12-28-2009 Georgia:
In this economy finding a job is tough, and as a registered sex offender — it’s almost impossible.
The Rome News-Tribune featured Otto Jabar Orr’s predicament as a registered sex offender in October. Orr wants to work with-
in the system but is finding that increasingly difficult.
The Christmas season has been a keen reminder of his situation: no job equals no money, which in turn means no home and no ability to provide for his children.
Through the charity of others, he has a place to stay and some food, but for a 27 year-old able-bodied man who wants to work that situation can chafe.
“I’m still looking, but everything I’ve had I couldn’t do because the restrictions don’t let me work there,” Otto Orr said.
Right now he’s living with Roger Covington — president of a local prison ministry — and helping him work on cars to pay his way.
Orr’s current entanglement with the legal system began at age 18, when he pleaded guilty to a statutory rape charge filed against him when he was 17. Although the sex was consensual, the girl was underage.
Orr said he’s been clean and arrest-free for four years. He’s been trying to comply with his probation requirements and was working for some time before being laid off.
The article garnered some international attention, and two French journalists from Zone Interdite, a news show, flew in to interview Orr. The show concerns the sex offender registry in the U.S., said journalist Pierre Toury.
“We’re trying to understand how it works and who is on it,” Toury said.
“It is about the law and how it has been applied — and the consequences of people who are not really meant to be on it.”
Toury said they also traveled to Florida to interview those who, because of that state’s laws, are forced to live under a bridge.
“Lawmakers need to decide the difference between the rapers and the others,” Toury said. “It’s not the best thing for 50 percent on the registry.”
He said the documentary will air sometime in March on the station M6 in France. ..Source.. John Bailey
December 28, 2009
Update: offender plea garners attention
November 29, 2009
With no place to stay, he could go to prison
Winter is coming and folks would not want to see a repeat of last year, where Michigan's Tom Pauli froze to death because he did not have a place to stay due to residency laws.
11-29-2009 Georgia:
He’s a handy, articulate and well-dressed 27-year-old man. Friends say he’s a hard worker with his head on straight — the problem is Otto Jabar Orr is also listed as a sex offender.
The crux of the problem is Orr wants to work within the system, and while the restrictions placed upon him chafe, he’s willing to work. But with unemployment rates at more than 10 percent, jobs are scarce. For someone branded as a sex offender, they’re almost nonexistent.
No job equals no residence, and for Orr no residence equals going back to prison.
“I have to find a place by the end of this month,” Orr said. “But, right now it’s hard for me to find a place without a job.”
It’s not a matter of wishing to comply. It’s a matter of being able to comply with the stringent legal requirements in harsh economic circumstances.
“I did that for a long time. I had a job but then got laid off,” Orr said. “And now no one is hiring, especially me with a criminal record and all.”
There’s no halfway house, no homeless shelter, even the friends who would gladly take him in are bound by the legal restrictions of the registry.
He could remain at his current “temporary residence,” but it is within 1,000 feet of a church, a violation of his probation, and Roger Covington — president of a local prison ministry — agreed to let Orr live in his home, but he’s a convicted felon, and that kind of association is also a violation of his probation.
“It makes me upset. I’m trying, but the only thing that keeps me focused is God,” Orr said. “Sometimes I feel like giving up, but I feel like he won’t let me down, and I keep pushing myself every day.”
The 27-year-old said he’s been clean and arrest-free since 2005. Compliance with a job and a residence was difficult, but doable. The problem is after two years of working for a bakery, he was recently laid off.
Since then he’s been applying for jobs and hitting the pavement. But bad decisions made early in life don’t go away.
Changing times
No one is saying Orr is an angel. He’s been in and out of the courtroom — convicted of several other crimes such as drug possession, obstruction and theft by taking.
But his current entanglement with the legal system began at 18 when he pleaded guilty to a statutory rape charge filed against him when he was 17. Although the sex was consensual, the girl was underage.
When the prosecutor offered eight years of probation — he took it. At that time he didn’t have to register as a sex offender. There was some initial counseling but no registration.
A year later Orr was back in court on a drug possession charge.
This time he went to prison, and upon release in 2005 his parole officer told him the law now required him to register as a sex offender.
“I talked to them but couldn’t push the issue, I just didn’t have any money — only the $35 they gave me when I got out,” he said.
Since 2006, Orr’s particular case would be considered a misdemeanor — with no stipulation of registering in the sex offender database. But that change came too late for Orr. He, and many like him, committed what is now a misdemeanor but face a lifetime stigma of being a convicted felon and even worse — a sex offender.
