the juvenile equivalent of guilty — for having sex with other young boys on an Arizona Army base.
That boy was sentenced to five years of probation, and he's being forced to register as a sex offender. A federal prosecutor told the Journal that the government decided to prosecute the boy because of the "severity of the conduct" involving five boys between the ages of 5 and 7.
The boy's public defender, Keith Hilzendeger, told the Journal he'd never heard of a federal case involving a 10-year-old. "I think this is really overreaching on the part of the government," he said.
Perhaps the worst part of the case involving Hilzendeger's client is his placement on the sex offender registry. In 2007, The New York Times Magazine had a moving story about the stigma and trauma inflicted on young people who were officially registered as "sex offenders."
One boy profiled in that story, Johnnie, had molested his half-sister when he was 11 and she was 4. Four years later, he started the eighth grade at his Delaware middle school and noticed the other kids pointing at him and laughing.
“Hey, aren’t you a sex offender?" one boy asked.
The latest case involving the Arizona Army base being heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit could force the government to justify putting kids on sex offender registries. In the end, the benefit to public safety may not outweigh the harm to the young children on that list, many of whom may be victims of sexual abuse themselves.
It sucks being a sex-offender. For most of us it was a stupid, illogical decision that not only created a "victim" ( regardless of the circumstances), but also has cost us family, careers, and our freedom.
As if that wasn't enough, there are the judgmental masses who have been unknowingly force fed stereo typed and skewed thinking by the sensationalizing media. Not all sex offenders re-offend. In fact, most don't. Not all men and women that have a sexual encounter with a minor are full blown pedophiles. There are in fact degrees.
I tried to contact someone from my past recently. Her response was that it made her "feel uncomfortable". What an uninformed, judgmental moron! Here in Houston we have the king of judgemental idiots-Andy Kahn. Kahn was so sure that he was right...about everything, that he thought it would be O.K. to lie at an offenders parole hearing. He is now under investigation by the Houston Police Department. We all know that nothing will happen to that vigilante.
Chin up and chest out, we do everything in our power to move forward despite people like the ones listed above. In fact, we have two long term mantras. 1- Never create another victim. 2- Try to do something in our lives that shows we can contribute in a positive way to society.
My guest this week is Dr. Michael Barta. Dr. Barta is the founder of the Sex Offender Treatment Program in the State of Colorado. Listen in as we discuss sexual addictions on this week's show.
Remember, if God is for you, who can be against you?
The man they are talking about, was deemed a level 1 offender (not likely to re-offend). He committed another crime and now they want to change the law. So I guess they will just label everyone a level 3 (most dangerous) just to "err on the side of safety?" It doesn't matter what laws they pass, if a person is intent on committing a crime, they will.
01/23/2013
By Bob Oakes
BOSTON — A month after the arrest of a Wakefield man on more than 100 charges of molesting young children, some state lawmakers from that area are calling for an overhaul of the system that lets the public know about the presence of convicted sex offenders in their neighborhoods. - As usual, one man commits a crime, all must pay for it!
The Wakefield man, was previously convicted of indecent assault and battery on a child, but a state board characterized his as a Level 1 sex offender, which prevented release of information about his criminal history.
The lawmakers who’ve filed a bill to reform the state’s sex offender registry all represent Wakefield, including state Sen. Katherine Clark, who joined WBUR’s Morning Edition to discuss the proposal.
If she does it without introducing her own hate into the mix, then we approve, and this should be done across the country. Erin Merryn is another person who has been pushing for this.
The state launched a new initiative Thursday that educates elementary school about sex abuse prevention. The effort is inspired by sexual abuse survivor Lauren Book, who’s also the creator of the new program called “Safer, Smarter Kids.”
In a kindergarten classroom of Tallahassee’s Apalachee Tapestry Magnet School of Arts, Lauren Book read a book called “Do You Have A Secret?” As she was reading, she continually asked the kids questions as part of the “Safer, Smarter Kids” curriculum.
“Do you think it’s okay to keep an unsafe secret if someone asks you too," asked Book.
"No," replied the kids.
"Louder, I can’t hear you," exclaimed Book.
"Nooo," screamed the kids.
"Very Good," Book told the kids. "It is not okay for somebody who has done something that they’re not supposed to do to tell you to keep that secret.”
Lauren Book is a sexual abuse survivor, who was abused by her nanny for six years when she was a child. She and her father now run “Lauren’s Kids,” a group that aims to educate adults and kids about sexual abuse. But, Book says she didn’t want to stop there, and unveiled her new initiative that educates elementary school kids statewide about child abuse prevention in six, 30-minute lessons:
“They learn things like their safety stop sign, which gives them five or more seconds to stop and think about a situation makes them feel. They talk about their TFA, which is ‘Think, Feel, and Act.’ What do they think about a situation, how does it make them feel, and how are they going to act upon that? We do address the difference between safe touch and unsafe touch. And, we do that from a place of fun, not fear," said Lauren.
