No easy answers

So what is the actual problem here? Fear and nothing more, statistics will not change fear, nor will education about sex offenders. But, one thing will, look to other communities to see if their crime rates or sexual crimes have gone up, reality is, crime rates have gone down as have sexual crimes. Find the source of the fear because its not the actual sex offenders, its what the politicians are saying. Seek them out and demand an answer to the simple question, why should I fear sex offenders like you tout all year long? I doubt anyone will get an answer, because they would have to tell the truth. Truth and politics simply do not mix!

8-6-2010 Oregon:

Residents object to sex offenders as neighbors, but what is the alternative?

Residents of Ashland's Quiet Village neighborhood are making noise about convicted sex offenders living among them, and it's hard to blame them. But there is a larger issue here, one that raises questions about how our communities deal with those who break the rules.

Sexual abuse is a frightening topic, and movies, books and television shows can make it seem there is a rapist lurking behind every bush.

Consider the primary objection from the Quiet Village neighbors: Our children are at risk.

The statistics about child sexual abuse — a specific category of sexual offenses in general — are clear: Between 30 percent and 40 percent of child victims are abused by a family member. Half are victimized by someone they know. Children abused by a stranger amount to 10 percent of all victims.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, 5.3 percent of convicted sex offenders commit another sex crime after being released from prison — lower than the rates for selling drugs and burglary.

What's more, the three men living in the home in Quiet Village are not classified as predatory offenders. If they were, the law would have required police to notify neighbors that they were there.

Eugene Haag, the owner of the home where the men live, is a regional chaplain for the Oregon Department of Corrections. He has rented rooms in his home to sex offenders and others on parole for 36 years, and he says no resident has ever committed a crime while living there.

Haag says he rents to offenders to give them a place to live and to help them avoid repeating their crimes. He says further that he has no intention of changing his rental policy.

Haag has a point when he asks where offenders are supposed to live. The worst situation for anyone released from prison is to be homeless, living on the street exposed to active criminals who are not behind bars.

If these men should not live in Quiet Village, where do the neighbors suggest they go? Some other neighborhood in Ashland? Some neighborhood in Medford? Talent? Phoenix? And who gets to decide?

Residents are entitled to be concerned about the security of their neighborhoods and the safety of their children. But so are the residents of every community in Jackson County.

Some Quiet Village residents who attended a public meeting about the issue Monday night said they plan to ask lawmakers to toughen sex-offender laws. That's an appropriate step if you are convinced the current laws are inadequate.

But unless Oregon decides to impose a life sentence for every sex crime, similar situations eventually will occur. Then what? ..Opinion of: Mail Tribune

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Where Should Sex Offenders Live After Prison?

3-9-2010 National: Listen to this 7 min. broadcast:

Chelsea King, a 17-year-old girl from San Diego, was raped and killed last month by John Gardner, a man with a history of sex crimes. Gardner was previously incarcerated for molesting a 13-year-old girl in 2000, but was let out of prison early in 2005. The case has sparked a heated national dialogue about the strength of laws intended to protect children from sex offenders. And the question of where sex offenders should live has come up in Florida, as offenders there struggle to adjust to society after prison sentences.

We talk with Grier Weeks, the executive director of PROTECT, a national organization lobbying Congress to enforce stricter predator laws. And for a closer look at how legislation is playing out locally, we talk with Julie Brown, a senior staff writer for the Miami Herald who has been covering sex offender communities that have been created in Florida.

Read Julie Brown's articles, "Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender enclave being dismantled," and "Some Julia Tuttle sex offenders find housing." ..Source.. The TakeAway Radio Station (The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with The BBC World Service, New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.)

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Sex-offender registry may only complicate tracking

See comment about recidivism quote which is likely in error.

2-2-2010 Maryland:

Pending expansions will increase number to be monitored

In Maryland, Thomas Leggs lived with his parents on a quiet street in Salisbury.

In Delaware, he served time for raping a teenage girl on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk.

Now, he is charged with kidnapping and is under investigation for killing an 11-year-old girl whose body was found in a field outside Delmar on Christmas Day.

His case, which shocked and horrified many on the Eastern Shore and beyond, is partly a reflection of the complicated job of tracking and monitoring rapists and child molesters after they're released, some observers say.

And despite proposals unveiled last week in Maryland to change the way the state tracks some sex offenders, experts warn that such moves may actually overwhelm the criminal justice system -- increasing the chances that the worst of the worst may fall through the cracks, particularly as they move between states.

