Sex Crimes

Chicago Tribune: "Are sex offender laws working?"

The Chicago Tribune has an interesting article discussing how Illinois' sex offender residency restrictions may be doing more harm than good. From the article:

Thousands of sex offenders have remained in prison for parole and then been returned to the streets without oversight or treatment. These offenders are less likely to register their addresses than those serving tightly monitored paroles in the community. They also are more likely to reoffend, sometimes repeating the same sex crimes, the review found.

Of the 1,292 sex offenders discharged in fiscal 2008 after serving parole behind bars, 28 percent were listed as missing, not having registered their address or not being up-to-date with their registrations, compared with 23 percent of the 1,868 sex offenders paroled into the community.

Another 21 percent of the discharged offenders returned to prison, a slightly higher rate than those who were paroled. But in most cases, offenders monitored in the community were sent back to prison for technical parole violations, in many cases housing-related problems, while the discharged offenders were convicted of new crimes.

Sex offender housing restrictions have long been criticized by civil liberties advocates, who argue that it's unjust to banish any segment of society, and by criminal justice experts, who say it's more productive and cost-effective for most offenders to undergo parole supervision and treatment in the community.

Now some victims' advocates and members of law enforcement are echoing the calls for reform.

Iowa Town's Total Sex Offender Ban May Be in Jeopardy

A helpful reader informs us that a small town in Iowa (Dyersville to be precise) has decided against repealing an ordinance that bans all sex offenders from residing within the city limits. The ordinance however, is in tension with the state's own residency restrictions which prohibit sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, libraries, and daycare centers. Thus, it appears that the town's ordinance is in a state of limbo. From The Telegraph Herald:

The Dyersville City Council decided not to act Monday on a repeal of an ordinance passed in 2005 that bans all sex offenders from residing within city limits.

Council member Molly Evers, a longtime opponent of the ordinance, cited a recent change in Iowa Code that takes away power from municipalities to adopt ordinances on residency of sex offenders.

[Under Iowa law], "any motion, resolution or ordinance adopted by a political subdivision of the state is void and unenforceable."

Four days after the council meeting, Evers expressed her displeasure with the decision not to move forward. "Dyersville should do the right thing now and bring its ordinance in accord with state law," Evers wrote in an e-mail to the TH. "Unfortunately, though, some people cannot admit it when they are wrong.

City Attorney Marc Casey contacted the Iowa Attorney General's office for "informal" advice before forming his opinion, according to Iowa Attorney General spokesman Bob Brammer.

"In our view, a local ordinance in this realm likely would be preempted by the specific language in the statute," Brammer said. "We encourage any city to consider and research if there are potential liabilities if the city enforces an ordinance that has been preempted or voided by state law."

Heavens said he's not concerned about litigation against the city. "Somebody would have to show they were harmed that they can't live in the city limits of Dyersville," Heavens said. "We have never had (sex offenders) come here and ask us to live here."

Meanwhile, a 19 year old Dyersville man has been charged with the sexual abuse of two 13 year old girls.  If he is convicted, it will be interesting whether the town will enforce the residency restriction on a current resident. 

CA Bill Would Ban Sex Offenders From Social Networking Sites

A California legislator has recently introduced a bill that would ban sex offenders within the state from utilizing social networking sites (such as MySpace and Facebook). But some have already questioned the constitutionality of such a proposal. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Sex offenders in California would be barred from using social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace under a proposed law aimed at making the Internet safer for children as more and more of them flock to the Web.

Citing horrific cases in which children were sexually assaulted by men they met online, Assemblywoman Norma Torres, D-Pomona (Los Angeles County) introduced the bill last month, which would make it a crime for Californian's 63,000 registered sex offenders to use any social networking site. The proposed law defines those as a Web site "designed with the intent of allowing users to build networks or connect with other people and that provides means for users to connect over the Internet."

Assembly Bill 2208 is similar to legislation passed last year in Illinois, but doesn't go quite as far as a New York state law that additionally requires sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses and online aliases with state authorities, who can then turn over the names to the companies that run the social networking sites. After the New York law passed, 3,500 sex offenders were purged from MySpace and Facebook by the Internet companies.

The number of users on social networking sites has doubled since 2007, Torres said, and many of those users are children. She noted that just last month, a 33-year-old man lured a 12-year-old girl to a hotel in Anaheim, where she was sexually assaulted.

"Tuttle Bridge is vacated, but problem remains unsolved"

Longtime readers know all about the problems with the Julia Tuttle Causeway, where homeless sex offenders have lived under a concrete overpass partly as a result of severe residency restrictions. The Miami Herald is reporting that most sex offenders who have lived there have been moved out, and those that remain will be relocated elsewhere. The article also points out that this effort will not solve the problem of sex offender homelessness, but will merely place them further out of sight. From the article:

Under a clear and brisk sky, with traffic booming overhead, work crews took sledge hammers to the wooden shacks, shingled huts and flimsy tents along the bank of Miami's gleaming Intracoastal waterway.

