When the registry is your bread and butter, of course you have to say, its a success! Reality tells us otherwise.
9-13-2009 Wisconsin:
State system has success, but offers no guarantees
Local and state laws may offer people some measure of protection from sexual predators, but the high-profile kidnapping case of Jaycee Dugard is a reminder that safety can't be guaranteed, local experts say.
Dugard was the victim of a kidnapping in 1991 and was imprisoned for 18 years in a compound in California, where she gave birth to two children fathered by her kidnapper, authorities say.
The suspect, Phillip Garrido, 58, is a registered sex offender who managed to maintain his secret even from a police officer sent to his home to investigate a report of a compound of occupied tents in Garrido's backyard.
Local officials only can speculate about what kind of breakdown in the judicial system failed to uncover Garrido's alleged crime.
But it's just one case and doesn't prove that the sex-offender registry isn't effective, said Tom Smith, sex offender registration specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
"When the registry was created, it was to provide an awareness to the public about who the sex offenders are in their communities, as well as allowing for community notification for specific offenders," Smith said. "An aware community is a safer community.
"Is it a cure-all? Absolutely not. But at least you know who the sex offenders are and where they are," Smith said.
That is one of the biggest misunderstandings of the registry. The registry merely indicates an address where the registrant MAY BE sleeping for 6 or so hours a day, one has no idea where registrants are for the remainder of the day/night. As to knowing who they are, would Jaycee know that the person who kidnapped her was a registered sex offender when Garrido kidnapped her? No, because statistics show that, for those who commit another crime, they do not commit it where they live (remember Garrido lived 160 miles away, for both of the crimes he committed). The registry is no more than a glorified telephone book w/pictures.
But the registry system's effectiveness is limited by the degree of compliance. Wisconsin has one of the highest compliance rates in the nation at about 90 percent, Smith said. But that still means 10 percent of the state's sex offenders are failing to keep up on notifying the state of their whereabouts.
The state's combination of sex-offender counseling, parole and the registry help it achieve a less than 1 percent recidivism rate, which means fewer than 1 percent of convicted sex offenders commit another sexual assault while on probation, Smith said.
"That speaks volumes," he said.
Yet, among people already convicted of a sex offense, that still means nearly 1 percent offend again.
The registry focuses its attention on convicted sex offenders and can do nothing to protect citizens from first-time offenders.
The number of forcible rapes statewide has changed very little annually since 1995, according to the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance, which tracks crime statistics statewide. They range from a high of 1,242 in 2006 to a low of 1,051 in 1997, the year the registry began in Wisconsin.
New sex offenders join the registry every year at a rate of almost 100 a month, Smith said. The state had 21,016 registered sex offenders as of the end of last week.
"The rates are not going down," Smith said.
In Green Bay, the number of sexual assaults hit a 10-year low last year. No one can say whether the drop may be the result of the May 2007 passage of an ordinance banning convicted sex offenders from moving within 2,000 feet of any gathering place for children within the city.
Smith said he thinks the ordinance actually makes the city less safe. If the city rejects convicted sex offenders, they could end up going underground and becoming noncompliant with the registry, he said.
Smith, who investigates noncompliant sex offenders and refers their cases to the area district attorneys for prosecution, says he has seen compliance "plummeting" in Brown County, which has 495 sex offenders on the registry.
"In 2007, I had 14 referrals for noncompliance," Smith said. "In 2008, I had 31. And at the end of August 2009, I had 27 new referrals for noncompliance. These are guys we've done a thorough investigation on and are unable to locate.
"And I have 30 open investigations. I'm expecting the numbers to almost double again. They're going underground, which undermines the integrity of the registry."
Arthur Taylor, chairman of Green Bay's Sex Offender Residency Board, which considers exceptions to that residency rule, disagrees.
"When they first passed the ordinance, I was fearful that (the offenders) would be going to live under bridges, like they do in Florida," Taylor said. "That's not happening."
But people must not count on a registry or the residency ordinance to keep them safe, Taylor said.
"Their parole officers might always know where they're living, but sex offenders can drive cars, they can go wherever they want," Taylor said.
The best thing that the registry and the ordinance do is keep people focused on the issue, which makes them safer, he said.
"It dials up your awareness," he said.
Green Bay City Council President Chris Wery said the council's intention, when passing the ordinance, was to reduce the number of convicted sex offenders being released into the city.
"We were getting more than our fair share," he said.
When the city failed to persuade the state to place some of those offenders elsewhere, the council passed the residency limit, he said.
Council members understand that sex offenders can still travel into the city to commit more sex crimes, but the ordinance helps prevent clusters of the offenders from living in neighborhoods, he said.
That is, neighborhoods where the ordinance is, not the one in the next county..
"Maybe, too, it does help people become more aware, too, of where they're living," he said. ..Source.. by Paul Srubas
No comments:
Post a Comment