Slate Article: The Ridiculous Laws That Put People on the Sex Offender List

Slate published a similar series worth reading, see "Listed for Life" which has links to all of the articles.

8-12-2014 National:

Three maps show states that register people as sex offenders for consensual teenage sex, peeing in public, and prostitution.

On his 18th birthday, Virgil McCranie and his 14-year-old girlfriend of one year, Misty, decided to have sex. Because of their ages, that meant McCranie committed the crime of statutory rape. When Misty told her father months later, after finding out that McCranie had cheated on her, he went to the police. In 1994, McCranie struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading no contest to lewd and lascivious behavior. He avoided prison, but as part of the deal, he had to register as a sex offender.

In time, Virgil and Misty reconciled, eventually got married, and began raising four children together. “It was a mistake, it happened, I’ve been with her since, I’ve loved her before then,” he told a local news channel 14 years later.

At that moment, McCranie was a still a registered sex offender. He says that he lost 17 jobs because of his status. Worse, he couldn’t attend his sons’ games and his daughter’s dance recitals. “I wish I could take it back,” Misty told the Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Once we got back together I realized how detrimental it was to him.”

In the end, McCranie was one of the lucky ones. He applied to then–Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for a pardon and received one. Others like him, however, remain on the registries. In at least 29 states—from Alabama to Wisconsin—consensual sex between teenagers is a crime that can lead to sex offender status. “No group is out there saying that they want Romeo and Juliet to be on the registry,” Brenda Jones, executive director of Reform Sex Offender Laws, a volunteer advocacy group, told me. “But lawmakers aren’t paying attention, and we as constituents are not aware.”

As you can see in the maps below, consensual sex between teenagers is just one of several crimes far removed from violent felonies that can land one on a sex offender registry. Kansas and at least five other states require registration for some prostitution-related offences, such as solicitation or running a brothel. In Michigan and at least 11 other states, urinating in public is.*

One possible reason for the long list of registry-worthy crimes is plea bargains like McCranie’s. Lawmakers may be ensuring that sex offenders won’t escape registration by pleading to lower-level offenses. But at what cost? ..Continue to Maps.. by Chanakya Sethi

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

New security system mistakenly flags north Texas dad as sex offender

10-30-2014 Texas:

An unnerving coincidence for a Fort Worth dad who went to visit his child's school in Fort Worth. A new computerized security system alerted staff that he might be a sex offender.

A promotional video from Raptor Technologies shows how it's supposed to work. Parents entering schools have their id's scanned, usually a driver's license, and a printer spits out a pass.

But when Jose Jimenez turned over his Texas driver's license, he got a shocking response. "When they put it into the computer, they say he could not be there because he was a sex offender," said his neighbor, Maria Miranda, who acted as interpreter.

He's not a sex offender. But when the computer searched a nationwide database, it found a close match. A Jose Jimenez listed as an absconder on Arizona's list of registered sex offenders. The Fort Worth Jose Jimenez says he's never even been to Arizona.

The middle names are different, but the height and weight are similar. The CEO of Raptor said the mix-up is partly due to the fact that Arizona does not list dates of birth on the registry. The principal compared the photos, and let Jimenez into the school.

"The system did work," said Fort Worth ISD spokesman Clint Bond. "We got a potential alert. We checked it out. It proved to be false."

Jimenez told us he's not worried, because he knows he's not the person on the list. But he did file a police report, just to make sure his identity had not been stolen by a sex offender -- and to have something on the record should the issue come up again.

Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, the CEO of Raptor Technologies said that although the system is new to Fort Worth, it is in 12,000 schools in 45 states. Jim Vesterman said Raptor has flagged 15,000 registered sex offenders trying to enter schools. ..Source.. by Delaney Bentley

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

San Bernardino County, Victorville settle litigation over sex offender ordinances

12-26-2014 California:

San Bernardino County and the city of Victorville have settled lawsuits with a civil rights attorney challenging the constitutionality of both municipalities’ sex offender ordinances.

Victorville has agreed to revise its 8-year-old ordinance to conform with state law, which prohibits registered sex offenders from residing within 2,000 feet of a school or park and bans those on parole and whose victims were under the age of 14 from visiting public parks without the express permission of their parole agent.

San Bernardino County has until March 1 to get Board of Supervisors approval for a revised ordinance or its settlement becomes void.

Santa Maria-based civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci filed lawsuits against Victorville and the county in federal court on Aug. 14 and Oct. 15, respectively, arguing the ordinances were overly restrictive and violated the civil rights of registered sex offenders. They were similar to dozens of others the crusading civil rights attorney has contested in cities and counties throughout the state, following a ruling in January by the 4th District Court of Appeal which found that sex offender ordinances in Orange County and the city of Irvine cannot impose restrictions more stringent than state law.

In April, the state Supreme Court declined a petition by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office to review the appellate court decision, leaving it intact and establishing a new legal precedent that has prompted the many municipalities sued by Bellucci to either revise or repeal their sex offender ordinances so they are uniform with state law.

Some municipalities have capitulated to Bellucci’s demands, while others have vowed to fight her. Bellucci’s most aggressive opponent is the city of Carson, which has declared war on Bellucci in an effort to keep its ordinance intact. On Tuesday, Bellucci filed a second lawsuit against the city in federal court after the City Council rejected a settlement agreement in September. Bellucci has a third lawsuit against Carson filed in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging breach of contract and fraud in regards to the settlement, which she says was legally binding with the signatures of the city manager and city attorney.

On Dec. 16, the Victorville City Council unanimously approved a revision to its 8-year-old ordinance that placed restrictions on where sex offenders could live and prohibited them from being within 300 feet of anywhere a child may be present, including video arcades, preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and day care centers.

“I think it’s worth saying that nobody on this council wants to make this motion,” Councilman Jim Kennedy said during the Dec. 16 council meeting. “We are trapped in state law and if anybody’s unhappy about this motion and this ordinance that we’re passing, what you really need to do is go take a look at your state Legislature because they’re the ones that created the state law that we’re bound to live with.”

City Manager Doug Robertson said that rather than facing the high cost of fighting Bellucci in court, the city agreed, as a condition of the settlement, to revise its ordinance and pay Bellucci $5,000 in attorney’s fees.

“We just agreed to settle the case and modify our ordinance to be in conformity with state law,” Robertson said. “I don’t think anyone was really thrilled about it. The thought was that this was an issue of local control, but obviously the courts have ruled otherwise.”

The revised ordinance goes before the council on Jan. 20 for a second reading and adoption and will take effect 30 days thereafter. Meanwhile, the city has instructed the Sheriff’s Department not to enforce its existing ordinance in the interim, Robertson said.

“We are very pleased and encouraged that the city of Victorville decided to comply with recent court decisions, including the state Supreme Court,” Bellucci said. “We got what we wanted and needed, which was to revise their ordinance, and we got paid attorney’s fees.”

San Bernardino County has taken a different approach in settling with Bellucci. It has agreed to bring the issue before the Board of Supervisors for consideration on or before March 1, but there is no guarantee the board will approve a revision to its ordinance. Bellucci is demanding that the county make its ordinance uniform with state law and that the county purge a provision of the ordinance that prohibits registered sex offenders from having their porch lights on between 5 p.m. and midnight on Halloween night, passing out candy to children or decorating their homes.