Most of the homeless sex offenders who lived here have been moved out, and the few who remain are on a short waiting list for housing that falls within Miami-Dade County's revised sex-offender law.

"It's the end of the Julia Tuttle, but it's not the end of this kind of place,'' said Patrick, a registered sex offender who has lived under the rat-infested bridge for three years and did not give his last name. "There will be another Julia Tuttle, another place where people will put us so that we are out of sight and out of mind.''

In the past decade, more than two dozen states and hundreds of cities have responded to the public outcry over sex crimes against children by passing residency restrictions. In many cases, the laws have effectively banned sex offenders and predators from living within huge swaths of cities and towns -- separating them from their families and support systems -- and settling them far from transportation and job opportunities.

By rendering them homeless, experts say, the laws make it more difficult for them to re-enter society, harder for law enforcement to keep track of them and easier for them to fall into lawlessness.

In South Florida, the zones that were carved out over the past few years forced sex offenders to live at least 2,500 feet from almost anywhere where children congregate: schools, libraries, bus stops, playgrounds and parks.

Not all sex offenders are hard-core predators or child rapists. Some of them are referred to as having committed "Romeo and Juliet'' crimes, which involve intimate relations -- not always sex -- among young couples, one of whom is under the age of 16. However, by law, all the offenders are lumped into the same category, and end up being labeled sex offenders for the rest of their lives, whether they raped a child or urinated in a public place where children play.

KY AG Asks SCOTUS To Hear Residency Case

After losing in the state Supreme Court, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Kentucky's sex offender residency restrictions may be applied retroactively. You may view the petition for a writ of certiorari here. In an October 2009 opinion, the state Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the law could not be applied retroactively without running afoul of state and federal constitutional prohibitions on ex post facto laws. You may view that opinion here. The decision is Commonwealth v. Baker, 295 S.W.3d 437 (Ky. 2009). From the Courier-Journal:

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled 5-2 in October that the statute was improperly imposed on people convicted before the law went into effect because both the U.S. and Kentucky constitutions prohibit laws that impose or increase punishment on criminal acts committed before the law's enactment.

Conway's office filed a petition Wednesday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The court receives about 10,000 requests a year to review cases and decides only about 80. But the question of the retroactive application of sex-offender laws has arisen in several states, making it more likely that the high court will accept the case.

The 2006 statute subjected all convicted sex offenders to the residency requirements, while the old law applied only to about 1,200 offenders who were on probation or parole.

The Courier-Journal has reported that there were about 5,800 registered sex offenders when the law went into effect, although some of them may no longer be required to register.

Victims' advocates said they were disappointed with the state Supreme Court's ruling.

But experts said research has shown that sex-offender registries and residency restrictions don't deter future crimes. And some criminal justice officials said Kentucky's law makes it so difficult for some offenders to find a place to live that they stop reporting their addresses to authorities.

NY AG Gets Social Networking Sites To Ban More Sex Offenders

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has a press release touting how 13 new social networking sites have agreed to remove NY sex offenders from their sites. From the press release:

As of today, 15 major social networking companies have agreed to use New York’s Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP), authored by Cuomo, to purge registered sex offenders from their sites. The law requires all registered sex offenders to register their email accounts, screen names and any other Internet identifiers with the state Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). That information is then made available to social networking sites. Several other companies continue to ignore this critical measure to make the Internet safer.

“It is no secret that sexual predators abuse social networking Web sites to find and manipulate victims and to insinuate themselves into their victims’ lives,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “e-STOP allows social networking Web sites to identify these sex predators and help prevent them from harming again. The country’s most popular social networking sites have taken an important step in making the Internet safer by using e-STOP to purge sex offenders from their sites. That some companies are continuing to ignore the e-STOP database is not only inexcusable, it is potentially dangerous.”

On December 1, Cuomo issued letters to 17 social networking Web sites urging them to take this important step towards protecting their users from sexual predators. To date, twelve of these Web sites; AOL’s Bebo.com. Google’s Orkut.com, Yahoo!’s Flickr.com, BlackPlanet.com, Classmates.com, Flixster.com, Fotolog.com, hi5.com, MyLife.com, Stickam.com, and Tagged.com, have agreed to use e-STOP data from the state to find and disable accounts linked to registered sex offenders. Imeem.com was recently bought by MySpace and will also purge its network of New York Sex Offenders. Multiply.com, which did not receive a letter, has also requested the e-STOP data. 

Another "Sex Offender" in Virginia

Radley Balko at the Agitator has a story from my home state of Virginia about an unusual sex offender. This was Balko's colorful take on the incident and conviction:

Erick Williamson, the Springfield, Virginia man arrested earlier this year for being naked in his own home was convicted of indecent exposure on Friday. The judge sentenced him to 180 days in jail, but suspended the sentence.

I’m still not sure how the conviction holds up, given that the two alleged witnesses had to actually look into Williamson’s house to see Little Erick and the Williamson Twins. So you now have to make sure no one can see into your home in order to be naked in it? How vigilant must you be?