"It only takes a couple minutes for me to get into my car, go across the bridge and rape and kill a girl and come back," said Keith Durkin, a criminologist with Ohio Northern University. "You don't have to be off their radar screen very long to do that."

By the end of the year, when a national sex-offender registry is put in place, the process of tracking offenders will have changed across the country. Many states are now working to comply with the new regulations.

But Durkin and others who study sex offenders say the broad classifications used nationally and in states including Delaware may actually make it harder for law enforcement agencies and the courts to zero in on the people most likely to commit sex crimes again and again.

"You've got a small group of offenders who commit lots of new offenses," said Chrysanthi Leon, a University of Delaware assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice. "We need to do a better job of distinguishing among the bigger group of offenders, and dedicate more of our resources on this smaller group of high-risk offenders."

The case of Leggs, convicted of sex offenses in two states, has drawn renewed attention to repeat sex offenders, the registration of those offenders and how states deal with convicted criminals who move easily across borders.

Research on sex offenders who commit new sex crimes is scattered and spotty at best, Durkin and Leon agree. But two long-term studies involving offenders who admitted committing new crimes after their release put the most conservative baseline for repeat offenses at 52 percent -- more than half of offenders, Durkin said.

If Durkin is quoting a Prentkey study then he doesn't realize there is an error in it. See Misquoting and Misapplying Prentky Statistics. Prentky said "We would like to conclude with two important caveats. The obvious, marked heterogeneity of sexual offenders precludes automatic generalization of the rates reported here to other samples." The apparent reason was, those stats pertained to folks in civil commitment, all who already were recidivists. The stats were NOT the result of a study of ALL sex offenders, the study was of ONLY recidivists.

Note: Notice also that the comment about recidivism is made by Durkin and not Leon. The journalist has poorly worded this which makes it look like she said this also, which she did not say.

But even those studies are somewhat flawed, he said, because they group nonviolent offenders such as flashers with violent child molesters, for example.

Authorities in Delaware and Maryland say they communicate regularly, almost daily, about the status of offenders who move, take up new jobs or are rumored to be living where they're not supposed to be. But even they acknowledge it's a challenge.

Interstate movement "is very difficult for states to deal with," said David Wolinski, who oversees Maryland's sex-offender registration unit.

For example, Delaware residents who commit sex crimes in Maryland would have to report their plans to Maryland authorities upon their release. If a person decides to return to Delaware, Maryland would then pass the information on to Delaware officials to put in their registry, said Sgt. Walter Newton of the Delaware State Police.

There also can be confusion about the way states classify offenders. For example, Leggs was designated a "high-risk" offender in Delaware, but not in Maryland.

That doesn't mean he fell through the cracks, Wolinski said. It's simply that Maryland doesn't assign risk levels the same way the First State does.

Currently, when dealing with someone convicted in another state, registration officials have to dig through the other state's statutes and try to figure out what the corresponding crime would be in their own state, and then assign a classification. That can be complicated, Wolinski said. "There's different terminology used in just about every state," he said.

New federal regulations

The Adam Walsh Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006, goes into effect later this year and aims in part to smooth out some of those issues by applying a uniform national classification system and implementing a national registry.

Delaware is one of the first to meet the standards of the new law, and will soon be seeking certification from the U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Beau Biden said.

"Our work protecting Delaware's children is never done," he said.

The bills proposed last week by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley would reform an advisory board on sex offenders, make possession of child pornography a registerable offense, require juvenile offenders to register if convicted in an adult court, reclassify offense categories and require lifetime supervision for some serious sex offenses and repeat offenders.

"There should be absolutely no mercy shown to anyone who harms a child in our state, and our legislation serves to impose the strictest standards of supervision to ensure that Maryland's children are protected," O'Malley said.

Some observers argue that while one-size-fits-all penalties and overly broad classifications may sound good politically, they're not truly effective in preventing recidivism.

Instead of looking at offense-based criteria, Leon said, the ideal classification system would involve individual assessments of each offender for factors that can increase the potential for repeat offenses.

Those factors include whether force was used, how the offender manipulated his or her victims and the age of the victims, Durkin said.

The current system, he said, leads to police and probation officers getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of offenders to monitor.

"They're really trying," he said. "But they've got this huge caseload." ..Source.. DAN SHORTRIDGE • The News Journal

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OK- 'Misleading' molester ad denounced by Adelson

10-22-2009 Oklahoma:

The mayoral candidate's record on crime is questioned.

