TX - We can do better on sex offender laws

Original Article

07/17/2014

By Steve Blow

Let’s face it, we’re more sympathetic to the plights of some than others.

Lost puppies and sad children rank right up there atop the sympathy scale. And at the bottom.

Well, can you think of a group lower than sex offenders?

It’s a tough sell, but a national conference is meeting this week in Dallas with the goal of making things a little easier for those convicted of sex-related crimes.

Hang on! Don’t stop reading. You may not be brimming with sympathy, but the truth is that the reformers have a point. And this doesn't just affect the sex offenders.

Our laws have become expensive and ineffective. In our zeal to protect against sexual predators, we might even be making things worse.

The national conference of RSOL — Reform Sex Offender Laws — began with a social hour Wednesday night. It gets down to business Thursday through Saturday, meeting at Skillman Church of Christ in East Dallas.

About 125 people are expected. Virtually all of them are like RSOL executive director Brenda Jones. They come because of a personal connection.

“I have a family member still serving time,” she said. “One of the things I promised him is that I would make sure he could have a life when he got out.”

The group’s central message is that sex offender registries have become an enormous burden on the individuals required to register, and they yield no safety benefit for the public.

“There’s no statistical evidence that it’s doing any good at all,” Jones said. “And there’s growing evidence that it could actually be doing harm.”

Those on sex offender registries often can’t find a job or a place to live. It drives many into hiding. The pressures can make those with sexual addictions more likely to offend, not less.

As with most things, this began with a good idea: Law enforcement should know where convicted child predators live. But in our zeal to protect kids, the movement went overboard.

The list was made public. Registry was required for more and more offenses. The result: Texas has almost 80,000 people on its sex offender registry.

“It was sold as a parent having the right to know there’s a predator next door. But the vast majority of the people on that list never touched a child, never had an offense against a child and may not have even had a sexual offense,” Jones said.

Even public urination sometimes ends up as a sex crime requiring registration.

Mary Sue Molnar of San Antonio leads the reform effort in Texas. She is founder of Texas Voices, an affiliate of RSOL.

“Several years ago, my son made some really bad choices. He was 22. The girl was 16,” Molnar said. “He would be placed on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life. He would never be able to serve his time and move on with his life, like any other offender.”

California has almost 100,000 on its sex offender list. And its oversight board wants to make a change. In a recent policy report, the board said:

“Research on sex offender risk and recidivism now has created a body of evidence which offers little justification for continuing the current registration system.”

The California report estimated that local governments spend $24 million a year maintaining the sex offender registry. Yet most people never consult it. And most who do take no action as a result.

Nobody is making excuses here for people who commit crimes of any sort. But if safety is what we’re after, we’re not getting our money’s worth.

Warning: City off-limits

View the article here | Other Related Items

It's so sad this world cannot learn from others or past mistakes. I am ashamed to be a part of the human race. We've all become barbaric animals who lust after seeing others suffer. Sick!!

04/22/2007

Deltona's ordinance, in effect, keeps convicted from moving in

DELTONA -- A local law that limits where sexual offenders can live has effectively barred them from moving into metro Orlando's second-largest city.

Deltona last year joined a group of nearly 100 cities and counties that have gone beyond the state law that prohibits many sexual offenders from living within 1,000 feet of certain areas where children congregate.

Commissioners in the Volusia County city decided that registered sexual offenders and predators cannot live within 2,500 feet -- nearly a half-mile -- of schools, parks, playgrounds, day-care centers and school-bus stops.

That left only a few pieces of vacant land not off-limits to offenders considering a move to the bedroom community of more than 85,000.

The city's ordinance does not apply to sexual offenders who lived in Deltona before the new rules were passed, as long as they stay in the same house.

City officials said they did not plan to close Deltona to sexual offenders, but they are not disappointed at the result.

"I think it sends a strong message: Don't become a predator or offender," Commissioner David Santiago said.

The public, for the most part, seems to support stricter residency rules for offenders.

"When you're talking about your children, it's better to err on their side," said Ocoee Mayor Scott Vandergrift, whose city has an ordinance similar to Deltona's. "Adults can fend for themselves and, certainly, they [offenders] should not have done something to get themselves in the position to be labeled that way."

Tougher to track offenders

But some law-enforcement officials, attorneys and civil-rights activists worry that what has become a national trend will ultimately make it tougher to monitor offenders.

If these men and women have no place to live, some officials warn, they might go underground and stop checking in with police.

"We lose track of them; they then become a threat to the community," said Fred North, who oversees probation officers in the 7th Judicial Circuit, which includes Volusia.

