Two Decades of Sounding the Alarm on Sex Offenders

12-28-2010 Washington:

POULSBO — “This notification is not intended to increase fear,” the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office flier reads. “Rather, an informed public is a safer public.”

For 20 years, that statement has accompanied the brief dossier on sex offenders released by the sheriff’s office to the community where they will live.

Washington reserves community notification for the sex offenders it ranks as most likely to re-offend. Whether it has made the state safer in the first two decades of notification’s existence is a harder question to answer.

The concept of community notification, developed by a task force in the late 1980s, was not envisioned as a crime prevention tool. It was a mechanism for law enforcement to inform residents of dangerous offenders — something they were prohibited by law from doing before 1990, said Lucy Berliner, a member of the original task force and head of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress.

Rather than questioning whether notification makes a community safer, she asks, “Is it right for the government to have information about your safety and be prevented from telling you about it?”

Notification has long endured scrutiny as a public safety tool. But local law enforcement believes it does serve as a deterrent.

“I think that because the public has tasked us with this, we do the best we can and it makes a difference,” said Doug Dillard, a Kitsap County Sheriff’s detective whose full-time job is monitoring sex offenders.

Dillard registers sex offenders, tracks down those who fail to do so for prosecution, and arranges community gatherings when Level 3 sex offenders change addresses.

His most recent meeting concerned the release of Johnathon Daniel Roswell, a 26-year-old man convicted of sex offenses in four different cases. When he was 17, he was convicted of third-degree rape of a 13-year-old girl. When he was 19, he was convicted of third-degree molestation of a 14-year-old girl. And when he was 21, he was convicted of second-degree child molestation of a 15-year-old girl. He knew the victim in each case.

A crowd of about 20 turned out at Poulsbo Fire Department headquarters on Dec. 13 to learn about Roswell, who was moving to Ryen Drive, which is in a neighborhood north of Poulsbo not far from the community’s Little League and Babe Ruth fields.

The meeting didn’t make North Kitsap resident Bruce MacLearnsberry feel any safer.

“It’s merely a reminder that it’s out there,” he said. “But we have to show up, we have to speak up.”

MacLearnsberry, who said he’s disillusioned with a justice system that releases an offender with multiple convictions, quoted Edmund Burke as rationale for notification: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

‘I HAVE TO PROTECT MY CHILDREN’

Community notification was a component of the 1990 Community Protection Act, a landmark piece of legislation passed unanimously that included new tools for the monitoring of sex offenders.

The act was prompted by public outrage at two killings — a young woman who was abducted and murdered in Seattle in September 1988, and the sexual assault mutilation and murder of a 7-year-old boy who was riding his bike in Tacoma in May 1989.

Then-Gov. Booth Gardner ordered the creation of a task force on community protection that was led by longtime King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng and included various stakeholders from the criminal justice system and the mothers of the two victims.

Their recommendations were introduced before the Legislature and were unanimously approved in January 1990.

The Community Protection Act bolstered sentences for sex offenders, provided them with increased treatment opportunities, and enhanced victims’ services.

But it was also a fundamental shift in the way the criminal justice system dealt with a unique criminal population. The state was the pioneer in the nation in establishing three unorthodox systems aimed at reducing the number of victims of sexual violence:

* Registration of offenders to a set period of time beyond incarceration and probation, so law enforcement could keep a better eye on them;

* A civil commitment process in which sex offenders found to have a “mental abnormality or personality disorder” could be committed indefinitely — a process that already existed for mentally ill people found to be a danger to themselves and others.

* A system of community notification, in which the proximate locations of many sex offenders living in the community would become public information.

Community notification of a registered sex offender depends upon the classification of the offender. Level 1 offenders are classified as being at low risk of reoffending; Level 2s present a “moderate risk;” and Level 3s present a “high risk.”

Information about Level 1 offenders is only released upon request by community members. Information about Level 2 offenders is included in public databases and released to schools and other organizations where children congregate. Level 3 offenders’ information is disclosed to the public at large.

Those who attended the Poulsbo meeting felt knowing who was in their neighborhood would help them keep their children safe.

“It is really up to us to watch where these guys are living,” said Brooke Hammett, who has a young son. “The police can’t watch them twenty-four, seven.”