While Balko doesn't give a lot of credit to the stories of the witnesses, under any version of the facts, this hardly seems like a person that should be subject to the federal and state restrictions on sex offenders. However, while the judge in the case couldn't have excused the defendant from registration obligations, he exhibited the sex offender hysteria that would have made it unlikely that he would have done so if given the option:

Williamson denied standing naked in his doorway or front window and said he had no intent to expose himself to anyone. But [Judge] O’Flaherty wasn’t buying it and likened Williamson to bank robber John Dillinger, who also “thought he was doing nothing wrong when he walked into banks and shot them up.”

That's right - the defendant was like John Dillinger.

"Jessica’s Law too vague to enforce?"

Thanks to CrimProf Blog, we see this interesting article from the San Diego Union-Tribune pointing out various problems with Jessica's Law implementation. From the article:

Jessica’s Law, which was approved by California voters in November 2006, toughened sanctions against sex offenders and bars them from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. In San Diego County, 1,266 of 1,731 offenders whose addresses are made public by the state live in those restricted zones, according to an analysis by the Watchdog Institute, a nonprofit investigative journalism unit based at San Diego State University.

That finding surprises virtually no one in law enforcement. They say the law is vague and has holes, making it nearly impossible to enforce.

For example, the law doesn’t specify whether residence restrictions apply to all convicted sex offenders or only to those who were convicted or paroled after it passed. There are no penalties for violating the restrictions.

Four registered sex offenders, two of whom live in San Diego County, have challenged the residency restrictions, and their case is before the California Supreme Court.

The four men were paroled after Jessica’s Law passed, but their most recent crimes were not sex offenses. Parole officers told them they had to move from restricted areas near schools or parks or be sent back to prison.

I'm not sure I understand the use of the word "vague" here. It certainly isn't in the legal sense. The lack of specific language for retroactivity has been the norm with sex offender laws and that is just a matter of statutory interpretation and constitutional analysis. However, I think the other criticisms of the law in the article are worth noting.

Group Seeks To Ban MA Sex Offenders From Homeless Shelters

The Boston Globe has an interesting article discussing a new push to ban sex offenders from homeless shelters. From the article:

As the state’s steep budget cuts have forced organizations that help the homeless to cut beds, staff, and programs, the advocates for the needy say banning sex offenders would allow shelters to save money on security, open up space for others, and make shelters safer.

The Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, which represents 90 organizations that provide services to the homeless, has urged state lawmakers to add shelters to an increasingly long list of residential bans for many sex offenders. They are already barred in some communities from living near schools, day-care centers, parks, playgrounds, libraries, or nursing homes.

While those who study sex offender recidivism rates say such residential restrictions are counterproductive, state lawmakers who support the proposed legislation argue that it also would fix a loophole in the law, which for five years has required the most dangerous sex offenders to post their names, addresses, and photos on a public website. They say too many sex offenders bypass the law by listing a homeless shelter as their address when they live elsewhere.

In a review yesterday of 162 Level 3 sex offenders - those with a high risk of committing sex crimes again - who list addresses in Boston on the state’s online registry, the Globe found that at least 74 percent reported they were living at homeless shelters.

It seems odd to fix a "loophole" that sex offenders are lying about their address by barring offenders from homeless shelters. It seems like the way to fix that problem is to verify offender addresses. Pushing homeless offenders out into the streets does nothing to prevent future sexual violence.

KY AG Asks SCOTUS To Stay Residency Decision

After the Kentucky Supreme Court denied a stay in a challenge to the retroactive application of the state's residency restrictions, the state Attorney General has filed a motion in the U.S. Supreme Court to stay an earlier decision. You may read the motion here. From a press release:

Attorney General Jack Conway today filed a motion with the United States Supreme Court asking it to stay the recent ruling by the Kentucky Supreme Court that lifts the residency restrictions for all registered sex offenders who committed their crimes before July 12, 2006 – meaning more than 5,500 sex offenders could live next to schools and daycares. 

General Conway and his Office of Criminal Appeals are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the state ruling until it decides whether or not to review Kentucky’s case.  The Office of the Attorney General has until December 30, 2009 to file a certiorari motion with the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Attorney General Conway will file the certiorari motion because Kentucky’s law is similar to laws in several other states that have had conflicting rulings by state courts.  He also has the statutory obligation to defend laws passed by the Kentucky General Assembly.

“I understand there are constitutional questions regarding retroactivity, but there are also public safety implications for families in keeping sex offenders away from where children congregate.  Only the U.S. Supreme Court can weigh these issues and provide guidance to states,” said Attorney General Conway. 

Attorney General Conway’s Office of Criminal Appeals filed a motion on October 21, 2009 with the Kentucky Supreme Court requesting that it suspend implementation of the ruling until the U.S. Supreme Court determines whether or not it will review the Kentucky case.  The Kentucky Supreme Court denied the motion.

Given that SCOTUS showed no inclination to take prior cases at the federal or state level, I'd be surprised to see them intervene here. However, with Comstock and Carr on the docket this term, they could resolve the major disputes to the various sex offender laws all at once if they took the Kentucky case.