“The system isn’t designed to help. I did wrong, I know I did,” Orr said. “But I’m still serving time every day. … By not knowing what I signed up for, I messed up my life.”
The law concerning statutory rape was amended July 1, 2006. It made consensual sex between teens (at least 14 years old) and a person no older than 18 a misdemeanor punishable by no more than a year in prison and no sex offender registration.
But the legislature did not make the law retroactive.
The sex offender registry is kept with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and according to Georgia law a person classified as a sexual offender must comply with the requirements of registration for life.
Those laws limit where offenders can live and work.
Those who have completed their incarceration or probation for at least 10 years can petition the Superior Court to be released from the registration requirements, according to Georgia Code 42-1-12 (g).
If the court decides the offender does not pose a substantial risk of future offenses, the court can release the person from registry. But for those in Orr’s situation, 10 years as a registered sex offender may mean a life term.
‘Ghetto pastor’
He’s not without help or friends, there are several who’ve stepped forward asking if they could help Orr. But with limited resources, time is running out.
Louise McCluskey, pastor of the Glorious New Jerusalem Church on West 12th Street, said she first met Orr through his grandmother and the self-described “ghetto pastor” said she saw injustice in his plight.
Here was a hard-working man whose faith had made a change in his life, she said, but his circumstances were dire.
That’s never mattered to McCluskey, who has run many prison ministries and is known for walking in among the convicts and making friends.
“You’ve got to love people. Jesus hung out with the thugs. Did you know that?” she said. “This church welcomes offenders regardless of what the law says. The church is a haven to set people free and help them to get to know Jesus.”
She found a residence for Orr to stay until the probation office saw a church in the area, invalidating the residence as a permanent place. His probation officer said Orr could stay there temporarily but gave an end of November deadline for him to move out.
Both McCluskey and Orr say the probation office has worked with him repeatedly, letting him stay out a little later to attend church and striving to help him stay out of prison. But the legislators made the law, and probation officers are sworn to uphold it.
“He has a good probation officer,” McCluskey said. “It’s the law that needs to change.”
But at this point what he needs is a job. He’s done house maintenance, some construction work and refurbished a home for the church on Harvey Street.
“He has worked diligently to restore that house, and it would be a good place to house others like him. But, guess what, there is a church at the corner,” McCluskey said.
He’s not picky at this point. Orr said he’d take any type of job. It’s not money or donations he needs. It’s a job and the ability to live under his current circumstances and hopefully provide for his three children.
For anyone with work available, McCluskey said they can reach her at 706-409-2908.
Although McCluskey said she has faith that God will make changes, she says people must still work for that change.
She speaks with a voice of experience and the surety of someone who has seen miracles happen.
She doesn’t expect people to make a change for the better 100 percent of the time. “When they want to change they’ll change,” she said.
“It isn’t about in here,” she said, gesturing toward the church. “It’s about out there,” she said, pointing toward the streets. ..Source..
by John Bailey
November 7, 2009
SD- Parole Supervision In South Dakota
11-7-2009 South Dakota:
A team of nearly 40 South Dakota parole officers keep an eye on convicted felons when they're released from prison.
The work of parole officers across the country went under the microscope this week when the California Inspector General criticized parole officers in that state for missing several chances to stop a crime in its tracks.
Phillip Garrido is the man accused of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard when she was 11 years old and holding her captive for nearly two decades. California officials say parole officers missed hundreds chances to end the kidnapping that started when the convicted rapist was labeled a low risk offender.
In South Dakota there are 23 hundred recently released inmates being supervised by parole officers right now, but the agents say checking up on convicted felons on parole is just part of their job.
"Our main goal with parole would be to protect the public," Sioux Falls Parole Services Director Doug Clark said.
The protection starts with an assessment of the parolee, figuring out how much they should be supervised. Supervision ranges from intensive supervision to indirect. Every former inmate is placed in one of five categories, but that supervision isn't just based on the crimes that they've committed in the past.
"We look at things like employment and housing and attempt to stabilize those things because we know those things are very important," Clark said.
Having a stable job and a secure place to live will lower the chances of a convicted felon finding their way back to prison.
"That's going to make or break their parole, whether or not they can be employed, whether or not they can find stable housing and those types of things," Clark said.
That's why parole officers not only supervise but also assist in finding jobs for the offenders, because they know protecting the community takes more than just a few visits every month.