Mayoral candidate Tom Adelson said his opponent Dewey Bartlett Jr. has taken his campaign into the gutter with a new "misleading, downright false" TV ad implying that Adelson is soft on child molesters.

"I deeply resent the defamatory attack from the Bartlett campaign," Adelson said during a news conference Tuesday at a River Parks playground near 18th Street.

"I was just shocked. It's sickening and grotesque," Adelson said of first viewing the commercial.

"This is a person, as you know, who last time he ran for mayor, his campaign tactics were called 'despicable' and certainly will stoop to any means," Adelson said.

"I think it's the nastiest ad I've seen in about 10 years," he said.

The commercial opens with a colorful playground of children playing and a voice-over stating: "Nothing that the Tulsa mayor does is more important than keeping families safe. That is why Tom Adelson's record on crime is troubling."

Then a suspicious-looking man in a hooded sweatshirt sneaks up on the park, lurking
behind a tree, and the color ad goes to black and white.

The ad goes on to state that "Adelson voted against the death penalty for twice-convicted child molesters, the worst of criminals. He wouldn't even let the jury give child molesters life without parole."

Adelson, a Democratic state senator, said he voted against a 2006 bill that would have allowed the death penalty for twice-convicted child molesters because it was unconstitutional. The legislation ultimately was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

But Bartlett, a Republican, said that at the time of the vote there was never any discussion about the constitutionality of the bill.

It appears that Bartlett will vote NEGATIVE on ANYTHING related to sex offenders without regard to constitutionality of it, even when such is not mentioned, and implies that everyone should the same! Should he even be a lawmaker, allowing prejudices and biases to control his vote?

"Tom had an opportunity to vote on the side of the child and didn't do so," he said in an interview after Adelson's news conference.

Bartlett said his ad brings up a "very relevant issue because the mayor is by charter the manager of the city and thus the leader of the Police Department."

Adelson said the bill also never took away the jury's ability to send repeat offenders to prison without the possibility of parole.

"That was always the law, and my vote had no impact on ensuring that repeat offenders go away for life," he said.

Adelson said he supported "chemical castration" for the worst offenders, and he thinks they ought to stay in jail forever.

Bartlett's ad goes on to say that Adelson voted for budget cuts to the state Department of Public Safety.

Adelson said the vote Bartlett is talking about was unanimous.

"This year in a budget crisis we've had cutbacks among every agency, and I think it's unfortunate that Mr. Bartlett thinks this is political opportunity rather than recognizing we're in one of the worst fiscal crises since the Great Depression," he said

Adelson said Bartlett will "do and say anything" to be mayor.

"Shame on that campaign. It's a disgrace to the city," he said.

Adelson said he and his wife are the proud parents of four children and like all parents "we care nothing more above all else than the health, safety and security of our kids."

Adelson said he has coauthored a law that gives increased investigative authority to police in cases of suspected child predators and another to strengthen the law involving Internet child porn.

Adelson said he challenged Bartlett at a debate last week to run clean campaigns but Bartlett refused.

Bartlett said "actions speak louder than words" but would not say whether he will stop the negative ads.

Bartlett said his ad is truthful, unlike Adelson's ad against him involving Great Plains Airline, which accused him of a criminal offense.

"For him (Adelson) to suddenly attempt to act holier-than-thou is laughable," Bartlett said.

Adelson's attorney Jim Connor sent a two-page letter to media outlets demanding they not run the Bartlett ad, saying it is "not just sleazy and disgusting politics, it is false and defamatory."

Adelson said Connor will be contacting Bartlett's campaign as well. ..Source.. by P.J. LASSEK World Staff Writer

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TX- Jurors hold parole board chairman personally liable in due process case

10-9-2009 Texas:

Attorneys Bill Habern and Richard Gladden won a major victory this week in their battle with the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole for due process for sex offenders. A federal court in Austin ruled that parole officials violated the constitutional rights of Curtis Ray Graham, an ex-convict who was denied a required hearing for 576 days.

Graham sued the parole board for classifying him as a sex offender, even though he was never convicted of a sex offense. He had been arrested on aggravated rape charges in the 1980s but pleaded to a lesser charge,and has been in and out of prison since then on charges ranging from robbery to attempted murder. After the parole board imposed sex offender restrictions on him, Graham alleged he wasn't allowed to review the evidence before the parole board made its decision, despite several federal court orders requiring such hearings.

