DE - Milton Plans Public Hearing on Sex Offender Law

Original Article

02/03/2014

By Lindsay Tuchman

MILTON - The Milton Town Council decided Monday night to host a public hearing on February 27th at 6:00pm to discuss an ordinance that would change the distance a sex offender can live to a school, day care or park. Currently the minimum distance is 3,000 feet. The council is considering lowering this to 500 feet.

The Delaware state minimum is 500 feet.

According to Mayor Marion Jones, local sex offenders have threatened to challenge the current law, leading the council to investigate its constitutionality. In such a small town with several schools, day cares and parks, the current minimum does not leave many options for sex offenders to live. Milton engineers drew up a map to show where the options are.

Fred Best, Principal at Mariner Middle School, says if the ordinance is changed, the school will be prepared.

"When you're talking 3,000, 500 feet that's not a huge difference for us as long as they're still 500 feet away and we know where they are, we know they're there," he explained. "We can take the necessary steps to keep our kids safe."
- 500 or 100,000 feet would not make a difference.  The facts are that most sexual crimes occur in the victims own home and family, not at a school, bus stop, park or daycare.  Residency restrictions do nothing to prevent crime or protect anybody.

His wife, Nicole Best, thinks 500 feet is just too close.

"The thing I think that would make me uneasy is that if they... allowed the sex offender to be closer to the school," she said "At 500 feet you have a visual on the school."
- Come on, ex-offenders, for the most part, do not sit on their front porch watching kids at school.

An 8th grade teacher at Mariner, Dana Orton, feels the same as Nicole.

"I think 1,000 is a little more reasonable, 500 just seems a little close," Dana said.

Mayor Jones wanted to make it clear that the council is not championing sex offenders, rather questioning the legality of the situation.

DE - Sex offender restrictions ineffective

Original Article

01/31/2014

By Paul Smith

Regarding sex offender residency restrictions:

Patty Wetterling, whose son Jacob was kidnapped and never found, posted the following statement on the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center website: “Because residency restrictions have been shown to be ineffective at preventing harm to children, and may indeed actually increase the risks to kids, the JWRC does not support residency restriction laws.”

In 2009, the Broward County Florida Board of County Commissioners Sexual Offender and Sexual Predator Residence Task Force reported they had reviewed available research about the effectiveness of residence restrictions and “found no empirical evidence to indicate that these laws achieve their intended goals of preventing abuse, protecting children or reducing reoffending.”

The Minnesota DOC analyzed 224 sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 1990 and 2002 who were re-incarcerated for a sex offense prior to January 1, 2006. There were only two where the offender contacted a juvenile victim at a park, and both offenders lived more than 10 miles away. They concluded that not one of the offenses would have been affected by any residency restriction.

In 2007, the Kansas Sex Offender Policy Board reported to the legislature: “Although resident restrictions appear to have strong public support, the Board found no evidence to support its efficacy.” Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz stated: “Residence restrictions don’t contribute to public safety. In fact, the consensus of experts in the field of sex offender management supported by available research and experience indicates they do just the opposite. Right now, it appears that the best alternatives are in the form of community wide education and training regarding steps that can be taken to educate parents . . .”

The California Sex Offender Management Board reported that 90% of people convicted of a sex crime have not been convicted of any sex crime before. The University at Albany [New York] School of Criminal Justice reviewed sex crime arrest records from the period 1984 through 2004 and found that more than 95% of those arrested had no prior convictions for any sex crime. More than 9 of every 10 who will harm a child cannot be on any registry or regulated by your law. They feel safer though and likely won’t be as vigilant.

I know you are concerned for the welfare of Milton’s citizens, but your ignorance of the realities and facts about sex offenders and residency restrictions threatens to place them at greater risk.