If the county does not agree to change its ordinance by March 1, the settlement agreement becomes void. That would mean Bellucci will have to file another lawsuit against the county if she wanted to continue in the litigation, as Bellucci agreed to dismiss the lawsuit per the settlement agreement, county spokesman David Wert said.

Bellucci said a second lawsuit would require a new plaintiff, which would not be an issue given that there is a pool of roughly 105,000 registered sex offenders in California, and finding one willing to join her in her civil rights battle would likely not difficult.

“Just because they settled one lawsuit doesn’t mean they can’t be sued again,” Bellucci said, adding that she will in fact sue the county again if need be. “Anybody who has to register as a sex offender in California can be a plaintiff, and there are 105,000 potential plaintiffs. ..Source.. by Joe Nelson

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Cedar Park police officer suspended indefinitely after he's discovered --associating-- with a --suspected-- serial rapist.

12-24-2014 Texas:

In August, Cedar Park Police Chief Sean Mannix announced the arrest of who he called a serial rapist: 19-year-old Jordan Benford. At the time, Mannix said there were five known victims and a possible 6th. Benford has been in the Williamson County Jail ever since.

"Our belief was the behavior was escalating and he's where he needs to be right now," said Mannix.

Mannix says when officers began their investigation in June, they went through Benford's phone as part of a search warrant. "In that cell phone were photographs of one of our officers in social settings with Mr. Benford," said Mannix.

Mannix says the officer, James Arrick, a six year veteran of the department appeared in two photos with the suspect. In one, the two were at a park, and looking at motorcycles in another.

"Immediately when that came to my attention, I ordered an internal affairs investigation based on the fact that I have an officer associated with a known felon, or associating with a known felon which is a violation of policy," Mannix said.

Benford was not a stranger to Cedar Park police. In 2012 he was arrested for the sexual assault of a student on the Vista Ridge High School campus.

Mannix says when questioned, Arrick did not confirm he knew Benford's criminal history.

"In police work, especially here in Cedar Park, we hold our employees to a very high standard and associating with people of ill repute in this case, a person suspected of several sex assaults does not reflect well on what we do and that is protect people from predators like Mr. Benford," Mannix said.

Arrick, however, was not terminated for his association with Benford. Mannix says Arrick was found to have done a warrant check on Benford which was a policy violation.

"He had no law enforcement purpose for doing that. He gave a few different accounts of why he may have done that, none of which were law enforcement purpose. So, I indefinitely suspected him for dishonesty and accessing a police database other than a law enforcement purpose," said Mannix.

Arrick will appeal his indefinite suspension in a hearing on January 20th.

Arrick is being represented by attorney with the Texas Municipal Police Association. The association could not be reached for comment as of news time Tuesday. ..Source.. by Noelle Newton

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Sex offender registry not the answer

12-23-2014 National:

Let’s get real folks! Ariel Castro (Ohio), Jerry Sandusky (PA) and many others we hear and read about were not on any public registry and that is exactly the point. The public has been groomed to believe all they have to do is check a registry and be aware of “those on it” and their family will be safe. The truth of the matter is that according to credible studies the recidivism rate for another “sexual” offense is 3.5 percent and those who are beginning to educate families are advising the other 93-95 percent of sexual offenses come from within the victim’s family, friends and those having access to the children and those never get reported.

There are over 774,600 men, women and children (as young as 6, 8 and 10 in some states) required to register and the "crimes" range from urinating in public (indecent exposure), sexting, incest, mooning, exposure, false accusations by a soon-to-be ex-wife, angry girlfriend, or spiteful student, viewing abusive or suggestive images of anyone 18 years old or younger, playing doctor, prostitution, solicitation, Romeo and Juliet consensual sexual dating relationships, rape, endangering the welfare of a child and many others.

If you multiply the number on the registry by two or three family members you can clearly see there are well over three million wives, children, moms, aunts, girlfriends, grandmothers and other family members who experience the collateral damage of being harassed, threatened, children beaten, have signs placed in their yards, homes set on fire, vehicles damaged, asked to leave their churches and other organizations, children passed over for educational opportunities, have flyers distributed around their neighborhood, wives lose their jobs when someone learns they are married to a registrant....all these things occur when these people try to hold their family together and provide the three things that professionals state are needed for successful re-integration; a job, a place to live, and a good support system.

Education is the key. We need to set up Child Sexual Abuse Prevention training programs to empower kids and teens to protect themselves as much as possible and to speak up if someone makes them uncomfortable or oversteps their bounds. Programs like radKIDs and others are great tools. Parents cannot be everywhere.

Residency restrictions push former offenders away from the supervision, treatment, stability, and supportive networks they may need to build and maintain successful, law-abiding lives. As one Iowa sheriff said, "We are less safe as a community now than we were before the residency restrictions."

Throughout the United States, courts have found residency laws unconstitutional because they are punitive or against the Ex Post Facto laws.

Many child safety and rape prevention advocates would like to see more money spent on prevention, education, and awareness programs for children and adults, counseling for victims of sexual violence, and programs that facilitate treatment and the transition back to society for convicted sex offenders. ..Source.. by Vicki Henry, President, Women Against Registry

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Jackley: Put pimps of minors on sex offender registry

UPDATE

12-23-2014 South Dakota:

Attorney General Marty Jackley has released his list of proposed bills for the upcoming legislative session. The state's top prosecutor will ask lawmakers to place some human trafficking convicts on the state's sex offender registry, ... ...

The push to add pimps convicted of trafficking of minors or trafficking through the prostitution of minors is based on the coercion embedded in the crimes, Jackley said. "The inclusion of human trafficking is part of our commitment to providing a sex offender registry that exceeds national standards, partners with our reservation communities, and protects our children," Jackley said.

The designation of traffickers as sex crime perpetrators makes sense, said Krista Heeren-Graber, Director of the South Dakota Network Against Family Violence. The goal of the registry is to inform the community of potential predators, she said. "I think it's a great idea," said Heeren-Graber. "It provides more protection and awareness for the community." ... ... ... ..Source.. by John Hult

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

NCDPS Statement on sex offender housing

12-23-2014 North Carolina:

Suitable housing for sex offenders leaving prison is a significant public safety issue facing North Carolina and many other states. As a group, sex offenders are at great risk for homelessness due to the public stigma they carry and the legal restrictions placed upon where they may live. Nearly 16,000 registered sex offenders are currently living in communities across North Carolina.

The Department of Public Safety recognized a longstanding need for temporary housing for sex offenders leaving prison and this year issued a request for proposals (RFP) for organizations to provide short-term sex offender housing in suitable locations. Such housing is designed to provide a 60-day transition period and may be extended up to 90 days maximum, until permanent housing is secured.

In Mecklenburg County, the Bradley-Reid Corporation, an established local provider of re-entry services and services to veterans and people living with HIV/AIDS, responded to the RFP and was awarded a contract to provide transitional housing with six beds for male sex offenders. Bradley-Reid secured letters of support from several community organizations supporting its efforts in creating such housing in Mecklenburg County.

A home on McAlpine Lane provides housing and meals for the residents, with access to public transportation. In addition to an onsite 24-hour house manager, probation officers provide supervision and the residents are subject to curfews and regular drug and alcohol screening.

The location of the transitional home meets the state's legal requirements for sex offender housing and was approved by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Department Sex Offender Registry Unit. The NC sex offender registry currently shows 117 registered sex offenders living within a 3-mile radius of this location.

