State-wide struggle over ways to deal with sex offenders
The Courant had this article over the weekend, chronicling the efforts across the state to deal with sex offenders after release.
The debate in Stafford was feisty and political.First Selectman Allen Bacchiochi, a Republican, had proposed an ordinance that would ban convicted sex offenders from public parks and recreation areas.
At the selectmen’s May 10 meeting, Democratic Selectman Gordon Frassinelli questioned the utility and deterrent value of the ban, likening the initial written warning and $100 fine on the second offense to an unshoveled sidewalk violation.
Bacchiochi snapped back, “Do you want to protect the children or do you want to protect the person who has already been a sex offender? I want to protect the children of this town.”
“I think that’s pretty universal,” Frassinelli replied in a quiet voice.
Stafford is the latest to wade into the debate, with the selectmen passing the ordinance, copied from one in Danbury, last month. Afterward, Bacchiochi immediately pulled it back for legal and enforcement review before sending it to a town meeting vote.
A state-wide bill to restrict sex offenders from living within 1000 feet of schools and child-care centers passed the House but didn’t come up for vote in the Senate. Connecticut has been slow to enter the fray, which has seen a rush of bills nationwide. This has actually been a good thing. As the debate has gathered steam, more data has become available and Connecticut has been able to see the effects of passing such laws.
If it saves even one child, it will be worth it, proponents say.But new research and treatment experts say it has a slim chance of doing even that.
“I know of no case where it’s saved a child from being molested,” said psychologist Dennis Gibeau, program director for the Center for the Treatment of Problem Sexual Behavior in Middletown. “The idea that we’re instituting laws that restrict where sex offenders can live, where they can frequent, doesn’t really address the issue of protecting children.”
Bridgeport is amending a proposal that would restrict sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools and child-care centers and prohibit them from parks unless accompanying their own children. Its sponsor, Councilman Keith Rodgerson, projects it will come before the common council again in July.
Rodgerson says there is more council and city support for the move since his research showed the unequal density of sex offenders in Bridgeport compared with Fairfield County towns and the state at large. Bridgeport has almost 16 offenders per square mile, while Danbury and the state as a whole have less than one.
“You walk out of your front door and you’re going to bump into one,” Rodgerson said.
Other cities in the State are dealing with the problem in the context of CT’s small size. New London considered a residency restriction ban, but it wasn’t pursued. The Mayor said it would have been hard to enforce.
No parent, politician or pundit could find fault with the intent of keeping children safe from sexual abuse. Of more than 600,000 registered sex offenders in the nation, Connecticut has almost 4,500.But can the recent laws, some of which virtually leave the convicted offender nowhere to go, work?
First of all, in 80 to 90 percent of sex offenses, the predator knows the victim, experts say. The stranger in the park case is rare.
Second, many of the ordinances, including the Danbury one, do not differentiate between child molesters and other offenders. The crimes of the 10 registered offenders in Stafford range from first-degree sexual assault to public indecency.
Third, the jury is still out on whether registering offenders or restricting their activities reduces the number of sex crimes.
“The general idea of limiting sex offenders in mixing with children certainly makes good common sense,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. Blumenthal supported the public safety legislation and has suggested more aggressive steps, such as electronic monitoring of serious offenders.
But a study released in April by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, tracing 224 repeat sex offenders, concluded that not one would have been deterred by a residency restriction law. Social proximity was the key factor, it found, with half of the offenders establishing contact with victims through friends or acquaintances. Only 35 percent of the offenders made direct contact with victims, and none of the juvenile cases involved contact near a school, park or other prohibited area.
At least the media is now taking note of the DOJ study that debunks the myth that sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism.
At the forefront of the debate is the presumption, once a child molester, always a child molester.A premise in the Danbury and Stafford ordinance states, “the recidivism rate for released sex offenders is alarmingly high, especially for those who commit their crimes on children.”
