NY - Sex Offenders Housing Restrictions Are Pointless

Original Article

08/25/2014

By Jesse Singal

On Thursday, Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times reported that “Dozens of sex offenders who have satisfied their sentences in New York State are being held in prison beyond their release dates because of a new interpretation of a state law that governs where they can live.” In short, since 2005, sex offenders in the state can't live within 1,000 feet of a school, and a February ruling from the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision extended that restriction to homeless shelters.

Because the onus is on sex offenders to find approved housing before they’re released, Goldstein reported, they've been left with very few options, especially in densely-populated New York City, where there are schools everywhere. This has led to an uncomfortable legal limbo and sparked at least one lawsuit (so far) on behalf of an offender who is still in custody even though he was supposed to be out by now.

The unfortunate thing about this situation is that laws designed to restrict where sex offenders can live are really and truly useless, except as a means of politicians scoring easy political points by ratcheting up hysteria. There are many tricky social-scientific issues on which there are a range of opinions and some degree of debate among experts, but this isn't one of them. Among those whose job it is to figure out how to reduce the rate at which sex offenders commit crimes (as opposed to those whose job it is to get reelected, in part by hammering away at phantom threats), there is zero controversy: These laws don't work, and may actually increase sexual offenders’ recidivism rates.

Maia Christopher, head of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, sent Science of Us a policy paper her organization has prepared on this issue (it’s not yet online, but should be later this week). ATSA’s views on housing restrictions for sex offenders are completely straightforward: The group “does not support the use of residence restrictions as a feasible strategy for sex offender management” because of a lack of evidence they do any good.

The paper notes that these laws have proliferated—“[a]t least 30 states and hundreds of cities” have them—because of some basic misunderstandings about how sex crimes are committed. There’s a collective American fixation on the creepy image of a sex offender salivating just beyond the playground fence, but that’s just not how things usually work.

Rather, these crimes are generally committed by someone known to the victim—93 percent of the time when it comes to child victims, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics—and the majority take place either in the victim’s home or the home of someone they know. “Therefore,” the authors write, “policies based on ‘stranger danger’ do not adequately address the reality of sexual abuse.”

Rest of the article

NJ - Twenty years later, has Megan’s Law delivered?

Maureen Kanka

Original Article

08/24/2014

It’s been 20 years since New Jersey’s Legislature passed Megan’s Law. The two decades since have been filled with legal challenges and disappointment it didn’t accomplish what many thought it would. It’s what happens when politics and emotion team to shortcut the legislative process.

The law is named for Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in 1994 when she was 7 after being lured into the home of a twice-convicted sex offender, Jesse Timmendequas, who lived across the street from the child.

Her parents, Maureen and Richard, lobbied the Legislature for a law to require registration of sex offenders; it was named after their daughter. It went into effect just months after her horrible death.

Typical of legislation rushed through, New Jersey’s version has been much challenged. Other states and the federal government took their time and did it better. In New Jersey, there is a back story involving Republican Garabed “Chuck” Haytaian, who was Assembly speaker and wanted to replace Frank Lautenberg in the U.S. Senate. His colleagues saw the law as an opportunity.

In his campaign ads, Haytaian bragged he “fast-tracked Megan’s Law.” Both chambers of the Legislature were controlled by Republicans, and so was the Governor’s Office. They wanted to see Lautenberg, a Democrat, beaten. Haytaian came within 3 points of winning.

Emotion and political ambition are not a good combination for strong, effective legislation — the usual vetting and debate got lost. After its passage, it was tied up in court for years, a lot of it because of unforeseen problems. As much as we hate it, there is a reason the legislative process is slow and deliberate by design.

In 2009, a study by the state Department of Corrections and Rutgers University concluded Megan’s Law doesn’t deter sex offenders in New Jersey. The report says it makes it easier to find them because of registration, but you don’t need a report to tell us that. It also said the cost of carrying out the law — the report used $5.1 million, the cost in 2007 — may not be justified.