In Miami, five offenders were living under a highway bridge because local ordinances made it difficult for them to find a home, according to the state Department of Corrections.

The agency, which requires offenders to have addresses so that they can be checked on, reluctantly allowed the men to camp under the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

The increasingly stringent rules on sexual offenders have generated disagreement about their constitutionality.

Kyle Shephard, assistant city attorney in Orlando, said it might be difficult to defend a ban on some individuals when cities are not allowed to exclude certain businesses such as adult-entertainment shops.

Orlando decided not to craft its own ordinance.

John Stickels, a University of Texas attorney and criminology professor, said he sees no legal problems with banning offenders from certain areas, even if it closes an entire city to them.

"A person who has been convicted of a felony loses some of their protections under the Constitution," he said, "and one of the rights they may lose is the right to associate with certain types of people."

Iowa's experience

While relatively new in Florida, expansive residential buffers have been controversial in Iowa for years.

In 2002, Iowa adopted a statewide 2,000-foot buffer that surrounds schools and day-care facilities -- twice as restrictive as Florida law.

Corwin Ritchie, executive director for the Iowa County Attorneys Association, said cities there then created even harsher restrictions.

The rules shut sexual offenders out of most large cities. They now stay at rest areas, truck stops and motels on the edges of town.

At some motels, Ritchie said, offenders are the only guests.

Law-enforcement officials there complain they waste a lot of time and money trying to track down banned offenders.

Ritchie's group has lobbied the Iowa legislature for the past two years to repeal the 2,000-foot law because of the unintended consequences.

But politicians do not want to appear soft on sexual offenders.

"They will admit to you privately it's ineffective and a waste of resources, but they won't vote for it [a repeal] publicly," he said.

Ritchie and others question the effectiveness of boundaries, saying many offenders prey on the children of family and friends.

Florida legislators, however, have been debating whether to expand the current statewide offender boundary.

Lawmakers and other authorities have said it may be easier to legally defend a statewide restriction than a patchwork of varying buffers among city and counties.

In Deltona, the addition of school-bus stops -- the city has nearly 1,000 of them -- is the main reason why so much of the city is off-limits.

A map provided by the Volusia County Sheriff's Office showed only a few unrestricted areas, including a section of swampland at the south of town.

Family forced out

Juan Matamoros, a registered sexual offender in Deltona recently ordered to move, knows how tough it is to find legal shelter in Volusia's most populous city.

Matamoros was convicted in Massachusetts more than 20 years ago of lewd conduct after he was caught urinating on the side of a road. He said he likely will move his wife and two sons to a neighboring town.

"It is kind of impossible to find a place around here because it's like everywhere you go, it's either a private day-care or some sort of story they come up with," he said.

While Deltona's ordinance is strict, parents such as Debra Hicks, a mother of three and Cub Scouts den leader, say they still cannot relax.

Although new sexual offenders can't move in, she worries about those who lived in Deltona before the new rules were passed.

Said Hicks, "They need to put them all on an island, as far as I'm concerned."

Don't banish offenders

View the article here

04/22/2007 Aurora flirts with misguided policy

Aurora may join Greenwood Village and become the second Colorado city that prohibits certain registered sex offenders from living near places children frequent.

In Aurora's case, the ordinance would target violent offenders and those who have attacked children. The forbidden zone would be anywhere within the city limits that's 1,000 feet or closer to a school or recreation center.

The Lyons town board wisely rejected a similar measure not long ago. We hope the Aurora ordinance, which is scheduled to be heard by the city's public safety committee Tuesday, suffers a similar fate.

Any attempt to banish former sex offenders from large portions of a city or town is counterproductive and would probably drive them underground, where they'll be even more of a threat. Such measures are also quite possibly unconstitutional.

The public is concerned that the corrections system is releasing potentially violent predators into the community with scant supervision. The reality is more complicated. Colorado has supervision guidelines in place to monitor sex offenders who have completed their sentences and are on parole. These regulations go far beyond the requirement to register with local law enforcement every time they move.

In fact, most felony sex offenders who have been sentenced since 1998 face some form of lifetime monitoring. Before an incarcerated offender who faces lifetime supervision is approved for parole, the inmate is expected to attend counseling and demonstrate improvement, make arrangements to find housing and a job, and agree to continue treatment after leaving jail. If they can regain something that resembles a normal life in their community, they'll be less likely to harm others again.

Measures that try to banish sex offenders can put them beyond the reach of family members, community and religious organizations and other support systems - as well as jobs and decent housing.