Mitch Smith, who called himself a “hard-nosed grandpa,” said he believes the responsibility of protecting the community — particularly children — falls on everyone’s shoulders and not just law enforcement.

“Any knowledge I can gain to help protect our youth,” he said, “I’m going to use that.”

George Minder of Poulsbo said he believes it’s irresponsible for his fellow residents not to come to such a meeting.

“I can’t sit back and wait for something to happen,” Minder said. “I have to protect my children. My wife. My family.”

THE COUNTY’S CALL

Law enforcement is required to send word to local media if a Level 3 sex offender is released from prison or moves. In Kitsap County, agencies mail notices to nearby residents as well. The office will spend up to $500 out of pocket to send notices to homes near where the offender will be living in a radius ranging from a quarter-mile to a mile, depending upon the population density of the area, Dillard said.

A common misconception is that registration requirements include restrictions on where an offender may live. That’s not true, Dillard said.

An offender could be on probation and face restrictions. But if they’re only required to register, they can live where they want. Offenders are required to register after they’re released from prison for at least 10 years, and those with the most serious offenses may have to register for life.

Level 3 offenders are subject to more stringent registration mandates, including community notification. Level 2 offenders can still be searched in a public database and Level 1 offenders often exist under the radar, though their status is noted in background checks and police databases.

The Department of Corrections assesses an offender upon their release from prison, but law enforcement can classify an offender at any level they choose. Mason County, for instance, has decided to classify every offender that’s homeless as a Level 3. In Kitsap County, there are homeless offenders at the other levels, though they are required to check in once a week and provide a report of where they’ve stayed.

Sheriff’s offices in Washington use a risk assessment to decide into which level an offender should be placed. The test weighs age, prior sex offenses and whether the offender’s victims were related to them or male.

‘PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW’

Notification’s popularity isn’t in doubt. Surveys in 1997 and 2007 found that a majority of state residents knew about and considered the community notification of sex offenders “very important,” according to the state Attorney General’s Office.

“I sense there’s very strong community support for notification,” said David Boerner, a Seattle University law professor, former prosecutor and one of the architects of the Community Protection Act. “People want to know.”

The attorney general’s office goes a step further, arguing that the state’s residents are safer because of community notification. Attorney General Rob McKenna points to a 2005 study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy that says sex offenders’ rates of recidivism — or re-offense — have dropped 20 percent for violent felonies and 70 percent for felony sex convictions since the 1990 establishment of registration and notification.

But overall research on the topic is mixed, and it “does not consistently conclude that community notification reduces recidivism, prevents sex crimes, protects children, or enhances community safety,” said a report penned by the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, an Oregon-based treatment and policy group.

Notification can, in some cases, have a negative impact on both an offender’s family and could potentially reveal the offender’s victim, the association said.

Community notification is often damaging for the offender. About one-third to one-half of adult sex offenders have experienced housing instability, job loss, vigilantism and threats, and property damage, the association said. In extreme cases, offenders have been assaulted. Two sex offenders were murdered in Bellingham in 2005 by a vigilante later sentenced to 44 years in prison for their deaths.

There might not be much sympathy for a sex offender. But an offender is most likely to re-offend when they’re unstable, said John S. Furlong, a longtime New Jersey criminal defense attorney.

“You’re actually promoting the recidivism of a new crime,” he said of notification, which he calls “community vilification.”

Contemplating, threatening or committing violence against an offender could lead to the courts or Legislature taking away notification, said Sue Shultz, commander for the Bainbridge Island Police Department.

More important, Shultz said, is that parents keep a dialogue with their children about safety, including appropriate versus inappropriate touching.

“We fail when we don’t teach our kids,” said Shultz, a former special assault crimes detective for the Bremerton Police Department for seven years.

In these days of cost-cutting, notification gives law enforcement one of its few ways to be “proactive,” said Bill Adam, a Mason County detective.

Adam is vigilant in distributing fliers to keep the community abreast of the sex offenders most likely to reoffend. Mason County was rocked by the rape and murder of 15-year-old Jennie Osborn by a sex offender in Lake Cushman in 2001.

Adam’s job exists, he said, so that a similar crime never occurs again.

“Even a remote possibility that notification can prevent that horrific crime, it makes our entire program worthwhile,” Adam said. “How can you even put a price on the life of a child?” ..Source.. Josh Farley