The Department of Public Safety believes that providing safe, structured and supervised housing for sex offenders leaving prison is a much better option for overall public safety than the alternative of sex offenders living in vehicles or becoming homeless on the streets. ..Source.. by Keith Acree, Communications Office,
North Carolina Department of Public Safety

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Protecting public creates pools of sex-crime felons in rural, less affluent areas in, around Jacksonville

8-21-2014 Florida:

When a 35-year-old mother was stabbed to death and a 10-year-old girl raped in Clay County on Dec. 1, many in the small Middleburg community learned for the first time that the sexual predator suspect was among 143 offenders who lived within five miles of the crime scene.

Registered predator Donald Hugh Davidson Jr. lived in a mobile home on the edge of that circle with another sex offender.

Clusters of such offenders end up being common in many areas due to the residency restrictions faced by some and economic difficulties, experts said.

In the Jacksonville area, where 2,300 predators and offenders are registered, the Times-Union found at least one house with seven offenders.

The city’s highest concentration of offenders and predators lies north of downtown in ZIP code 32206, encompassing Springfield and stretching to the Evergreen Cemetery and east to the St. Johns River, where about 180 offenders and predators call home.

Sex offender Robert Goeing Young, 55, whose home address on East 15th Street was within that boundary, was sentenced to life in prison in 2013. He was arrested after the family of an 8-year-old girl allowed him to sleep with their daughter at their home in another part of Jacksonville. They knew Young was an offender. He previously was convicted of molesting and impregnating another young girl in 1991.

In February, 32-year-old Kristopher Keith Reynolds turned himself in on charges of lewd and lascivious battery and impregnating a girl who was older than 12 but younger than 16. Reynolds, a registered offender whose permanent address was on East 19th Street less than a mile from where Young lived, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Jacksonville’s postal code with the second-highest concentration of sex-crime felons lies just west of the first, ZIP code 32209. About 340 registered predators and offenders live within the adjacent postal boundaries.

BY THE RULES

Most registered sex offenders and predators do not usually cause problems, said Sgt. Scott Moreland, who runs the special victims section of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office that supervises sex predators and offenders.

In Davidson’s case, he once went beyond his requirements when he notified the state of a change of address to a motel where he stayed one night before moving back to Middleburg, Moreland said.

Davidson’s past includes convictions in molestation cases involving two young girls in 2004 and 2005 and an attack on a pregnant woman in 2010. He was released from prison in September.

Now the 34-year-old is charged with the death of acquaintance Roseann Welsh and of abducting and sexually assaulting a child. His ankle-bracelet monitor was found at the homicide scene.

Moreland said Clay does not have county residency ordinances regarding sex-crime felons but follows state registration requirements.

Housing restrictions on predators and offenders at the state level are imposed according to their crimes, said spokeswoman Samantha Andrews of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Some communities have residential boundary ordinances in addition to the state’s sanctions, she said.

If the victim is younger than 16, then a person convicted of crimes including sexual battery, lewd and lascivious offenses, or viewing child pornography cannot live within 1,000 feet of schools and other places where children gather, according to state law.

Duval, Nassau and Baker counties extend that limit to 2,500 feet through local ordinances.

The state and local rules do create exceptions related to when the crimes were committed and when the offender established residency.

In Northeast Florida, St. Johns and Putnam counties do not have local ordinances.

Those convicted of sex crimes can be classified as offenders or, for more grievous crimes, as predators.

In Florida, sex offenders are those convicted of a sex offense involving a minor and include child pornography, sexual performance by a child and procuring a child for prostitution.

Predators include those convicted of a more serious, higher-degree felony such as raping a child or multiple offenses. They are designated a predator by the court.

Florida sex-crime laws require lifetime registrations, which also can become roadblocks to employment and housing.

Criminologists said laws designed to keep children safe can push predators and other sex offenders into knots within communities.

Door-to-door notifications by law enforcement personnel to surrounding neighbors when a predator moves in as well as a detective’s visit to the predator at least four times a year are required under the state law.

“It actually gives the community a little bit of education as to who is around them,” Moreland said.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

While Jennifer Klein, now assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Texas at Tyler, was at the University of Florida, she studied the impacts of sex-offender status on offenders.

She said the laws often have unintended consequences.

In studies of female offenders, she found they lost jobs and housing and were subjected to harassment. Male offenders had similar experiences, she said.

If offenders and predators are lumped together, the percentage who will reoffend is about 7 percent to 15 percent, Klein said.

Job and housing applications often ask if the applicant is a felon.

“It’s hard enough to get a job as a convicted felon,” she said. “Sex offenders, it’s a double whammy.”

Restrictions on sex offenders are somewhat less stringent than on sex predators, but both tend to be grouped under the same legal umbrella, she said.

The only jobs most can get are low-paying ones that restrict where they can afford to live, she said.

“Either they are going to more rural areas or they are going to low-rent areas because that is all they can afford,” she said.

Landlords, she found, often charge higher rents because the renter is considered a liability.

Like many predators and offenders, Davidson lived far from affluent communities.

The day he was arrested, a horse stood next to the mobile home where he lived on a lot surrounded by trees. Welsh’s mobile home was an 11-minute drive away at the end of a long driveway at the intersection of two dirt roads.

Within a mile of where Davidson lived on Canvassback Road are four other sex offenders and one other predator. Fifty offenders, including 12 predators, live within three miles, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The ZIP code has the highest number of sex-crime felons in the county.

There are other clusters in outlying parts of Clay, said Moreland, including areas around Green Cove Springs and Keystone Heights.

“It just seems to progress a little farther out,” he said.

BLURRED IN THE PUBLIC EYE

Derek Logue, 38, a Cincinnati sex offender and founder of the Once Fallen Internet site that advocates for changes in sex-offender registry guidelines, said rules regulating where offenders cannot live are particularly problematic in cities.

“You look at a map, there is a school here and park there if you live in an urban area,” he said. “And if you do live in an urban area, it is typically going to be a slum or a high-crime area.”

Logue has been out of prison since 2003 after serving about three years. He was charged with sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl, according to Alabama sex offender records.

He moved to Ohio and he said he has difficulty finding jobs and housing and now lives on disability.

Society and lawmakers have painted sex offenders and predators with the same brush with laws intended to protect children, he said.

Predators, who are the real targets, may be the least affected, Logue said. “They don’t have to live under this,” he said. “They are going to be in prison for the rest of their lives or be executed.”

Ron Akers, a University of Florida professor emeritus whose expertise in criminological theory included studies of violent crime and deviance, said the differences between predators and offenders becomes blurred in the public eye.

When lawmakers write sex-crime legislation, their thinking is to throw a wide net so not to miss any potential problem groups. They want to avoid excluding someone who should be punished, he said.

“You get a kind of definition creep,” he said. “It starts including people who are not nice people, who may have done something inappropriate, but are they a danger to society?”

Akers said while recidivism rates among the broad population of offenders and predators is low, as the spotlight narrows onto the most violent, the likelihood of those offenders committing more crimes grows. And he said there is no way to measure crimes that occurred but were not reported.

A perception has evolved that sex-crime felons are driven by compulsion and highly likely to reoffend once out of prison, Akers said.

“So once they get out, you put controls on them,” he said.

