9-23-2007 New Hampshire
Lawmakers are struggling to make the state's sexual predators law mirror the federal Adam Walsh Act, named for the 6-year-old snatched from a Florida store in 1981. Authorities never found his body, just his head in a canal 120 miles away. Suspects in the unsolved crime have included the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer and a Florida mass murderer, Otis O'Toole, who died in prison in 1996 for another crime. O'Toole twice confessed to killing Walsh, but later recanted and authorities never charged him.
The federal law posts an Internet profile of most sex offenders, including their photo, age, home address, license plate number, identifying features, and employer's name and address, if they have a job. Those felons also give the police a DNA sample.
Each person is assigned to a reporting tier based on the severity of his crime. Tier III is for the worst threats, people who register four times a year for life.
Assistant Attorney General Ann Rice warned that New Hampshire could lose up to $200,000 in crime-prevention grants unless its law substantially conforms to Adam Walsh.
Study debunks sex predator laws
Recently, Human Rights Watch, a national research and advocacy group, issued a damning report on the spate of sex offender laws that swept the country after the 2005 murder of Jessica Lunsford in Florida.
The 146-page document said the popular Internet offender registries endanger children by driving the few intractable pedophiles underground. The study tried to debunk several alleged myths: that all sex offenders are like Dahmer and O'Toole and prey on strangers; that they have many victims; that they commit new sex crimes after release from prison; and that treatment programs are useless.
The report, "No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the United States," found the vast majority of offenders against children have a single victim well known to them. It also said sex offenders are the least likely of all parolees to re-offend, and therapy cuts that risk even more.
The report criticized municipal ordinances like the ones in Dover, Franklin, Tilton and Northfield that keep offenders from living near schools, parks and day-care centers. The study said these bans can cost sex offenders their friends, jobs, spouses, families and mental health. It also makes them more dangerous, being homeless and with no address to report.
Reams stands by law
Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams serves on a national executive task force of prosecutors, helped draft New Hampshire's child predator law, lobbied for it, and found the Rights Watch study biased. He said the country has more than 600,000 registered sex offenders, and only a handful have been murdered. The county attorney opposes residency restrictions on sex offenders, but said they have passed constitutional muster so far.
Note: His mentioning of a "handful" is grossly inaccurate. The reality of those murdered cam be found in this blog it is over 80 and still more to post.
Reams said a recent study of pedophiles at the federal Butner Corrections Center in North Carolina found that most had multiple victims. The report said 132 men had confessed to sexually abusing 1,777 young children. A Canadian study of sex offenders showed much the same thing, Reams said, and the lifelong recidivism rate was more than 90 percent.
Note: It appears the studies cited pertain to those in a civil commitment center and as usual should not be applied to all sex offenders as Reams has done here. Unfortunately I cannot find a e-mail address to contact the Journalist who apparently has the studies. The federal BOP study was never released and is being hidden by the feds, see link.
It should be noted the Butner facility is the only one in the federal system devoted to treating serial pedophiles. The Canadian study tracked 300 inmates arrested in the 1950s and 1960s when only fixated pedophiles went to prison. Even talk of incest was taboo, and modern therapies did not exist.
Carolyn Lucet of Conway has counseled hundreds of sex offenders in therapy over the last 30 years. She said only one has ever returned to prison on a new sex charge. She called the Human Rights Watch study reliable and urged lawmakers to classify sex offenders by rigorous clinical standards used in several states.
"The offenders I deal with are very frightened," Lucet said. "The man who murdered two offenders in Maine had New Hampshire names on his list. That man in Tennessee hasn't even been tried yet. And he's homeless."
Janis Wolak, a UNH researcher on crimes against kids, said the Rights Watch study is consistent with the scientific literature. Many sex offenders are treatable, and the incidence of sex crimes has declined for more than a decade, she said. The typical abusers are family members, close friends, babysitters, coaches, priests, teachers. Among teenagers, it's their peers. She said there are no studies to show if the new laws protect children.
"We desperately need research on it. The media is fixated on the stranger-danger idea," Wolak said. "Most are nonviolent. They use their authority as a father, stepfather or uncle."
Defense lawyers widely predicted their clients would reject plea deals under the new law. That's because the state can hold an offender five more years in prison if they remain dangerous to society. But Reams has seen no major shift in the pre-trial process. Most cases went to trial in the past.
"They still do," he said.
Assistant Attorney General Rice told lawmakers the state should conform with federal law by classifying people by their crimes, not by their actuarial risk. In an interview, Rice said she was aware of clinical indexes that claim to predict whether certain types of sex felons are likely to re-offend.
Attorney Mike Iacopino heads the Defense Lawyers Association and told Rice, "Just do without the federal money." ..more.. by Chris Dornin, of Golden Dome News, covers the Statehouse in Concord.
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