NY- Sex offenders often dumped in Newburgh

7-20-2009 New York:

NEWBURGH — Donald Kardian left state prison on June 30, telling authorities he planned to live in Harriman. But it didn't really matter to them where he was going: The high-risk sex offender had finished his 10-year sentence and was about to become someone else's problem.

As it happened, Kardian's relatives in Harriman wouldn't let him stay with them. So he, like other released offenders before him, wound up at the Orange County Department of Social Services office in Newburgh — a ward of the county, legally entitled to emergency housing at county taxpayers' expense.

His release and the predicaments that followed help illustrate one of the country's most vexing public-safety issues: the placement and supervision of freed convicts whose sexual crimes, often involving children, strike a particularly raw emotional chord.

Complaints abound. Start with the City of Newburgh, which has the distinction of hosting more than half of Orange County's Level 3 sex offenders, those considered most likely to commit more sexual crimes. As of Friday, the city had 27 Level 3 offenders and 23 Level 2 offenders listed on the state registry.

Newburgh police, who keep close tabs on this population, are frustrated with the high volume of offenders, especially those with no apparent ties to the city. These outsiders usually tell police they were sent to 280 Broadway — the local Social Services office.

"We have problems of our own here," said police Chief Eric Paolilli. "We don't need people being brought here to add to our problems."


County left to pick up pieces
Social Services Commissioner David Jolly shares Paolilli's frustration, and then some. In his view, the state has abdicated its responsibility to provide transitional housing for sex offenders after they leave prison, leaving social-service agencies such as his to bear the burden, the expense and the blame.

"We should not be used as a quasi-law-enforcement agency because nobody else wants to house sex offenders," Jolly said.


Kardian's journey to Orange County doesn't inspire confidence in the system. According to his sister, Adirondack Correctional Facility drove the Level 3 offender to a bus stop four miles away and deposited him there with a bus ticket to Albany and $40, even though she told the prison he couldn't stay with her and he had no other place to go.

"They said he has maxed out," Kardian's sister said. "They're putting him on a bus, and where he ends up, he ends up."

The woman, who asked that her name be withheld, said she picked up Kardian at a Kingston bus station and brought him to Harriman to stay until the county placed him at the Imperial Motel in Newburgh, one of 16 lodgings the county uses for temporary housing.

That made Kardian the fourth sex offender listing the 40-room Imperial as his address at that time. Once that lineup was reported in the Times Herald-Record, a new aggrieved party joined the saga: Manu Patel, owner of the Imperial.

Interviewed in his office, Patel complained that the county never told him those clients were sex offenders, showing referral papers for Kardian and another guest to prove his case. Each was being put up by Social Services at $60 a night.

He can't afford to refuse all emergency-housing clients, he said, but added, "The people with a bad record — that one I can stop." He has since asked the county to move Kardian, according to Kardian's sister.


Nowhere else to turn
The problem soon reverberated in Harriman, where police distributed fliers warning residents that Kardian — whose victim was 13 — had been visiting a neighborhood filled with children. Kardian's sister was mortified by the attention, and distraught that families of offenders would be placed in such situations.



"New York State does nothing to ease these guys back into society," she said.

Unlike Kardian, 60 percent of Newburgh's Level 2 and Level 3 offenders are on parole, which means the state Division of Parole inspected where they would be living before they were released from prison and also notified the police, their victims and — if no suitable home can be found — the Department of Social Services.

Most of Newburgh's offenders live in apartments and rooming houses, not county-sponsored housing (the Imperial is the county's only homeless site in the city). Two Level 3s and a Level 2 live in a rooming house on a forlorn stretch of South Johnston Street. Two Level 2s and a Level 3 occupy a row house on Chambers Street. Seven Level 2 or Level 3 offenders are registered at various places along Liberty Street.

Cheap rent is a likely reason so many choose Newburgh — and, to a lesser extent, Middletown, Kingston, Port Jervis and Monticello. Many offenders have no money, cars or jobs when they're released, and rental assistance is spare: Kardian, who is 61 and being put on welfare, has been promised $300 a month for housing, according to his sister.

Because of a state law signed in 2007, authorities can order civil confinement of particularly dangerous sex offenders at two state-run facilities after their prison terms end, or place them under "strict and intensive supervision." But those cases are rare: Out of 29,000 offenders statewide, 86 have been confined and 46 placed under supervision, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Jolly bristles that New York is using "the homeless system to solve a problem they won't face," rather than sponsor transitional housing for sex offenders, as Connecticut as done.

"If the state of New York has decided that I need to house sex offenders, then they should give me the resources to do so," he said. ..Source.. by Chris Mckenna, Times Herald-Record