In a ramshackle two-story house residents and the state call The White House on Jacksonville’s Stockton Street, Paul Grisham, 58, lives with six other sex offenders who each pay $750 a month to rent a private room or $530 a month to share a room with another renter, they said. One sleeps on the living-room couch.

Grisham pleaded guilty in 2005 to possession of child pornography after his arrest on child-performance charges, a third-degree felony.

According to his arrest report, police following a tip found computer disks at Grisham’s apartment that included videos of naked girls and images detectives deemed pornographic. While police in the report said it could not be definitely determined the girls were younger than 18, Grisham was charged based on what he and witnesses told detectives about the girls’ ages.

It is the only sex charge in his court file.

“We’re like the lepers of biblical times,” said Grisham, who has lived at the house for nine years.

After the arrest, he lost his job doing flooring for a Jacksonville company, then a hardware store job and then one at a mom-and-pop gas station.

He cannot work or live anywhere near where children may be, he said.

“If a child walks up to a bus stop, I walk away,” he said. “That’s the fear you live in. You have to.”

Moving away would be difficult. Apartment complexes often have playgrounds, which is a restriction.

Offenders need to be classified in more than two gradations, Grisham said.

“There needs to be different levels of offenders,” he said.

What he needed, he said, was treatment for pornography addiction.

HIGH-PROFILE CASES TOUGHEN LAWS

This year state legislators unanimously passed laws to punish sex offenders following the rape and murder of Cherish Perrywinkle, the 8-year-old Jacksonville girl who was abducted from a Wal-Mart and whose body was found the next morning.

The man charged in the case, Donald James Smith, 58, was a registered offender who lived with his mother in a Jacksonville neighborhood with a low number of predators and offenders.

Cherish’s case and a finding by the Sun Sentinel in South Florida that some predators slipped through loopholes and were committing crimes after release from a treatment facility drove lawmakers to pass laws increasing penalties in some cases and adding information predators and offenders must report.

At the bill signing, then-Senate President Don Gaetz said the legislation sent a message that Florida is “scorched earth for all those seeking to harm our children.”

Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford said at the signing by Gov. Rick Scott that the laws were proof of the state’s commitment to keeping Florida’s children safe. ..Source.. by Dana Treen

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Local facility to house homeless sex offenders

12-17-2014 Ohio:

MANSFIELD – The Richland County Community Corrections Board approved a change Wednesday to admit some homeless county sex offenders to a local facility.

Nothing Into Something Real Estate is a faith-based nonprofit agency with headquarters in Columbus. Representatives from the group proposed two changes at Wednesday’s meeting.

One change would expand the eligibility for the exit program, now located on East Cook Road, to admit some homeless Richland County sex offenders who committed their crimes locally.

Target populations include homeless sex offenders convicted of failure to register and those who have completed Volunteers of America sex offender treatment.

No sex offenders will be accepted from other counties. The program will provide housing and monitoring, with treatment to be referred to existing local agencies.

The measure passed unanimously.

“It’s hard to keep track of a guy who has no residence,” Common Pleas Judge Brent Robinson said.

Robinson said Judge James DeWeese, who was ill Wednesday, drafted the language.

The other change would be to establish a homeless women’s program in the county, located in two of the houses of the old Crossroads halfway house. The program would initially house up to 15 women who are convicted in and reside in the county.

In other notes from the meeting, Mansfield Safety-Service Director Lori Cope said vehicle thefts in the city have gone up “astronomically.” Such thefts are up 133 percent this year.

Prosecutor Bambi Couch Page offered a reason.

“We have a theft ring that is going on in three counties,” she said. “They’re stealing cars and chopping them.”

After the meeting, Couch Page declined to divulge the other two counties.

In his update, Commissioner Tim Wert asked sheriff’s Maj. Joe Masi about the possibility of deputies wearing body cameras “due to things that are going on nationwide.”

“We’re checking with three different companies; Mansfield police are doing the same thing,” Masi said. “It does come with a hefty price tag. For everyone to have a camera, it would probably be $40,000 to $50,000.” ..Source.. by Mark Caudill

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Parks Board decision on restricting sex offenders pushed back

12-15-2014 Indiana:

Enforcement remains a concern for several Vigo County Park Board members, as the board on Monday continued its discussion of whether or not people listed on the state’s sex offender registry should be banned from visiting county parks.

County Attorney Michael Wright told the board that the Indiana Supreme Court overturned an ordinance in Jeffersonville, found unconstitutional as it violated an individual’s rights who had been removed from the sex offender list. Some offenses require a person to be on the list only for 10 years, while other offenses place a person on the list for a lifetime.

The state supreme court upheld an ordinance adopted in Plainfield as it determined that visiting a park system is not a fundamental right protected under the state constitution or the U.S. constitution. That ordinance has a clause allowing people removed from the list to visit parks.

“Based on that, you can safely say if you enact an ordinance that has a certain level of protection in it, for cases as applied that are unconstitutional, then you are probably in a pretty defensible position from a litigation perspective,” Wright said.

However, Wright told the board that outside of Indiana, other states have not enacted such restrictive ordinances, instead considering “parks by nature are better when open.”

“I think that other jurisdictions outside the state of Indiana are probably looking at it from a common sense perspective and saying, ‘We are not really sure this is how we want to go,’” Wright told the board.

Indiana law does not prohibit those on the sex offender registry from visiting public parks, and Indiana state parks do not have a policy restricting sex offenders from entering parks.

Peggy Harlan, who is president of the board, along with board members Matt Schalburg and Jim Luzar questioned how the parks department could effectively enforce a county ordinance. Luzar said every person entering any of the county parks would have to be checked against sex offender lists and would delay access to the parks. The parks department does not have the manpower for such checks, Parks Superintendent Kara Kish told the board.

Luzar suggested instead of a blanket policy, the board consider focusing just on camping, as the parks department already has an application process. ..Source.. by Howard Greninger Tribune-Star

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

R.I. prison system lacks resources to care for mentally ill inmates

12-15-2014 Rhode Island:

CRANSTON — To reach D-mod, a specialized unit at the High Security Center of the Adult Correctional Institutions, you must pass through a series of steel doors manned by guards inside fortified control booths. You must be escorted by at least one correctional officer — on this day, William Galligan, a lieutenant. Louis A. Cerbo, the Department of Corrections’ clinical director, joins him on a tour.

Each of D-mod’s 12 cells holds a single prisoner. Each cell has cinder-block walls, a high ceiling, one fluorescent light, a camera, a tiny window facing outside, a larger window facing in, and a bunk and steel toilet/sink fixture, both bolted to the concrete floor. The metal mirror, warped by age, distorts your reflection. The total floor space of each cell is 76 square feet. There are no radios, televisions, or computers. It is eerily quiet, except when someone is in crisis.

A small number of D-mod inmates, diagnosed with severe mental illness, spend most of their days alone in these cells.

During the hour or sometimes more that they are out, they take outdoor “recreation” in steel cages, watch a group TV, visit the library or classroom, or receive counseling and related services. When they shower, liquid soap is poured into their palms, since a bar could be used to attempt self-asphyxiation, or, wrapped and swung in a towel, used as a weapon.

These men on D-mod, home of the Observation and Stabilization Unit, are among the sickest people at the ACI.

Galligan says their care has improved since Cerbo was hired in late 2011: correctional officers have undergone training and they belong to mental-health teams created by the clinical director. Galligan says his job these days includes what he calls “a social-worker aspect.”