"And, we go over strangers! 90-percent of the time children are abused by someone they know, they love and they trust, and a lot of times, kids think it’s somebody wearing black, with messy hair, a bad nose, that has a gun, a knife, or a sword, who’s about to kidnap them.”
Both sides of the aisle worked together in the 2011 Florida Legislature to make sure Book's initiative got funding. Democratic Senator Bill Montford says as a result of Book’s lobbying efforts, her initiative was able to get off the ground of Florida.
“When you can get the Florida Legislature to put out millions of dollars for a program that has this much of an impact and do it so quickly, you know it’s a good program," remarked Montford. "I have four grandchildren, got another one on the way, October 29th, and I’m so glad that they will have the opportunity to go through this program themselves. So, as a grandfather, as a legislator, as a senator, I fully embrace this effort.”
Book was joined by other lawmakers, like Representatives Alan Williams and Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda as well as the state’s Department of Children and Families Secretary David Wilkins and Superintendent of Leon County Jackie Pons Schools in launching the effort.
Sex offender, the mere mention of the word can turn even the most pleasant conversation into one filled with anger. Questions like ‘How could they?’ and ‘Why would they?’ inevitably come up. And those who commit the crimes often face years in prison. But if and when they get out, what greets them on the outside?
“Any metro area of Oklahoma, they’re not going to be allowed to live in. So you have to think rural when you begin to reintegrate them, almost from the beginning. When I say rural, I’m saying at a minimum the outskirts of a metro town or city.”
Floyd Long is transition coordinator for the state’s Department of Corrections. He works to get the worst of the worst integrated into society, so they can contribute whatever is possible. He tries to find them housing, a job, and transportation, with the help of family.
“The ability to buy a car, your metro transportation, your bus systems do not go out to the metro areas. So it becomes a big challenge when it comes to transportation.”
“Thus it becomes a challenge to get employment because they can’t get to their job. So it kinda snowballs, there’s a snowball effect that begins to occur.”
Inside the Crossings Community Center, just north of Lake Hefner, non-profit leaders, DOC staff, religious leaders, and interested volunteers, all came together a couple weeks ago to get a sense of the problem.
“If anything it’s going to get worse…”
This is one of the few conferences in the country devoted to the topic. Steve Gordon heads the Oklahoma Partnership for Successful Reentry and organized the gathering of about 50. That’s fifty people trying to help hundreds of sex offenders due out this year…
“We want to get that dialogue started. Dialogue with each other, dialogue with the powers that be, dialogue with the community and the two biggest challenges, nothing personal against you, but the media and public opinion.”
But yet here in Oklahoma, a state often cited in national media as backwards and behind the times, a discussion about what can be done. Why?
“We have a very strong faith community in Oklahoma and a lot of the churches have been stepping up. And then if they really are sensitive to the needs, the hardest reentry of anybody is the sex offender.”
“Nobody wants to help them, they’ve typically burned their bridges. And so it takes someone with a great heart of mercy even to want to look at them. They’re the lepers of society.”
I’m out on a walk with John at Hand Up Ministries in southwest Oklahoma City.
A registered sex offender from California, he now works full time for the ministry. John got out of jail in 1994 and has been in Oklahoma for years. An enthusiastic, eternally optimistic guy, he seems to take the best possible view of the situation he put himself in. But he’s fighting his registration requirements because of the stigma..
“I believe if a person lives like me, I’ve been out for twenty years, why shouldn’t I be able to?”
Everyone I talked to described a snowball effect. They have trouble finding a place to live, then they don’t have access to transportation, and so they can’t even try to interview for a job, where there’s a whole another set of barriers. Wayne Bowers works with CURE-SORT, devoted to sex offender reentry.
“I think all of a sudden, there’s beginning to be more and more people who are speaking out. When I moved here, I was worried. I thought ‘Am I really getting into something?’. But I’m encouraged to see there is a lot of place for growth here.”
But how does this affect you and me? Lately, the default position has been to wall sex offenders off. Well, Steve Gordon says some are starting to realize why that often doesn’t work…
“It’s making the public less safe because right now in Oklahoma County, we have 120 homeless sex offenders because there’s no place for them to go. That’s not good. Everybody I talk to, no matter what their background or what their profession, they say that’s a bad thing.”
But in the back of Steve Gordon’s mind, there’s the question of the standards these programs are held to.
“We can have the best reentry policies, the best reentry concepts and systems, they will not work. All we need is one angry citizen going up onto the steps of Legislature pitching a fit and it will undue years of good work we’ve been trying to do.”
That’s all it came down to in the day-long conference. The best programs could struggle to compete with one of the most powerful motivators: fear. A solution to that is far more difficult.
