A helpful reader sent this interesting article to me (probably the same helpful reader who sent it Berman's way):
"The climate right now is so punitive around what to do with people who commit sex offenses," says David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center (www.ohiojpc.org). "Elected officials don't care that these new changes are going to impose incredible hardships on certain individuals. They don't care, frankly, that maybe these registries don't do any good any way ... because no one wants to come out and look like they're the friend of a sex offender.
"You've got plenty of people in the legislature in the state of Ohio who hold their noses and vote to approve these very punitive restrictions that we're seeing on sex offenders. They know that it's bad policy, but they do it any way because they can't take the political risk."
State Sen. Eric Kearney (D-Cincinnati), whose name appeared on S.B. 10 as a sponsor, didn't respond to repeated phone calls and e-mails requesting an interview.
There was a second reason legislators were motivated to pass the new law: Federal money was involved.
The law brings Ohio into compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. While the federal government can't force states to enact laws, it can create financial "incentives" for states to adopt them. In this case the incentive was a 10 percent bonus in grants created by the Walsh Act if Ohio enacted the law by July 27. States that don't pass the law by 2009 will face a 10 percent cut in other federal grants.
Ironically, the Ohio Legislature rushed for nothing. Congress hasn't acted to fund the bonuses in the first place, according to Amy Borror, spokeswoman for the Office of the Ohio Public Defender.
"There absolutely was a sense of urgency that the legislature wanted to pass it before they adjourned for the summer to meet this July 27 deadline ... to get 10 percent of nothing," she says. "Congress hasn't actually appropriated any money for that so, as of right now, it's 10 percent of zero. Even if there were money, even if it were $1 million or $2 million, that pales in comparison to the cost of implementing this."
Perils of simplicity
The registration system Ohio adopted in 1997 was risk-based -- that is, the law required judges to hear evidence about whether a sex offender was a threat to repeat his or her crime (see "Postcards from the Edge," issue of Jan. 12, 2005).Judges heard testimony from psychologists, law enforcement officials and others involved in the evaluation process. Judges put offenders into one of seven categories. Some had registration requirements ranging from 10 years to life, and others had no registration responsibilities.
The new law scraps the risk-based classification system. Now judges are required to place sex offenders into one of the three tiers defined in the federal law. The new classifications are solely based on the type of crime instead of on the risk of re-offending.
Having three classifications instead of seven simplifies registration -- but maybe too much so. It certainly won't help people understand the complexity of the crime. The system isn't even truthful, applying the tag "sex offender/child-victim offender" to people in all three tiers -- even if the victim wasn't a child at all.
The article covers the issues in depth and I recommend checking the whole thing out. As you might notice, the article also seems to draw heavily from David Singleton, who has written an interesting law review article about sex offender restrictions and has done a lot in the state in the fight against some of the ill-advised restrictions there. I think he is a great source for the article and has done an excellent job in bringing reasonable arguments to one side of the discussion.
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