“We don’t throw them in a cell and forget them,” he says. “We try to make it a little bit better, rather than exacerbate the situation. We get them medicated, we get them compliant, we get them stabilized.”

“We work together,” Cerbo says. “We have to understand their perspective and they have to understand ours.”

The same approach, says Cerbo, is used elsewhere at the ACI, including in High Security’s other modules. According to department spokeswoman Susan Lamkins, 17 of High Security’s 94 inmates, as of last Monday, were classified as “high risk” — men diagnosed with schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and other severe disorders who have exhibited unruly, self-injurious or suicidal behaviors. Another 31 were classified as “moderate to low-risk mentally ill offenders.”

Treatment teams include doctors, social workers, and education and discharge-planning specialists, according to Cerbo. ..Continued.. by G. WAYNE MILLER, JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

‘Bang, Bang:’ Sex Offender Devon Naeem Davis Gets Two Extra Years In Prison For Insensitive Comment, Justice?

12-15-2014 Oregon:

One sex offender has definitely learned the consequences that words can carry. According to CBS News, Devon Naeem Davis recently received an additional two years behind bars for an insensitive remark he made at the time of his sentencing back in May.

On that particular day, he appeared in a Washington County Circuit Court room where he was sentenced to four years in prison for indecent exposure and second-degree assault against a pre-teen girl. Following the sentencing, the man reportedly turned to the mother of the victim and said, “bang, bang.” The shocking comment caused the judge to ask him to repeat what he’d said. Although he stated that he said, “dang, dang” the judge reportedly refused to believe his claim.

So on Thursday, December 11, Davis appeared before Circuit Judge Viki M. Pauler where he reportedly plead guilty to retaliation against a witness. Needless to say, Judge Pauler had no reservation about expressing her disdain for Davis’ careless comments.

According to Herald Mail Media, here’s a brief exchange of the conversation that took place on Thursday between Judge Pauler and Assistant Public Defender Thomas Tamm:

“That is not believable,” Wright said. “Mr. Davis, this disturbs me greatly and lying about it doesn’t help.”

“This court doesn’t take very kindly to threatening witnesses,” Pauler said Thursday before imposing the sentence.

“Mr. Davis had a very dysfunctional family life,” Tamm said. “Now that he has served some time in prison, he wants to get on with his life,” Tamm said.

Davis reportedly received an additional two years in prison for his actions. Do you think the punishment first the crime? Share your thoughts. ..Source.. ...

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Corrections Officials Revise Policies to Release More Violent, Sex Offenders

12-13-2014 Oklahoma:

Pushing to reduce prison overcrowding, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has quietly changed its policies to give early releases to greater numbers of violent and sex offenders, according to agency documents obtained by Oklahoma Watch.

The department is doing so by relaxing policies that determine which types of inmates can receive early-release credits, when those credits can be given, and how many credits offenders can receive, corrections department records show.

Previously, for example, inmates convicted of violent or sex crimes, such as murder, robbery, or rape, who lost early-release credits because of “misconducts” in prison were not eligible for restored credits. They are eligible now.

These types of inmates are among the more than 1,500 offenders, convicted of violent or non-violent crimes, that the department has released since March using restored credits.

At least dozens of those prisoners have since been arrested for other crimes, including murder, bank robbery and sexual assault, according to a check of court and county-jail records in a sampling of counties. One prisoner charged with bank robbery in June had been denied parole twice, in 2012 and 2013.

Some law enforcement officials say the stepped-up early releases are putting public safety at risk, but corrections officials maintain that’s not the case.

Officials have said publicly that accelerated releases of inmates through restored credits did not represent a policy change, only a more efficient use of existing policy. But Oklahoma Watch’s review of copies of department memos and a comparison of old and new policies show the agency granted exceptions to policies, then revised the policies, to enable the early releases. The DOC has revised its policies on restored credits four times this year.

Department memos and other records show the Corrections Department made other key changes to increase releases of inmates:

• The agency doubled the maximum number of certain early-release credits that can be earned by or restored to inmates.

• The DOC altered a policy to allow credits to be earned for inmates serving “split life sentences,” which typically require inmates to spend 20 to 30 years in prison and the rest of their life on probation. The change was retroactive, meaning credits were awarded going back to the first day of incarceration. One sex offender was given 12 years worth of credits and released on Dec. 10.

• The department reversed a policy that banned restoration of credits to inmates who are in a punishment period following a misconduct in prison. Now inmates can regain credits within those periods -- six months to two years, depending on the infraction -- and be released early. That includes inmates with violations for escape, assaulting a staff member, rioting or possessing a weapon.

• Officials decided that a state law banning inmates convicted of drug trafficking from getting credits does not apply to those convicted of aggravated drug trafficking, a worse crime. Aggravated means an additional factor was involved, such as a large amount of drugs – 1,000 pounds vs. 25 pounds of marijuana, for example -- or a prior criminal record.

The changes were part of an effort to reduce overcrowding in prisons. In August, two-thirds of prisons were officially over capacity, in part because about 3,000 state inmates had been moved from county jails into prisons. Prisons also were full because efforts to reduce incarceration, such as a Justice Reinvestment Initiative offering alternative treatment for nonviolent offenders, had stalled, advocates of the initiative said.

Speedy Exits

Department records reveal a sense of urgency to get inmates out of prison.

A March 10 memo sent by Ed Evans, associate corrections director, to all facility heads had an attachment saying registration paperwork for sex and violent offenders whose credits were restored must be “completed immediately and forwarded to the Sex Offender Registration Unit so that their release is delayed no longer than necessary.

“Due to the short notice, staff will need to assist the offenders in contacting family and/or friends to arrange their transportation home,” the attachment said.

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said he’s concerned that accelerated releases are causing a danger to the public.

“I think what you’re going to see within a year, maybe less, is a spike in crime by the offenders released to the street,” said Prater. “They’ve shown they can’t behave behind the walls. They’re certainly not going to behave on the outside without supervision.”

Corrections Director Robert Patton maintained the releases are not a threat to public safety. The department is simply fulfilling the law for early-release credits approved by the legislature, he said.

“Am I going to tell you that everyone I release will never come back to prison again? Of course not,” Patton said. “But what I can tell you is that the only way the system can be effective is if there’s a way to earn (early-release credits) back.” It is a “carrot and stick” approach, he said.

Gov. Mary Fallin told Oklahoma Watch, “There has to be a fine balance between having the system and protecting the public … If there’s an incentive for an inmate to behave because they have the opportunity to earn good time credits, that certainly helps correctional officers and employees with those inmates.”

Easing a ‘Jail Backup’

When Patton took over the director’s job on Feb. 18, the backup of state inmates in jails was already a serious concern.

County jail officials were criticizing the state’s low reimbursement rate for housing state inmates and slow response in picking them up.

Minutes from a November 2013 Board of Corrections meeting show staff and board members were looking at the problem. Terri Watkins, director of DOC communications, said Patton immediately began working on the issue and meeting with law enforcement officials.

Prater said that shortly before taking over as director, Patton visited with him and others at the District Attorneys Council meeting and talked about using restored-credits to step up releases.

“Patton told us they were going to be very careful about who they released and would use evidence-based assessments of who they released,” Prater said. “I don’t believe that’s occurred.”

Patton has said the department initially believed the jail backup was about 1,900 prisoners, but the number turned out to be closer to 3,000.

