NY- Sex offenders: looking at the numbers

2-9-2009 New York:

"No Easy Answers," is the title of a Human Rights Watch report on sex-offender laws in the United States and here's one question.

How well do residency restrictions protect children?

One statistic from the report jumped out at me: 87 percent of people who were arrested for sex crimes had not previously been convicted of such an offense, according to a 1997 study.

No residency restriction would have hindered their ability to abuse children. It couldn't. They hadn't been caught yet.

Here's another statistic - one that is even more uncomfortable to consider. Just 14 percent of all sexual assault cases involved strangers, according to the the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

For children under 18, the vast majority knew their abusers -nine cases out of 10. One-third of the cases involved relatives, and for children younger than 6, the number is even higher. Nearly half of the offenders were family members.

These are people who, until they are caught, are in the child's home, not across the street or lurking at the park fence.

Late last month, a state Supreme Court justice struck down Rockland County's pedophile-free child-safety zone. Justice William A. Kelly declared the law unconstitutional.

New York state placed residency restrictions on sex offenders in 2005, he noted. Serious offenders and those whose victims were children may not enter within 1,000 feet of any school.

"New York has one of the strictest sex offender residency laws in the nation," he wrote.

Further, he found that the state Legislature did not intend for municipalities or counties to enact their own laws regarding sex offenders. And he wrote: "Sex offender residency restrictions are multiplying throughout New York state, as local legislatures scramble to outmaneuver each other with highly restrictive ordinances designed to banish registered offenders from their communities."

And he noted that the ordinances interfere with parole and probation officers' efforts to find suitable housing for offenders.

The ruling risks invalidating all of the 80 child-safety zones across the state. As a result, state Sen. Craig Johnson from Long Island has proposed prohibiting any registered sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of a school building, park or day care center. He has the support of the Senate majority leader, Malcolm A. Smith.

You can empathize with a parent who does not want a sex offender anywhere near a school. Or a park. Or a day care center. Who has much sympathy for an adult who molests children?

But if the state is to enact such a law, it must make sure it is not doing the opposite of what it intends. For instance, does it want to cluster sex offenders together? Will that make them more dangerous in the future? Are the laws having the effect of pushing offenders out of the system, away from parole officers or therapists whose work may protect children?

In the end, if a molester is so dangerous why is he or she out of prison at all? One answer is harsher prison penalties in the first place. Another may be to put more focus on determining who will reoffend.

One study found that the recidivism rate for all sex offenders averaged 24 percent, the Human Rights report noted. No one is saying this is insignificant. But as the Human Rights report stated, three out of four sexually-violent offenders do not reoffend.

We need to make sure we are concentrating on the quarter who do. ..News Source.. by Noreen O'Donnell