The decision was most remarkable for the fact that juror held Board of Pardon and Paroles Chairman Rissie Owens liable for $21,250 ..Source.. by Diane Jennings/Reporter

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MI- Police combat sex offenders

11-14-2008 Michigan:

OWOSSO - Sergeant Tom Holcomb knows he has a difficult task in the city.

As the city's head of sex offender investigations, Holcomb is responsible for keeping track of the Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry's estimated 86 sex offenders in Owosso.

With a population topping 15,000, the estimated ratio is one in every 180 people is a sex offender. The ratio is higher than Flint (one in 212), Lansing (one in 244) and much higher than Shiawassee County (one in 369).

“As far as being the highest in the county, you have to look at population,” Holcomb said. “The biggest city we have is Owosso.”

Compared with the cities of Corunna (one in 134), Durand (one in 292) and Perry (one in 117), Owosso is lower than only Durand. The highest ratio of all major cities in Michigan is Detroit (one in 79).

Public Safety Director Mike Compeau said enforcement should be considered.

“Holcomb is one of the best in the state at his job,” he said, adding the Owosso Police Department also is one of the best departments in the state to combat sexual offenders.

Holcomb said there are other factors to take into account.


“One bit of food for thought, there may be some who are registered who have moved from one jurisdiction into another and haven't registered,” he said. “The numbers on the Web site also don't indicate how many unlisted adjudicated juveniles there are.”

Holcomb said there were less than four adjudicated juveniles in Owosso.

“One misunderstanding most people have is they think that most of these are teens who violated the age of consent,” he said. “Locally and nationally speaking, those only account for 4 or 5 percent.”

That isn't the only myth concerning sexual offenders, Holcomb said.

“Someone does not necessarily become a sex offender if they're convicted of indecent exposure,” he said. “Unless it's a third conviction. So it takes a lot more than just some kid getting caught for streaking.”

Holcomb said there are several ways a person becomes a registered sex offender, including any criminal sexual conduct offense; computer crimes, such as soliciting minors or posting pornographic material; and convictions for being sexually delinquent.

“A CSC is the most common out of all of them,” he said. “The others are pretty rare.”

Another myth Holcomb mentioned is those ending up on the sex offender registry stay there for life.

“For many of the lesser offenses, it's 25 years,” he said. “For the more serious crimes or multiple convictions, it's life. Also, juveniles can petition the court to be removed before 18.” ..News Source.. by NATHAN BRUTTELL Argus-Press Staff Writer

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OH- Sex Offenders and Communities: COMMUNITY COMPASS SPECIAL RESEARCH REPORT NO. 3-10

8-15-2008 Ohio:

April 2008:

Community COMPASS, Hamilton County’s Comprehensive Master Plan and Strategies is a long-range plan that seeks to address mutual goals related to physical, economic, and social issues among the 49 communities within Hamilton County. Through a collective shared vision for the future based on the wishes and dreams of thousands of citizens, Hamilton County now has direction to chart its course into the 21 century. In developing a broad vision with broad support, Community COMPASS will help ensure that trends are anticipated, challenges are addressed, priorities are focused, and our collective future is planned and achieved strategically over the next 20 to 30 years. Through an in-depth analysis of all aspects of the County, the multi-year process will result in a comprehensive plan.

Implementation of Community COMPASS

Sex Offenders and Communities suggests recommendations consistent with Economic Development, Collaborative Decision Making and Diversity and Equity Objectives and Policies as contained within the 2030 Plan and Implementation framework for Hamilton County, Ohio. Among the specific objectives related to this study are:

..to read the full report..

Report prepared for: Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners, Prepared by: Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission Staff

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MO- Court: State can't require registry info from pre-1995 sex offenders

4-1-2008 Missouri:

KANSAS CITY — A Missouri appeals court says the state can't require people convicted of sex crimes before 1995 to provide information for the state sex offender registry.

But the court says the state can still list their names and criminal history if they come from public records.

The decision today mostly upholds a Jackson County judge's decision preventing the Highway Patrol from requiring all sex offenders to provide their current home and work addresses, pictures and other information for the Internet registry.

The judge said the state could not enforce the law against people convicted of sex crimes before it went into effect in 1995.