At a corrections board meeting on April 3, Laura Pitman, division manager for field support, said that restoring early-release credits to shrink the prison population was the first phase of emptying the jails, board minutes show. Beginning March 10, offenders who had lost credits because of violations “were reviewed for possible restoration of those lost credits if the return resulted in an immediate discharge,” she said.

Between March 10 and March 28, the prison system released 436 prisoners using restored credits, the April 3 minutes show.

In October, Patton told a legislative panel that removing inmates from the jails had saved at least $11 million. However, “it’s much more than about the dollar figure – it’s preparing inmates for release into society,” Patton told legislators, referring to lack of rehabilitative programs in jails. “It is my responsibility, to the best of my ability and within my budget, to prepare offenders for release. That’s what correctional systems are about.”

Relaxing Restrictions

Most inmates can earn early-release credits. There are two basic types: credits for just being incarcerated, and “achievement credits” for good behavior or participating in prison programs, such as education and substance-abuse treatment. Each credit represents one day of early release. Some prisoners accumulate hundreds or thousands of credits.

The credits are used as an incentive for inmates to behave well and to seek rehabilitation as well a way for prison officers to control the inmate population.

When state inmates break rules or laws in prison or in a county jail, they can lose credits. Credits can be restored, with restrictions.

Corrections Department memos and policy records obtained by Oklahoma Watch document the loosening of restrictions for earning and restoring credits.

In July, for example, the department made a policy change that eliminated the maximum number of early-release days – 365 – that could be restored to an inmate. The maximum became unlimited. As a result, some prisoners released earlier this year had thousands of credits restored to them. In November, the department reinstated a cap, at 730 days.

The only inmates ineligible to have credits restored are those with active misconducts in prison – meaning the violation occurred within the previous six months to two years - that would also likely lead to criminal charges: killing another person, participating in an act that killed another person, or rape/forced sex.

The department also doubled the number of achievement credits that can be earned in some programs, such as halfway-house work release. It doubled the number of credits awarded for continued good behavior, too, from 30 to 60 for four months without a misconduct.

Another change involved inmates serving time for “85 percent” crimes – violent, drug or sex crimes requiring that at least 85 percent of sentences be served. Those offenders generally cannot receive early-release credits until after they have reached the 85 percent mark.

Under old policies, such inmates who violated rules in prison and lost their credits could not have any credits restored. The new policy allows for restoring credits if the inmate meets certain requirements related to time left on the sentence and the nature of their crime and misconduct, a copy of the new policy shows.

Prisoners with split-life sentences used to be lumped in with those serving life imprisonment sentences and thus were not eligible to earn credits. However, a tally of the credits was still kept in case their sentence was modified. The new corrections policy retroactively applies all of the credits.

An example is a 58-year-old sex offender, Ricky D. Smothers, who had 4,444 credits, or more than 12 years, awarded to him this month because of the policy changes, according to department records.

In September 1997, a Lincoln County judge sentenced Smothers to life in prison with all but 30 years suspended after the offender pleaded guilty to raping and molesting his 4-year-old, mentally disabled stepdaughter near Chandler. The crime was covered by the news media.

Smothers had very few misconduct violations in prison and, after serving 17 years, was released on Dec. 10 under probation, records show.

Another early release, first reported by The Oklahoman, involved Antonio Ray Mason, who in 1994 was sentenced to 35 years in prison for second-degree murder. Mason shot another man with a pistol during a robbery. During his time in prison, Mason committed 25 misconducts, 10 of which were major, “Class-X” misconducts ranging from possession of a cell phone to committing battery on a staff member without injury, department records show.

In August, Mason was given eight and a half years of restored early-release credits and released.

Other prisoners released through restored credits have since been accused of new crimes, according to a sampling of court and jail-roster records checked by Oklahoma Watch in Comanche, Garfield, Grady, Okmulgee, Osage, Roger and Tulsa counties. Thirty-eight accused re-offenders were found.

Aaron J. Rock, 24, was released in April after serving three years of a seven-year sentence for drug, weapons and robbery charges. Rock’s application for parole had been denied by Gov. Fallin in 2012 and by the Pardon and Parole Board in 2013. In October, he pleaded guilty in federal court to a June 14 bank robbery in Sand Springs.

John M. Hensley, 27, was released from prison in April after serving four years of a six-year sentence for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. In October, he was arrested in Ardmore and charged with attempted rape and various aggravated assault counts.

In April, 30-year-old Desmond La’don Campbell, serving time for attempted kidnapping, exited prison after receiving 362 restored credits, as first reported by the Tulsa World. Corrections records show he had lost the credits for possessing a cellphone or its paraphernalia or posting to a computer site, considered a major violation because of some prisoners’ use of cellphones to coordinate gang activity. His credits were restored under an exception to the restored-credits policy. He was later suspected in at least seven rapes across Tulsa in June. He died on July 8 after a single-car crash on June 29.

There is insufficient data to determine whether the recidivism rate is higher for inmates released so far this year through restored credits than for all inmates released from the prison system. The department says 21 percent of offenders released in fiscal year 2010 returned to the system by the end of fiscal 2013.

It’s also not clear how many inmates have been given an early release under each policy change. The corrections department provided to Oklahoma Watch a list of 1,497 inmates released from prison because of restored credits from March through September but provided no details about each inmate’s credits or misconducts. About 12 percent of the offenders had names common for females; about 10 percent of Oklahoma’s inmate population are women.

Reports of Light Punishment

Sean Wallace, director of a correctional workers group, and some corrections department employees say besides the early releases, corrections officers are being told in many cases not to report offenders or take away early-release credits for misconducts.

“There’s all this pressure on them not to write people up,” said Wallace, who heads Oklahoma Corrections Professionals. “…Even if they do pull the trigger and write someone up, it’s often waived by their superiors.”

Wallace said the policy changes increase the danger level in prisons already facing staffing shortages and make it hard for officers to maintain control.

“I think everybody already feels they’re in a precarious position,” Wallace said.

Watkins, corrections department spokeswoman, said she knows of no directives to staff members to not discipline, or not deny restoring credits to, inmates who commit violations in prisons. She also said early releases are not causing correctional staff to lose control of the prison population.

“I believe the director talked to staff, talked to wardens, talked to facilities and asked to be informed if it was creating any problems,” Watkins said. “I understand (Oklahoma Corrections Professionals) has said there’s been concerns, but I am not aware of any that have been directed to us.”

Sequoyah County Sheriff Ron Lockhart said his office contacted the Corrections Department in late November after a state prisoner being held in the jail to attend a court hearing attacked another jail inmate. Lockhart said his office requested that the prisoner be given a misconduct and have early-release credits taken away as punishment.

“They said, ‘We can’t take his (early-release credits) away. We might be able to re-classify him, but thanks for calling,’” Lockhart said.

The Sequoyah County jail population is higher now than it was before the department pulled state prisoners from the jail, Lockhart said. Offenders released from prison are showing back up in the jails charged with new crimes.

“It’s basically those who are getting let out early and re-offending,” Lockhart said. “Our jail has been near capacity since the DOC started this.”

Prater, the district attorney, said probation and parole officers also are being discouraged from reporting some offenders who violate release conditions to district attorneys.

He said he believes the early-release efforts are circumventing the authority of the Pardon and Parole Board and the parole process. The parole board’s role is to screen inmates for release under parole supervision; inmates released through restored credits won’t have the need to apply for parole.