But a 2003 Bureau of Justice Statistics study followed 9,691 released sex offenders, 4,295 of them child molesters, in 15 states from 1994 to 1997. In that span, only 5.3 percent of the total group repeated sex crimes, and 3.3 percent of the child molesters were arrested for another sex crime against a child.
“The conventional wisdom is that they all go out and reoffend. I don’t think you’re going to find the data to support that,” said Charles Olney, research associate at the Center for Sex Offender Management in Maryland, a project for the U.S. Justice Department. “That 100 percent recidivism rate – I’ve only heard it in speeches.”
Dan Casagrande, the Danbury corporation counsel who helped draft the sex offender ordinance, pointed to an Indianapolis ordinance that was struck down in federal court as too restrictive. “It kept anyone on the registry from entering the city of Indianapolis. You can’t even be on the interstate,” he said.
Police in Georgia and Iowa have said the laws have seriously undermined efforts to keep track of offenders. “We’re going to see sex offenders who are unable to live in communities and they’re going to go further underground where they can’t be monitored,” Renee Redman, legal director of the ACLU Foundation of Connecticut, said.
It will be interesting to see how cities (and the state) react to growing data on residency restrictions and whether they attempt to shape bills in a meaningful way.
Here is my post on what acceptable registry and residency restriction laws would look like.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Gideon on June 10, 2007 at 7:18 pm, and is filed under ct legal news, residency restrictions, sex offenders. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 4 years ago
Read this article, it summarizes nicely the pitfalls of residency restrictions
Link
Admin’s note: Edited for formatting.
about 4 years ago
I hate these kinds of laws. Aside from the reasons you mention—especially the fact that many sex offenders are not actually child molesters—there’s the problem that these laws are dishonest.
Assuming convicted sex offenders are like most other criminals, their conviction is probably the result of a plea deal. Changing the law to add new restrictions is the moral equivalent of reneging on the plea deal: Perhaps the defendant wouldn’t have taken the deal if he knew he’d have to move out of state, or perhaps the state would have had to settle for less prison time to get him to move out of state.
(I realize criminal law is not contract law, but the unfairness of it still rankles.)
More generally, I doubt the honesty of politicians who say that released sex offenders are a danger to the community. If they really are dangerous, isn’t the best solution to keep them locked up? I question the sincerity of anyone who claims that offenders are too dangerous to be allowed in the neighborhood/city/state for the rest of their lives, but not so dangerous that it’s worth spending money to keep them in jail.
about 4 years ago
“More generally, I doubt the honesty of politicians who say that released sex offenders are a danger to the community.”
This comes into play, too, when restrictions are applied retroactively, forcing registrants to move after years of offense-free living in their home. If someone hasn’t committed any offense in twenty years, the “immediate danger” claim falls a tad flat.
I don’t deny there are registrants who will re-offend–recidivism is low, but it exists–but residency restrictions don’t have an impact on that. Over nearly two years of strict restrictions, Iowa found the incidence of victimization didn’t change. (And, as before res-res, the vast majority of victimizers were NOT registrants.)
I wish more states would go the route Kansas has chosen in this regard: study the issue, follow the evidence, and ban residency restrictions.
(As an aside, Kansas has identified a specific subset of registrants who are endangered by the registry–victims of domestic violence stalkers. These registrants are required by law to keep their stalkers up-to-date on their location, despite the stalking.)
about 4 years ago
I am a retired Police officer with over 25 years service. I can tell you that these types of laws are what we in Law Enforcement used to call feel good laws. They make the public feel good but do nothing to protect the public. If we are going to have sex offender registrys then we should only have those who are the greatest risk to reoffend listed on them. The US Dept. Of Justice Bureau of Statistics on Recidivisim show that within 3 years of release from prison of sex offenders 3.5% of them will be reconvicted of a new sex crime. It also says that over 90% of sexual assaults are commited by a person well known to the victim be that victim a child or adult. Given the above facts we are wasting a lot of money on a very small problem. If we educated the public we would be better off. This idea of stranger danger is way out of date. The laws on were ex sex offenders may live are causing more harm then good and many studies show that they may even be making it more of a danger to the public. Tim P.
about 4 years ago
Our current laws are ruining more lives than it is helping. One of the differences between your neighbor and the sex offender, is that one case was reported, and one was not.
