Rethinking Nebraska's sex offender registry

11-5-16 Nebraska:

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) -- Do all the people on Nebraska’s Sex Offender Registry really need to be there? Do you think we should know the whereabouts of every sex offender in the state? Some people don’t think so.

Groundbreaking research at UNO found that most sex offenders do not reoffend. Research showed that putting every sex offender on a public website can lead to harassment and may contribute to conditions that make reoffending more likely.

Jeromy Wilson is a convicted sex offender; his picture was placed on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry for exposing himself when he was 17. “It wasn’t something to harm nobody, it was me being young and dumb,” Wilson told WOWT 6 News.

Five years ago Wilson says he was an adult dating website. The then 25-year-old thought he was hooking up with a 19-year-old female, but later found out she was a minor.

“The last thing you really do when you go out on dates, you know, you talk to somebody ‘hey can you send me a copy of your id.’ You know that was where my mistake was,” Wilson said.

For that mistake Wilson was charged with first degree sexual assault of a child. He plead no contest to third degree sexual assault and went to prison for a year.

"I wasn’t denying the fact that I made a mistake, but I was also trying to savor the fact that she had falsified her information to me,” Wilson explained, “And I’m still trying to maintain some of my dignity.”

Now Wilson has a lifetime spot in the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry. He says people are using the registry to harass him, to call his clients to prevent him from working.

Wilson says it not fair that he continue to pay for the mistakes he made.

Because I’m trying to make my life better and prove not only to everyone else but to myself and my family that I’m better than this,” he said. “But you keep getting kicked while you’re down.”

For 15 years, UNO’S Dr. Lisa Sample has been researching why most sex offenders do reoffend and why Nebraska puts every sex offender on a registry.

“Not all sex offenders are created equal -- not all need to be on that registry,” said Dr. Sample. “Just because you’re on the registry did not make you a predatory pedophile. There are the Romeo and Juliet out there where somebody was 19 somebody was 16 - not old enough to consent, indecent exposure cases, flashing cases.”

But when most of us think about sex offenders we think of the worst: Roy Ellis did reoffend, kidnapping, assaulting and then killing 12 year old Amber Harris. Amber’s mom says the registry is necessary.

“I’m sorry for anybody who thinks they’ve been victimized or harassed, but it’s there for a reason because there’s people who go out there and reoffend,” said Harris.

Dr. Sample agrees it is necessary, but she says not all sex offenders should be on the list. She would like to see the registry return to a risk based system.

“Where we administered a risk assessment instrument to people upon conviction and we categorize them as low, medium or high risk and we alerted the public to only those people who presented a high risk of reoffending,” said Dr. Sample.

Wilson would also like to see that happen. Now 30 years old, his fiancé expecting a child and he says he’s changed his life but he wonders how long he will have to drag his past around.

“I should be able to live my life without having to deal with public ridicule,” Wilson said. “Not to mention, later on down the road when my child grows up, I’m going to have to explain ‘hey why is daddy on the registry.’”

Information on the sex offender registry should not be used to retaliate against the people of the list, their families or their employees; vandalism, verbal or written threats of harm are illegal. ..Source.. by John Chapman

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Study: Sex offender registry might not increase public safety

8-13-2013 Nebraska:

The way Nebraska tracks sex offenders might not be protecting public safety as well as the system lawmakers abandoned in 2009, according to a study commissioned by the state Legislature.

Under the old system, only the names of sex offenders deemed by the Nebraska State Patrol as most likely to re-offend were publicized. Those who had committed minor offenses and were considered at low risk of re-offending -- known as Level 1 offenders -- were required to register with law enforcement agencies, but their information wasn't made public.

But lawmakers passed a bill to comply with the Adam Walsh Act, a federal law named for Adam Walsh, the son of “America's Most Wanted” host John Walsh, who was abducted and murdered in 1981. The new law included Level 1 offenders in the public reporting requirements, and the state posted their photos and addresses on a website.

The information stays up for as long as 25 years, and in some cases, for life.

"It appears that the Adam Walsh Act was founded more on public emotion than good science, which is its fundamental shortcoming," said the report done for the Legislature's Judiciary Committee by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Consortium for Crime and Justice Research.

"In nearly all cases, adoption of the Adam Walsh Act … results in the community being notified about more sex offenders. With the increase in cases, it becomes more difficult for citizens in the community to discern which offenders on the list are the most dangerous," it said. "If the purpose of registry and community notification laws is to promote public safety, this widening of the net of offenders placed on the public list is in direct conflict with the primary purpose of sex offender registries."

More than 4,000 registered sex offenders live in Nebraska. The report said more than 56 percent of all sex offenders assaulted someone they knew. About 34 percent assaulted a family member. Less than 17 percent assaulted a stranger.

"Consequently, if a primary purpose of sex offender notification and registries is to protect the public from strangers who are convicted sex offenders, then the current makeup of the Nebraska sex offender registry is at odds with this goal," the report said.

"Consequently, the findings … call into question the accuracy and utility of the Adam Walsh Act classification system in detecting offenders that are at a high risk to re-offend. From a public safety standpoint … research suggests that public safety has not been enhanced by the adoption of the Adam Walsh Act … system," the report said.

Brad Ashford, chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, said it might be time to re-examine whether the names of sex offenders who commit "minor" offenses should be made public.

He noted that the names of juvenile sex offenders, unless they are convicted as adults, are not.