When Miami Beach established a 2,500-foot buffer zone in 2005, the only place that state corrections officials would allow sex offenders to live within the city limits was under a bridge that's beside the Intracoastal Waterway.

Last October, a federal judge suspended an ordinance in Indianapolis which prohibited sex offenders who committed crimes against children from coming within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds. To be sure, that's stricter than the proposed Aurora ordinance, which would regulate only where sex offenders live, not where they work . . . or walk. Still, the basic principle is the same.

The legislature has turned back attempts each of the past three years to impose a buffer zone statewide. We urge council members in Aurora, and elected local officials elsewhere, to show similar restraint.

Sex-offender laws reevaluated

View the article here | Other Related Items

04/23/2007

State lawmakers have started to wonder whether strict restrictions on sex offenders are working out as planned.

TALLAHASSEE -- State officials are worried that two years of local crackdowns to register sex offenders and ban them from living in certain areas are proving so counterproductive that it's getting tougher to find the convicted rapists and pedophiles in the first place.

"The fundamental question is: Is what we're doing now, has it gotten us where we want to be?" said James McDonough, secretary of the state Department of Corrections. "And the answer is, apparently not."

Citing the cases of several sex offenders who have been living under Miami's Julia Tuttle Causeway, legislators, the attorney general and even the governor are reevaluating the hodgepodge of local laws passed after the 2005 death of Jessica Lunsford, the 9-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in Homosassa in 2005. The Miami sex offenders told reporters they ended up living under the bridge when local residency restrictions kept them from finding other housing.

Experts who treat sexual offenders have long criticized laws banning convicted offenders from living within a certain distance of where children gather. And as lawmakers are starting to point out, city and county laws that go beyond the 1,000-foot state standard not only have created housing complications like the situation in Miami but also might make sex offenders more likely to avoid state registry requirements.

"The misconception is that the tougher the ordinance, the less likely it is that sex offenders will live in a city," said Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat. "In reality, the tougher the ordinance, the much more likely it is for the sex offender to live underground. The sex offender will still live in the city. We just won't know where they are."

OFF LIMITS

Aronberg and Rep. David Simmons, a Maitland Republican, are sponsoring a proposal that would expand the statewide restrictions to 1,500 feet in exchange for eliminating the more stringent local restrictions that often leave cities and counties off limits to sex offenders. Many cities impose their own restrictions of as much as 2,500 feet. The Aronberg-Simmons bill also would require convicted offenders to agree to electronic monitoring.

The Senate version of the bill is scheduled to have a hearing today in the Criminal Justice Committee.

Aronberg said he also is looking at options that would leave the local rules in place but give convicted offenders the option of following the new statewide standard in exchange for agreeing to electronic monitoring.

Another possibility would create "no loitering zones" that would prohibit convicted sex offenders from hanging out near schools, parks or other places children congregate. A similar no-loitering law passed earlier this year in Hillsborough County.

McDonough met with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Rebeca Sosa in Tallahassee last week to discuss creating a possible task force to examine the problems created by city and county restrictions. Already, Miami-Dade is looking at repealing residency restrictions barring sex offenders from living near bus stops.

"That doesn't mean I want to ease, in any fashion, zero tolerance to sexual predators in our community," Sosa said. "But I do realize we have a problem."

The more measured approach to residency rules is an attitude change compared to previous sessions where state lawmakers last year considered a proposal to expand statewide residency restrictions to 2,500 feet.

"There have been a lot of our colleagues who want to put tighter and tighter restrictions," said Sen. Nancy Argenziano, chairwoman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and the Crystal River Republican who sponsored the Jessica Lunsford Act cracking down on sex offenders in 2005. "But we could be creating a bigger problem."

OPPOSITION

State lawmakers warn that finding a solution could be logistically difficult and legally complicated, which is why the state probably won't see changes until next year.

And any effort to repeal broad local restrictions likely will face stiff opposition from city and county leaders who want to keep sexual predators out of their community.

"Personally, I don't think 2,500 feet is enough for someone with a violent past," Weston Mayor Eric Hersh said. "I don't care if they don't have any place to live in the state."
- Ok, so what would you think if all criminals like murderers, gang members, drug dealers/users, DUI offenders, thieves, etc all had no place to stay? Would you want to even go outside? Why are you picking on sex offenders when there is other criminals who harm children as well? I guess murdering someone is ok as long as it's not a child and sexual abuse is done. This is sick, fix the damn laws.

In the end, changes will likely come from some sort of compromise.

"Nobody wants a sex predator in their neighborhood or around their children," Attorney General Bill McCollum said. "But under the circumstances, those that are released and are in society need to be able to work, need to have a place to live."