Some public officials expressed concern about the releases.

Rep. Bobby Cleveland, R-Slaughterville, said some legislators want to repeal the law allowing prisoners to have early-release credits restored.

“I think the law’s good. You’ve just got to really be careful,” Cleveland said. “I wouldn’t be in favor of it (repeal), but some people are.”

“They were letting out some people they shouldn’t have let out,” Cleveland said.

Asked about the possibility of new legislation, Gov. Fallin said, “If the legislature wants to have a discussion and look at how our current earned credit system works, I think that’s certainly a reasonable conversation we can have … The end goal is to keep the public safe.” ..Source.. by Clifton Adcock

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Pasco commissioner seeks new housing restrictions for sex offenders

12-10-2014 Florida:

WESLEY CHAPEL — Pasco Commissioner Mike Moore wants to make it more difficult for registered sex offenders to live in Pasco County.

Moore announced Monday he would seek a local ordinance prohibiting convicted sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools, school bus stops, playgrounds, day care centers, libraries, nursing homes or assisted living facilities. State law now sets that distance at 1,000 feet and applies it only to schools, playgrounds and day care centers.

If approved by the full commission, the ordinance would restrict newly released offenders, but it would exclude the 871 registered sexual offenders now residing in the county.

"This is not going to be a safe haven for sexual offenders,'' Moore said.

His proposal is modeled after an ordinance in Miami-Dade County that is subject to a federal court challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union. Moore's proposal also comes less than two weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that some communities are retreating from these housing buffers because they are ineffective or make it more difficult for authorities to track offenders. Palm Beach County, for instance, relaxed its housing restrictions in July after being sued by a registered sexual offender who said the ordinance left him homeless.

"We can't be scared of lawsuits when we propose an ordinance,'' Moore said.

He acknowledged that including school bus stops eliminates substantial housing options for the offenders. The Pasco County School District has 4,400 locations for its bus stops, most of which are at least 2 miles from one of 76 school campuses.

Moore announced his plan at the Pasco Sheriff's Office substation in the Shops at Wiregrass mall. He was joined by Sheriff Chris Nocco and two detectives from the sheriff's sex offender unit.

"There's people that will question this,'' Nocco said, "but as a society we have to decide what's more important — our children or sex offenders and sexual predators?''

Moore said he would propose the ordinance during the commission's Dec. 16 meeting and hoped a vote could be scheduled in January. In Pasco County, the city of New Port Richey has a 2,500-foot buffer for sex offenders, and the city of San Antonio uses 1,500 feet. ..Source.. by CT Bowen

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Georgia cops dump sex offender in nearby county

12-10-2014 Georgia:

ATHENS, GA. -- A homeless man was turned away from one Athens shelter because he was a convicted sex offender and another because it had no room, police said.

As a result Monday, Athens-Clarke County police drove 51-year-old Ronald Dwayne Roebuck back to Walton County from where he’d come earlier in the day.

Athens authorities said Monroe police had driven Roebuck to the Salvation Army shelter on Hawthorne Avenue, pointed him toward the door and quickly drove off.

The Salvation Army would not accept Roebuck because he was a registered sex offender, police said. ...

The Salvation Army suggested to Roebuck that he try the Bigger Vision shelter on North Avenue, and when he called there he was told the shelter had no room for him, according to police.

Roebuck later called local police for advice.

An Athens-Clarke officer met him at a bar on Prince Avenue, according to an Athens-Clarke County police incident report. The report indicated that Monroe police were contacted and informed of Roebuck’s situation and that he needed to return to the county where he is registered as a sex offender.

Monroe police refused to return to Athens to get the man, nor would they agree to meet at a location in Oconee County, about halfway between Athens-Clarke and Walton counties, according to the report.

The Athens-Clarke officer then gave Roebuck a courtesy ride to Walton County and dropped him off at a service station in Monroe. ..Source.. by Joe Johnson

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Iowa’s going to have smartphone driver’s licenses

Think of the issues this would raise, especially giving a smartphone to a cop in a traffic stop so he can check it out in his vehicle! And for RSOs wow...anything possible. Then if a smartphone is lost? UPDATE: Some issues answered in this article: "Iowa wants to make driver's license apps for smartphones...

12-10-2014 Iowa:

The Iowa Department of Transportation said it plans to pilot a smartphone driver’s license program that could one day make plastic licenses a thing of the past.

“It’s really moving beyond a static thing,” said Mark Lowe, director of the Iowa Department of Transportation Motor Vehicles Division, in an interview with The Washington Post.

The concept is to not only host the license in an app, but to also be able to send push notifications about, say, traffic, or if a user’s license is about to expire, Lowe said. He said he is “not aware” of any other state that has a similar program.

A group of state employees that travels frequently for work will pilot the program in the next six months, and the department of transportation will determine the next steps for wider use, including giving Iowans the option to try to the smartphone license while waiting for their plastic version to arrive in the mail.

“I think for us right now, what we want to focus on is the option,” Lowe said.

The state will also have to educate officers, those who sell alcohol and tobacco, and the TSA to ensure that the licenses are recognized, but Lowe thinks digital licenses are the way of the future. People “really expect to use those mobile devices,” he said.

Iowa is one of more than 30 states that lets drivers show proof of insurance on their phone, according to the Des Moines Register. ..Source.. by Hunter Schwarz

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Roane County commission to vote on fee for sex offenders for notification system

Of course using the FREE national notification system is not an option..wonder why?

12-9-2014 Alabama:

Roane County Sheriff Jack Stockton said he's concerned about sex offenders living in the county and wants a system put in place to notify residents when a registered sex offender moves nearby.

Roane County commissioners will vote Monday evening on a resolution on whether to allow the sheriff's office to start collecting a $50 yearly fee from each registered sex offender in the county to pay for a notification system.

According to the resolution, certain homes, childcare facilities and schools would be contacted if a sex offender moves close by.

"It's good to know who they are and where they live," Kingston resident Adrienne Schaffer said.

Schaffer has two daughters ages 3 and 6 and said she believes a notification system would provide an added safeguard for her children.

"It's good to know where they live especially so you can avoid their houses for trick-or-treating and especially if they're in your neighborhood you can just be mindful if your children are out playing by themselves," Schaffer said.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation already has an online registry available that allows you to search by name or address.

According to the TBI website, 93 sex offenders live in Roane County.

Stockton said the number of sex offenders in Roane County has increased around 25 percent since 2006 and believes the notification system will allow parents to keep better track of sex offenders.

"We would notify the public either by email or either by flyers that we put out in that neighborhood notifying the people that there is a sexual offender living in their community," Stockton said. ..Source.. by SAMANTHA MANNING

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Unregistered sex offenders displayed on billboards in Marion County

This makes no sense at all, statistically these folks are not committing crimes. And murderers are not so treated. Which is more important to the safety of society? Idiots make these decisions and they somehow get elected..

UPDATE: Sex offender billboard campaign includes two deceased men They cannot get anything right...

12-8-2014 Indiana:

Authorities are taking a new approach to get unregistered sex offenders off the streets of Marion County.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Marshals Service and Crime Stoppers are collaborating to get the 40 most violent, unregistered sex offenders behind bars.

For the first time, authorities are using billboards as a way to advertise those unregistered sex offenders. They hope the general public will provide tips.