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MN - Tough thing, isn't it, this 'due process'?

Original Article

02/03/2014

By D.J. TICE

This month a federal judge may issue a long-awaited ruling on the constitutionality of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program. Along with national controversies over vast government surveillance programs, MSOP’s troubles raise a basic question that we should occasionally challenge ourselves to answer:

Why should Americans respect constitutional rights that get in the way of government keeping us safe?

First, some background, courtesy of Gov. Mark Dayton:

Two months ago, Dayton released a remarkable document (PDF) — a letter to Department of Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson that told the MSOP story with almost embarrassing candor.

“[F]or many years,” the governor wrote, Minnesota “has kept its most serious criminal sexual offenders locked away with virtually no chance of release.” And like “most Minnesotans,” Dayton added, he is just fine with that.

“As Governor, however,” he went on, almost with a note of regret, “I am responsible to carry out the laws … .” And the laws, he explained, say that offenders are eligible for release once they have served the prison sentences required at the time of their convictions — even under the “weaker laws” that applied to sex offenders years ago.

“Until now,” wrote Dayton, “the State’s tactic to avoid releasing … offenders after they had served their criminal sentences has been to commit them to a ‘treatment program’ … . In practice … these civil commitments have turned into virtual life sentences.”

MSOP is the “treatment program” — those quotation marks, by the way, are the governor’s — that is really just a tactic to impose retroactive life sentences on people who have served their time. After repeating that he rather prefers this arrangement, Dayton acknowledged that “this method of locking people away for life” might be found “unconstitutional.” This would put him, Jesson and the current Legislature “in the position of having to do what previous [state leaders] have avoided …”

Like their duty, for instance?

But there’s no sense rushing into anything. Noting that Jesson had “courageously begun to implement the current … laws” — actually allowing a few MSOP patients to move toward closely monitored provisional release (as other states do with offenders like these) — and after adding that he has “great confidence” in her judgment and processes — Dayton then ordered Jesson to call the whole thing off and for the time being “oppose any further [release] petitions …”

Why? Because of “political grandstanding” and “gamesmanship” in the wake of news reports about one of the proposed releases. (Several 2014 candidates for governor and the state’s attorney general had publicly condemned the proposed release.)

Dayton’s letter could be Exhibit A for the unconstitutionality of MSOP. To review: The governor of Minnesota orders his administration to drop its new, experimental efforts to actually “implement the laws” governing MSOP releases — which, in case you missed it, the governor doesn’t like anyway ­— and to do so expressly because the political heat is on.

Dayton is right, of course, that none of this is new; this isn’t really about him. On MSOP, Minnesota politicians have displayed bipartisan grandstanding, gamesmanship and gutlessness for 20 years. That’s how the state has come to have, per capita, the largest “treatment program” of this kind in the country (with about 700 clients at a cost of $120,000 per head, per year).

The question for Judge Donovan Frank is whether this state of affairs can possibly suffice as the due process of law guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

If so, we had better start calling it “due process.”

But why should we care about the constitutional rights of MSOP inmates, who truly are frightening?

The first reason is that if America doesn’t stand for the rule of law — and for equal legal rights for everyone — then it simply doesn't stand for anything. Or at least it stands for nothing more inspiring than the world’s best shopping.

If such an appeal to principle and civic dogma has lost influence, we may face a different kind of danger. The practical reason to respect constitutional rights — even when, like the governor, we’d really rather not — is apparently hard for many modern Americans to take seriously. Constitutional boundaries have weathered enough storms in our history (albeit not without breakdowns) that the threat of tyranny now seems far away and unreal.

But “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” as James Madison warned in the Federalist Papers.

The power of “locking people away for life” is a fearsome thing that must itself be kept in a strong cage built of law and procedure. There is no guarantee that everyone who comes to wield that power will be well-intentioned, much less courageous in the face of the extreme political pressures that can arise from extreme circumstances.

This is where the issues surrounding MSOP bear a resemblance to the controversy over the federal government’s secretive surveillance regime in the war on terror. That too is awesome power that in the wrong hands could be a tool for despotism.