"There's nothing with the current system that would prevent us from doing with other offenses -- lesser offenses, misdemeanors -- what we have done with juveniles," Ashford said. ..Source.. by Kevin O'Hanlon

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Prisons losing crowding battle

One interesting point, the Journalist says "Many convicted of sex crimes" but does not distinguish if they are "New Sex crimes," or are they possibly due to "Failure to Register" charges for maintaining a nonsensical telephone book of addresses where sex offenders sleep? I would like to know.

6-19-2011 Nebraska:

LINCOLN — A deluge of new prison inmates — many convicted of sex crimes — is overwhelming the state's effort to relieve overcrowding in the state corrections facilities.

The state has been ramping up a program to accelerate parole for short-term, low-risk inmates and reduce overcrowding, which has hovered around 140 percent of capacity for several months.

But record-high admissions to Nebraska prisons, along with still-transitioning rehabilitative programs, have left those efforts well short of expectations.

Instead of populations falling at the nine state correctional facilities, numbers have risen in the past few months, reaching 4,482, or 141.17 percent of capacity, last week.

State prison officials spoke last year of paroling more than 260 inmates by July 1, but the number of inmates on parole has risen by only 40 since March 1.

Bob Houston, state corrections director, remains confident his department can reach a goal of reducing the state's prison population by 545 inmates, or about 12 percent, over the next two years.

“I think we're on a good track,” Houston said. “But nothing is as fast as I'd like it to be.”

State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, chairman of the legislative committee that oversees corrections issues, said he has faith in the effort to deal with more inmates in less-expensive community settings rather than prison cells. But it's clear changes might be needed, he said.

“We're going in the wrong direction, so we'll have to revisit this,” Ashford said.

State officials, needing to close a nearly $1 billion budget gap this spring, were counting on faster progress to parole more short-term inmates, providing significant cost savings.

A total of $6.7 million in savings was projected over the next two years by paroling 545 inmates.

It costs about $29,000 a year to house an offender behind bars, compared with $5,000 per year for intense parole supervision. Houston and others say parole, coupled with treatment, is more effective at avoiding repeat crimes.

The expected reduction had another anticipated benefit: heading off construction of a $125-million-plus state prison.

When the prison population reaches 140 percent of capacity, it triggers a report to the governor, who can declare an emergency. The figure also can be a benchmark federal judges use to order construction of new prison cells.

The increase in new state prison inmates comes at a time when crime rates are falling in the state and across the nation.

Nebraska's numbers buck another national trend: The number of state prisoners nationwide fell last year for the first time since 1972.

The growth in the number of sex offenders sent to prison appears to be a major culprit in the prison population dilemma.

Such offenders generally serve longer sentences and are paroled at a much lower frequency than other inmates, exacerbating the overcrowding problem.

In the past couple of years, sex offenders have supplanted drug dealers and drug users as the largest group in Nebraska prisons.

A sex offense was the most serious crime committed by nearly 19 percent of all state inmates. Assault followed at 13 percent, with felony drug crimes third at 12 percent.

Officials said prison alternatives such as drug court and community corrections have reduced the number of inmates sentenced for drug crimes.

But while one in five inmates is in prison for sex crimes, only about one in 30 offenders released on parole last year, or 28 in 797, was a sex offender.

That is despite a low rate of recidivism for sex offenders. A 2002 U.S. Department of Justice study found that 5.3 percent of men who committed rape or sexual assault had reoffended within three years of being released from prison.

Esther Casmer, the state parole board chairwoman, disagreed that the low rate of parole for sex offenders was related to any cultural fear of such criminals.

Casmer said her board is often presented with parole candidates who have either refused treatment for sex offenses or have been unable to get treatment because of waiting lists in the state prison system.

Casmer said she won't parole anyone who hasn't shown through treatment that his risk of reoffending has been reduced.

“Those programs are designed to address sexual deviancy or predatory behavior,” she said. “We are not going to consider them for parole without treatment. It wouldn't make sense.”

Houston said his department has increased the quality and capacity of in-prison treatment and is working to create more community-based treatment programs for sex offenders so more inmates can be treated outside prison, during parole.

The state has begun offering more out-of-prison treatment programs through a “day-reporting center” in Lincoln and is working to duplicate that effort in Douglas County.

Once additional community treatment programs are in place, the number of parolees should increase, Houston said.

There are a couple of signs of progress. The number of inmates on parole has risen to 1,015, up from 975 on March 1. Four additional parole officers have been hired in both Omaha and Lincoln and the plan is to hire 12 more.

Houston said six drug abuse counselors have been transferred to community positions so more services can be offered outside prison.

But, because of state budget reductions, the department must first cut expenses elsewhere to free up money to invest in the transition of more inmates to parole, Houston said.

A 160-inmate wing of the Omaha Correctional Center was closed in May, eliminating 14 correctional officer positions. But it takes time to retrain those officers or hire others as parole officers, drug counselors or sex-offender counselors, he said.

The record-high influx of new prisoners is not likely to abate soon, said Steve King, who tracks statistics for the state prison system.

Judges sentenced a record 237 new inmates in March, and the first quarter of 2011 also saw a record 630 new inmates entering prison. That followed a record 2,339 new inmates in 2010.

“We're just continuing to set new records,” King said.

He noted that the legislative trend in recent years has been to increase and enhance sentences, sending more people to prison for longer sentences.

Ashford said it is unclear whether more money will be needed to bolster treatment of sex offenders or whether senators need to re-examine sex offenders' prison sentences.

Prison officials might have to amend their approach to reach their goals of reducing prison overcrowding, Ashford said.

“I do believe the department is doing the best they can, but there may be some structural changes that have to be made,” he said. ..Source.. by Paul Hammel
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

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