"The goal being to reduce the risk, their criminagenic risk and needs, to a point where their behavior changes and there is no returning to prison or returning to crime," Clark said.
Clark says parole officers do have different monitoring techniques for sex offenders. Every sex offender who is released from prison in South Dakota takes a polygraph test three months after their release, and then every six months after that. The goal is to check up on their behavior and make sure they aren't a risk to the public. ..Source.. by Ben Dunsmoor
December 28, 2008
MA- Crime increases in some areas as economy fails
If there is -at least- some proof that unemployment is a precursor to crime (recidivism), why would lawmakers write laws that causes unemployment (for sex offenders)?? Guess I'm not smart politically. Check out the study that shows recidivism goes UP when folks are unemployed (see tag below).
12-28-2008 Massachusetts:
FITCHBURG, Mass. — Nothing about the failed bank robbery here earlier this month was ordinary. The suspect, a 51-year-old woman, does not fit the typical criminal profile. The weapon, a crudely assembled fake bomb — a tangle of wires protruding from a handbag — is not often a weapon of choice. And the demand, $50,000, was relatively modest by some criminal standards.
The only thing about it that seemed to make sense to local Police Chief Robert DeMoura was Maria Oliva's explanation when she was caught a short distance from Rollstone Bank & Trust.
Frustrated by her inability to find a job, DeMoura says, Oliva told police she was pushed to the breaking point. The chief is not defending her alleged act, for which she has been charged. Yet it is only the latest in a rising number of offenses in this small northern Massachusetts city that DeMoura links to the failing economy.
Crime analysts differ over whether an economic downturn always precedes increasing crime. Since summer, when the first financial giants started to fall on Wall Street, law enforcement officials have been tracking domestic violence and property offenses — robbery, burglary and theft — for signs of trouble.
In the past 2½ months, Fitchburg has been hit by 22 robberies, an unprecedented number for any similar time period in a city where, the chief says, three or four robberies a month are the norm. Some of the targets have been stores where offenders have taken food and clothing in addition to money.
Thefts from cars have jumped by 164 from last year and car thefts have more than doubled. "This is something we've never seen before," the chief says. "There has to be some correlation" to the economy.
Abuse calls rose
So far, anecdotal evidence suggests crime is increasing in some communities, though the FBI's 2008 crime report from thousands of jurisdictions across the country will not be completed until next fall.
An October survey of 180 law enforcement agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found that 75% cited a recent rise in at least one category of property crime.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline, an advocacy operation partially funded by the federal government, reported a 21% increase in calls for help in September and 18% in October from the same periods last year. There was no increase in November, but spokeswoman Retha Fielding says the "only thing we can put a finger on is a change in the economy" for the increases.
"We're not saying that the economy is causing domestic violence; we're saying it is putting more stress on families where violence is occurring," Fielding says.
Alfred Blumstein, a Carnegie Mellon University criminologist, says it may take a year or two to determine whether the economy has driven more people to crime.
The most vulnerable portion of the population, Blumstein says, are young adults "at the margins," many of whom have already been in trouble with police and trying to move into the workforce.
David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says the demand for illegal drugs drives crime more than a sagging economy. Major surges in crime, he says, have been traced to Prohibition and to the cocaine and crack epidemic of the late 1980s and '90s.
"The public concern is that a tidal wave is coming," he says. "Unless it is being driven by some other drug epidemic, that's not going to happen."
Follows economic woes
In Fitchburg, an old mill town along the Nashua River, the empty factories and shuttered businesses are more commonly blamed for the city's recent crime troubles.
"This all absolutely follows the economic problems," says Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early, whose jurisdiction includes Fitchburg and who has seen property crimes rise in other areas. "Desperate people do desperate things."
John Shammas, 58, whose Fitchburg restaurant was robbed at gunpoint last month, believes the economy is responsible for a local crime wave that "is out of control."
He says the incidents have instilled fear among his employees. "It's not just about the money," he says. "We're all having hard times."
The Dec. 5 attempted robbery of Rollstone bank is an unusual story of financial desperation, police say.
Oliva allegedly entered the bank with a note and a "large bag," according to the police report. "The note said she had a bomb and she wanted $50,000. If the police were notified then they would die," the report says.
Apparently flustered when asked to remove her hat and glasses, Oliva allegedly turned and walked out.
After she was arrested, police say she confessed.
"Her reason was one of desperation and despair," according to the police report, which noted that she had been out of work for "an extended period of time." ..News Source.. by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