Patrol officials say the ruling likely won't change the registry, which now lists the exempt individuals in a separate section. ..more.. by The Missourian

Court of Appeals decision: Jane Doe I, et al., Respondents v. Thomas Phillips, et al., Defendant, James Keathley, Appellant.

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The Net is a circuit of safety concerns

11-12-2007 National:

Notice the use of these terms: sexual predators, sex offenders, online predators, registered sex offenders. The failure to distinguish between these terms and these offenders will keep lawmakers blind as to how to solve these sexual offenses. eAdvocate

If you watch TV or read the news, you know sexual predators hang out on the Internet, looking for underage victims.

Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" features men being lured by the promise of meeting underage girls. Several state attorneys general recently have called on social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook to ban registered sex offenders and make their sites safer. Newspapers have been filled with stories about the dangers children face when they post too much personal information. And victims have testified recently at congressional hearings.

Notice the coupling of the "To Catch a Predator" series and "Social Networking Websites" and "ban registered sex offenders (RSOs)," all together implying that RSOs are causing the online predation. Whats wrong with that folks ask? Simply this, it is not RSOs that have been caught preying online, it is NEW PREDATORS who have never before committed a sex crime. The failure to recognize this means legislation directed towards RSOs will not solve the problem of online predation. Neither the media nor legislators will recognize this! eAdvocate

Some worry that parents are falling victim to "predator panic" and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether.

"One of the misunderstandings that we think is widespread is that what sex offenders are doing is picking out kids (online) and stalking them and deceiving them and abducting them and raping them," says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

"That's not what's going on."

Abductions by strangers are so rare that many experts can't name a single case in which a predator attacked after only seeing a child's profile online.

'Grooming' their victims

In most cases, predators seek out vulnerable teens — those who post sexually suggestive pictures of themselves, talk about sex online or frequent places where hook-ups are made, Finkelhor says. They spend weeks, even months, forging a relationship and gaining the teens' trust.

Usually, those who become victims eventually agree to meet the perpetrator face to face; often they know that the person they're meeting is older. But by the time they meet him (usually it's a man), they often think they are in love. It's a process called "grooming," Finkelhor says.

"It's the kids who respond to somebody and start talking about sex that puts them at risk — or kids who use sites to communicate with lots of people they don't know, or put very sexualized images online," he says.

The Internet allows predators "to form supportive relationships with emotionally vulnerable teens," says Nancy Willard, author of Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly.

Though there are no comprehensive national annual figures on Internet crimes against children, Finkelhor says, overall sex crimes against children are down, with the notable exception of child pornography. Sexual abuse cases were down 51% from 1990 to 2005 — from 22.8 per 10,000 to 11.3 per 10,000 children, he says.

Feeling safe doesn't make it so

Studies show that most teens feel relatively safe online. A Pew Internet & American Life Project report last month showed that though children, especially girls, who posted pictures of themselves on social networks were more likely to be contacted by strangers, only 7% of online teens said they had ever had an interaction with a stranger that made them feel scared or uncomfortable.

And a report out last year by Finkelhor's center found that from 2000 through 2005, the number of children ages 10 to 17 who received unwanted solicitations online declined from 19% to 13%.

But calls to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's hotline have been on the rise, says president Ernie Allen. In 2005, there were 2,660 reports of online enticement of children; in 2006, there were 6,374. In the first eight months of 2007, there were 9,533. Some of the increase can be attributed to greater Internet use and increased awareness of the hotline, Allen says.

He agrees that education is a key to Internet safety. But he says the Internet does make it easier to prey on children.

"Just like in the physical world, those people who seek to prey upon kids go to where the kids are," Allen says. "We don't think the sky is falling, but there (are) adults hiding behind the relative anonymity of the Internet to try to achieve what they either can't achieve or can only achieve with great risk in the physical world. America's moms and dads really need to catch up."

Though it's good to educate children and parents about dangers, some experts worry that the message may backfire.

"If you are petrified of predators but are not worrying about cyber-bullies, loss of reputation, spending too much time online and the other less frightening but more likely dangers of online use, then you are misplacing your energy," says Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org. "You're petrified of something that's probably not going to happen and failing to pay attention to the dangers that are far more likely."

Allen says messages should be balanced, but parents do need to stay aware of the problems. "The good news is that the vast majority of America's kids are much smarter and much more aware. …

"But the bad news is, there are a lot of (predators) out there who are still seeking, overwhelmingly for grooming and seduction. This remains a significant problem." ..more.. by Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY

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