Mark Dayton is no tyrant. Neither is Barack Obama. Neither was George W. Bush. But America’s founders deliberately designed a government that contains no unchecked discretion that could be readily abused should a would-be tyrant ever actually appear at the helm. We should keep it that way.

MN - Sex offender dispute gets political

Original Article

This just shows that they don't want people to get out of civil commitment and that they love to exploit ex-offenders, fear and children for their own political agenda!

11/08/2013

By PATRICK CONDON

ST. PAUL (AP) - The fate of a convicted rapist up for release from Minnesota's sex offender treatment program became a potential issue Friday in next year's governor's race.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, up for re-election next year, is at odds with his fellow Democrat, Attorney General Lori Swanson, who wants to block the state from releasing _____. Dayton is backing his human services commissioner, Lucinda Jesson, who doesn't oppose _____'s provisional release from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program.

Dayton's position drew fire from state Rep. Kurt Zellers, one of the Republicans vying to run against him next year. At a Capitol news conference, Zellers said he believes _____ is still dangerous and that the state should keep him in custody indefinitely.
- So is Mr. Zellers an expert in the field of treating ex-offenders, or is he just using this for his election campaign?

Zellers, a former House speaker from Maple Grove, said the primary job of elected officials is to "protect the people you represent. Letting Mr. _____ go would be failing in that duty."
- Your job is to also obey the constitution and other peoples rights, which you are failing at!

Minnesota's treatment program allows offenders who finished prison sentences to be indefinitely confined. It's the subject of a class action lawsuit by people who say they have little chance to go free even if they successfully participate in treatment. Only one person has ever obtained a successful conditional discharge from the 18-year-old program.

Eric Magnuson, a former state Supreme Court justice, has said the state is at risk of having a judge dismantle the program in a way that's objectionable to state policymakers and residents. He's leading a state task force to recommend alternatives to state legislators.

_____, 58, was convicted three times of sexually assaulting teenage girls. After finishing prison terms, he has been civilly committed to treatment since 1991. A Department of Human Services panel has recommended his supervised discharge, which is supported by his program treatment team. Jesson did not oppose that recommendation, but asked for an independent examination of _____ before a hearing on his request before a panel of state judges.

Bob Hume, a spokesman for Dayton, said Zellers is wrong to suggest that Dayton or administration officials have the authority to hold such offenders for life. He also said it's wrong to suggest that _____'s release is imminent, noting that the new examination would happen in January and that the judicial panel would have time to weigh the findings.

The administration plans to make recommendations to lawmakers ahead of next year's session on possible legal changes related to sex offenders, Hume said.

Swanson opposes _____'s release, citing experts who as recently as 2012 found _____ was still potentially dangerous. On Friday, Swanson's office was before the judicial panel asking it to set an evidentiary hearing in the matter similar to a trial.

Zellers acknowledged the legal threat facing Minnesota's program. But he said if it were struck down while he was governor, he would push for the state to fight releases on a case-by-case basis.
- But aren't these already on a case-by-case basis?  So you'd be doing nothing new!

Zellers is one of four leading Republicans hoping to challenge Dayton next year.

Hennepin County Commission Jeff Johnson said he believed it would be a bad idea to release _____. But he said it's wrong to politicize an issue that he said needs a bipartisan solution.

"If I were governor, I would be checking politics and press conferences at the door and working overtime with leaders from both parties to figure this out," Johnson said. "The governor and the Legislature are going to need to find an alternative to the system we have or the court's going to do it for us, and I guarantee we won't like the way that looks."

The other candidates, businessman Scott Honour and state Sen. Dave Thompson, sounded similar notes. Honour said Zellers had the opportunity to do more about the issue when he was House speaker — echoing a criticism leveled by Dayton's spokesman.

"Clearly this is a dangerous person," Thompson said. "But in the long term, we are going to have to confront what is potentially a legitimate constitutional challenge to our civil and criminal commitment laws."