"We've put together this poster and this program to try and bring them in compliance. That's what we all want -- them in compliance -- but now they're wanted and now we need to get 'em off the street," director of Crime Stoppers Steve Dubois said.

An electronic billboard on Fall Creek Parkway displayed mug shots of unregistered sex offenders Monday morning.

"We want those neighbors to say, 'Hey that's John Doe, he takes his trash out every Tuesday, I see him over there,' and it turns out John Doe is one of the wanted sex offenders," Marion County sheriff’s deputy Brad Allen said.

In addition to the electronic billboard by the Indiana State Fairgrounds, two other static billboards will go up at Interstate 65 and North Lafayette Road and at the corner of Washington Street and Highland Avenue.

The billboards will be up for the next month. ..Source.. by Drew Smith

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Sex Crimes on Campus: Professors as Judges

See Also: Rolling Stone's University Rape Story Unravels Thanks To Source

12-6-2014 National:

The folly of letting amateurs handle serious crimes

THE uproar about sexual assaults on American college campuses is growing louder. Barack Obama has called them “an affront to our basic humanity”. Several universities—including Johns Hopkins, San Diego State, Emory, MIT, Clemson and the University of Virginia—have shut down or suspended parties at their fraternities in recent months. This week Wesleyan University in Connecticut banned a fraternity from holding social events for a year following two allegations of assaults at booze-fuelled revels. Meanwhile, 90 schools in 35 states are under investigation by the federal Department of Education for mishandling cases of sexual violence.

Rape and sexual assault in America have declined sharply since the mid-1990s, to 1.1 per 1,000 women per year (see chart). And students are no more likely to be assaulted than non-students of the same age, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (though its numbers are somewhat out of date). Yet activists insist that American campuses—and especially fraternities—nurture a “rape culture”.

They often cite an estimate that one woman in five will be sexually assaulted during her time in college, which comes from a report prepared for the Justice Department in 2007. Skeptics doubt this estimate, noting that it was based on a small sample (an online survey of two universities) and used a broad definition of sexual assault, which included everything from rape to any kind of “unwanted sexual contact”, as well as any encounter where one party was too intoxicated by alcohol or drugs to give informed consent.

Reports of horrific individual cases have brought extra attention to the issue. Rolling Stone recently published an account of an alleged gang-rape at the University of Virginia, where a student says she was attacked by seven men while lying on shards of a broken glass-topped table. The magazine appears not to have interviewed the (un-named) alleged perpetrators, so it is unclear how they respond to the charges*.
In 2011 the Department of Education sent colleges a letter warning that if they did not take steps to curtail sexual violence, they could be in violation of Title IX, a federal anti-discrimination law. It urged schools to set up committees to adjudicate complaints of sexual wrongdoing, even of heinous crimes such as rape. These committees often consist of untrained professors, administrators and students. The director of a campus bookstore served on a judgment panel for one college last year.

Under this system, defendants and victims have no right to legal counsel and no opportunity to cross-examine witnesses. Colleges typically determine guilt based on the civil “preponderance of the evidence” standard, meaning it is more likely than not that the perpetrator committed the crime, rather than the far tougher “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, which is used in criminal courts. Panels cannot jail wrongdoers, but they can expel them.

Students on both sides of the fence have complained that these amateur tribunals are inept. A lawsuit this year alleged that Columbia University unfairly allowed perpetrators to remain on campus. Meanwhile male students at Vassar, Duke, and the University of Michigan have sued their schools, claiming that campus committees found them guilty of sexual misconduct when they were innocent. At Harvard 28 law professors recently criticised the university’s new sexual-assault procedures as lacking “the most basic elements of fairness and due process”.

Critics of the system argue that crimes should be dealt with by the police and the courts. In colleges as in the wider world, most rape victims never report the attack to the police. Studies suggest that the vast majority of campus assaults are committed by a small fraction of college men who tend to rape over and over again. So campuses would be safer if these habitual offenders were swiftly identified and arrested, rather than just expelled—leaving them free to go to another college and rape again.

Other critics think that colleges—and the government—should regulate alcohol more realistically. Binge-drinking is common on campuses, and cited in many complaints of sexual transgressions. But because students under 21 have no legal way to obtain alcohol, they tend to party in places where there is no adult supervision nearby, such as in fraternity houses, which are not technically part of the university. The head of the University of Virginia notes that students at frat parties often have no idea how strong their drinks are. (At some parties, the hosts mix everything up in a trash can.)

The lack of adult supervision has had dire consequences: men in fraternities are three times more likely to rape than other men on campus, according to John Foubert of Oklahoma State University. If the drinking age were lowered, parties could be held on campus and colleges could supervise them better, critics say.

* On December 5th Will Dana, the managing editor of Rolling Stone, issued a note to readers saying that the gang rape story they published may have been inaccurate. ..Source.. by The Economist

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Former-state Rep. Keith Farnham pleads guilty to child porn

UPDATE: Keith Farnham now registered as sex offender

See Also: Ex-State Rep. Keith Farnham pleads guilty in child porn case

12-6-2014 Illinois:

Former state Rep. Keith Farnham faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison after pleading guilty Friday to online trading of thousands of images and videos of child pornography depicting victims as young as toddlers.

Federal prosecutors sought to take Farnham into custody after his guilty plea to a single count of distributing child porn. But U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang allowed him to remain confined at home on electronic monitors, citing serious health problems that include a terminal lung disease, bladder cancer and hepatitis.

Farnham, 67, must register Monday with federal authorities as a sex offender.

Farnham's attorney, Terry Ekl, said his client hopes to begin taking an experimental drug to treat his pulmonary fibrosis — a condition that causes lung tissue to scar — but still would need a lung transplant for any hope of long-term survival. He was scheduled to be sentenced March 19 and could face up to about 15 years in prison under federal guidelines.

"Without a lung transplant, it's likely he's going to die in the penitentiary," Elk told reporters in the courthouse lobby.

Farnham, an Elgin Democrat who resigned his seat in March days after federal agents seized computers from his state office and home, appeared in court with an oxygen tube hooked up to his nose. When the judge asked him what he did for a living, Farnham said quietly, "I was a state representative."

Ekl said he would seek the minimum five-year prison term for Farnham, a Navy veteran who ran an Elgin printing business before running for office in 2009.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Storino said that investigators found more than 2,750 images of child pornography on Farnham's computers as well as two graphic videos showing victims as young as 2 or 3.

According to Farnham's plea agreement, the pornography was found on computers and electronic storage devices that were seized from his state office, home and car. Authorities also linked a Yahoo email account used by Farnham to an online trading forum in which he chatted with other users about his sexual preferences, according to the charges.

"12 is about as old as i can handle," Farnham allegedly said in one online chat in November 2013, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in April. "i love them at 6 7 8."

In another chat, Farnham allegedly described in detail a sexual encounter he had with a 6-year-old girl, the complaint alleged.

Ekl said the encounter was fictional. While Farnham's "sickness" was disturbing, Ekl said, he "has never, never abused any child, never had any physical contact with a child."

As part of his home confinement, Farnham must to stay off the patio of his condominium because a young child lives nearby. Farnham's wife, Susan, also was ordered to keep her cellphone and computer password protected from Farnham, lock up her iPad and laptop when she's not home, and notify court officials if her husband tried to use any device that could potentially connect to the Internet. ..Source.. by Jason Meisner

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...