Sex offenders have to live somewhere

8-24-2013 Colorado:

Federal Judge R. Brooke Jackson did all of Colorado a favor this week when he struck down an Englewood ordinance that pretty much barred sex offenders from living in that city.

"Few sex offenders are incarcerated for life," Jackson noted. "Most will at some point return to the community, and there must be a place for them to live."

And yet, he noted, Englewood's ordinance "leaves essentially no place for offenders to live" — thereby conflicting with the state interest in the "uniform treatment, management, rehabilitation, and reintegration of sex offenders during and after state supervision."

The judge is clearly right about this. If Englewood can effectively banish all sex offenders, then there's nothing to stop every other town and city in Colorado from doing the same thing.

No doubt some might find this an attractive solution. After all, didn't Britain and France simply export a portion of their criminal element once upon a time to places like Devil's Island and Australia? Indeed they did — and there's a reason they stopped more than a century ago: It's not civilized.

And it wouldn't be fair to other states either.

Moreover, registered sex offenders have already served their time.

We certainly don't disparage Englewood's motives. City officials passed the ordinance in 2006 after they heard that the Colorado parole board intended to place a "sexually violent predator" in a hotel that was a block from a day-care center. So they fashioned an ordinance modeled on one in neighboring Greenwood Village that barred registered sex offenders from living withing 2,000 feet of "any school, park or playground or within 1,000 feet of any licensed day care center, recreation center or swimming pool."

Trouble is, that pretty much ruled out the entire city when combined with other restrictions in the ordinance. Englewood itself acknowledged at trial that only 126 residential addresses remained possible homes for sex offenders, while the ACLU's attorneys produced an expert who maintained the true figure was 55 addresses.

"Either way," the judge noted, "approximately 99 percent of the city is off-limits to most sex offenders."

The result of the ordinance was predictable. As the judge noted, the vast majority of sex offenders who wished to live in Englewood "relocated to another city" rather than risk the sanction. It's as if Englewood — along with Greenwood Village, Lone Tree, Castle Rock and other communities with similar laws — thinks it somehow deserves an exemption to state law that clearly contemplates sex offenders being integrated into communities.

All such ordinances presumably will now have to be revised.

Don't misunderstand: Judge Jackson was very clear that he was not barring Englewood from adopting any ordinance relating to sex-offender residency.

Cities may impose reasonable restrictions that distinguish violent predators from other offenders, for example, and impose reasonable off-limit zones next to places that children frequent.

But if they're going to be fair to neighboring cities as well as faithful to Colorado law, they can't bar them from 99 percent of their residential properties. ..Source.. by The Denver Post Editorial Board