11-23-2008 Ohio:
Springfield, Ohio — Bans prohibiting registered sex offenders from living near places where children gather are in more than 30 states, but are running into challenges over whether they do any good.
A ban that prevents a sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of those schools, parks and day care centers doesn't prevent them from standing across the street from them.
"If they're living within 1,000 feet of a school, the opportunity to interact with children definitely increases," said Clark County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Young, former Electronic Sex-offender Registry Notification (ESORN) officer with the Clark County Sheriff's Office. "But at the same time, living within 1,000 feet of a school — that's all it affects — where they live."
At least 30 states have passed restrictions similar to the one in Ohio. They ban sex offenders from living within anywhere from 500 to 2,500 feet of a child care or educational facility.
There's little research on the effect of sex offender residency restrictions, according to the American Psychology Association.
The only benefit shown by the few studies that have been done is a quicker arrest time for subsequent offenses, according to a 2006 report to the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission.
-Highlighted is incorrect, it implies that "residency laws" assist LE when someone recidiviates, what it should say is, that "registration laws" MAY assist LE when there is a NEW sex crime, IF that crime is by a registered sex offender. "Residency laws" are of no value in finding who may have committed a sex crime.
That report states:
"There has been very little research on the effectiveness of SORN legislation in protecting the public. Of the few existing studies none found statistically significant reductions in recidivism. However, one study fund that SORN registration resulted in less time to arrest for subsequent offenses."
The housing instability created by residency restrictions may actually make some sex offenders more likely to re-offend, according to some studies.
A study in Orange County, Fla., found that 95 percent of all residences in the community were within 1,000 feet of a "child-dense" area, leaving few places for sex offenders to legally reside.
Residency restrictions have sometimes come with unintended effects.
After a sex offender residency restriction went into effect in Iowa, the number of unaccounted sex offenders in the state doubled, according to the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
A representative from CASA spoke to legislators in 2005 about the group's concerns about the impact of Iowa's 2,000-foot residency restrictions. The restrictions destabilized employment opportunities for sex offenders and research has shown that steady employment and a stable lifestyle improve the chances that the sex offender will not re-offend, according to CASA.
Opponents of residency restrictions argue that the policy is self-defeating. The restrictions make it difficult to keep track of offenders, the argument goes, because they discourage offenders from registering.
The recent popularity of sex offender residency restrictions stem from belief that there is a high re-offense rate for sex offenders, that strangers commit most sex crimes and treatment does not work for sex offenders, according to a 2005 study by psychologist Jill S. Levinson.
Studies of imprisoned sex-offenders have shown that, when it comes to an offender's choice of victim, the determining factor is not where the offender lives, but whom the offender knows.
Research conducted in 2005 for the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission found that in 93 percent of sex-offences involving child victims, the offender knew the victim.
"Sexual offending is not a crime of proximity; it's a crime of relationships," said Margie Slagle, an attorney with the Cincinnati-based Ohio Justice & Policy Center, which litigated the issue in the Ohio Supreme Court.
"(These laws) provide a very false sense of security for parents," she sad.
In Clark County, sex offenders register their addresses with the Clark County Sheriff's Office. He enters their new address into a computer system; if the address is within 1,000 feet of a school, the system alerts him and he tells the sex offender they cannot move there.
Schools have little to do with the monitoring of where sex offenders live in relation to their buildings because it is a police matter. However parents sometimes call because they are concerned about a sex offender living in the neighborhood.
Often, those calls go to the transportation department, said Carolyn White, transportation director for Springfield City Schools.
Although there is no law against it, the district tries to move bus stops so they are not by a sex offender's home, she said.
"In the city it is so hard because it seems like there's one on every corner," White said. "There's just some areas that it just seems like it's more heavily populated in some areas."
In some cases, parents arrange to take turns waiting with the children or walking them to the bus stop, she said.
In Clark County, at least 18 sex offenders live within 1,000 feet of a school under an exemption that allows offenders who moved to their home or committed their crime prior to the law's creation to live within the restricted area. There are two in Champaign County who live within the 1,000-foot limit.
There are nearly 300 registered sex offenders living in Clark County and about 110 in Champaign County, according to the office of the Ohio Attorney General. ..News Source.. by Megan Gildow and Emanuel Cavallaro, Staff Writers
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