FL- A thoughtful voice tackling what Miami Herald called ‘the sex offender mess’

5-29-2009 Florida:

Dr. Jill Levenson, associate professor and chair of human services at Lynn University, is sometimes in the unenviable position of being on the right side of a tough issue. A licensed clinical social worker who got her start 20 years ago as a child protection social worker, she is a nationally known expert on sexual violence and has become a respected authority on, among other things, laws aimed at protecting children while punishing, tracking and rehabilitating sex offenders.

Yesterday morning’s Miami Herald included an editorial by Fred Grimm that dissects South Florida’s own ’sex offender mess’ - a problem that some believe is the result of housing restrictions that have kept registered offenders clustered in tight communities and, as is the case in Broward County to our south, in a homeless sect nestled under an interstate overpass.

In an effort to find a better way to protect the county’s children, Broward recently created an independent commission to examine new alternatives. Chairing the commission is our own Dr. Levenson, whose work has shown, among other things, that rules imposing housing restrictions on sex offenders can sometimes create more problems than they solve (as may be the case in Fort Lauderdale).

In his editorial today, Grimm applauded the work of this commission.

“The task force charged by the Broward County Commission with finding a way out of the conundrum created by sex offender residency restrictions has listened to experts, crunched numbers and discussed a dismaying array of unintended consequences,” he wrote.

“They discussed better solutions than laws that forced registered sex offenders into homelessness; that left parole officers with no alternative but to send them to live under a highway bridge; that encouraged sex offenders to cluster in neighborhoods with less restrictive ordinances.

…

They pushed beyond the emotional stuff and dug for what made sense.

It was the kind of thoughtful examination needed to sort out a complicated and volatile problem.”

What stuck out to me were those two words: “thoughtful examination.” If you know Dr. Levenson, you know those two words fit her well. She applies her more than two decades of field work and expansive research to projects aimed at finding real solutions. Sometimes, this approach - favoring research over knee jerks - has drawn scrutiny from some corners where voters and lawmakers favored fast action to a slower, if more productive, approach. But more and more people in government (as in Broward County) and the media (like Grimm) are seeing the value in that method.

I, for one, was glad to see this approach (so common to university faculty in general but especially, Dr. L) gaining traction here at home. Bravo Jill! And best of luck to you and the commission. ..Source: Lynn University blog.. by Jason