All sex offences SHOULD NOT be classified the same. That is just wrong. The court system is also to blame. Most attorneys will scare people into pleading guilty when faced with a long sentence. That’s the reality. Most often, all it takes is an accusation. I know of a case where a child’s father was accused of touching a teenaged girl. He’s in prison. The child was sent to live with his mother. The mother’s boyfriend got a 15 year old pregnant. (unreported). So, who is protecting this child??
Who is now not allowed to see his father that raised him. Why are we allowing this to happen to our children? All the “tough on crime” politicians care about is getting a “vote”.
I hope and pray that it all back fires on them.
about 4 years ago
To: SandyPort2@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Sue,
Here is a little something I just thought I’d write while waiting for my ride. I don’t know who you could send it to but it might be useful.
brett
California has a real crisis on its hands and has begun exacerbating the problem through a fear based political propoganda agenda that is misinforming California voters. It is no secret that California’s prison system is massively overcrowded and undeniably disfunctional. The courts are simply sending too many people to prison for too much time. Unfortunately, our criminal justice system has few alternative programs established for punishing law breakers, so judges are left with their hands tied and are forced to sentence offenders to prison time.
(Needs to be developed)
The hysteria in California over sex offenders has gotten way too out of hand. Politicians and the media have wipped up such propoganda that only Hilter and the Nazi’s hold claim to a more effective effort. Californian’s have been fed horror story after horror story to increase their level of fear, so they will in turn vote to pass Draconian laws which punish the dreaded sex offender. The average Californian resident pictures some creepy crawly child predator who is lurking behind park bushes waiting for you to turn your back so he can snatch up your little Lucy and run off to molest her and kill her. The image of freaky, disgusting and dangerous. Admitedly, there are predators out there who fit that description. They have cause great pain to families, communities and even other criminals. BUT, they are the exception and are a rare few. It is a fact that the large majority of sex offenders already knew their victims, often for long periods of time and often through family or friend relationships. It is also a fact that many sex offenders had no previous criminal record and have an incredibly low rate of re-offending. In fact, there is a far higher likelihood of an armed robber wife beater to re-offend than for a sex offender to re-offend. But, you don’t have to register for either of those crimes or have your face plastered across the internet.
While being an advocate for reforming our states sex offender laws, I wish to clearly state that I do not condone sexually deviant behavior in anyway. I do, however, see a great need to create laws that address the astounding contrast amongst sex crimes. I do not believe that a 22 year old man who was dating a 16 year girl in a “consensual” relationship should be dealt with or punished in the same way as a 22 year old man who drugs and rapes a 16 year old girl. They are crimes with great contrast and character, but Jessica’s Law places the same harsh restrictions on both men regardless of the type of sex crime.
What I suggest is to create a 3 tier system of sex crime classification and punishment. Each tier specifically structured to punish AND rehabilitate the sexual criminal in a way that is effective and just. What we have now is a “one size fits all” style of punishment that is costing this state billions of dollars every year. It is tearing apart families, destroying lives and not fixing the problem. I don’t understand how politicians and voters can propose and pass laws such as Prop 83 with total ease, but when we try to pass measures to drastically reform our educational systems and provide schools with the money they need to educate children in the highly competative 21st Century everyone brushes propositions under the table and pretends that there is no cure for the problem. Did ever occur to someone that maybe there wouldn’t be so many law breakers if we invested more money into rehabilitation and education BEFORE they grew up to be criminals!!!
Governor Shwartzennegger, if you want to be remembered in history for being an exceptional leader and actually finding a cure to California’s prison and sex offender problems, I suggest you start talking to US, the criminals. We know why the crimes are being committed and we know how to get them to slow. A politician who has never been in our shoes hasn’t a clue how to curb crime. All they know is what they need to say and vote on in order to get re-elected.