The Ticking Sex Offender Bomb

War on … the Fallout of Declaring War on Social Issues: Symposium Article: The Ticking Sex-Offender Bomb

Corey Rayburn Yung

University of Kansas School of Law
December 12, 2013

Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, Vol. 15, 2012
Abstract:     

Much like the ticking-time-bomb scenario in the public debate about torture, the belief that sex offenders generally, and child molesters specifically, will inevitably commit new offenses has come to effectively frame societal understanding. The concept of the sex offender who is a ticking time bomb waiting to molest more children has served as the basis for sex-offender registration, residency restrictions, community notification, and civil commitment. Relying on strongly held myths about stranger danger, sex-offender recidivism, and sex-offender homogeneity, the criminal war against sex offenders shows little sign of abating. This Symposium Article explores the rhetoric and reality of the War on Sex Offenders and how the ticking-time-bomb metaphor reshaped the debates and policies surrounding sexual violence.

SF Parolees to get More Programs

Sex Offenders in San Francisco may soon have more programs offered to them. As it stands now, the entire city of San Francisco is "off-limits" to those on parole and are forced to live on the streets in that city. To read more about this programs go to:

 http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sex-offenders-released-in-sf-may-soon-have-more-programs-offered-to-them/Content?oid=2641098

San Diego Judge Rules Residential Restrictions Unreasonable

From: KBPS http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/sep/14/judge-rules-san-diego-sex-offender-residency-restr/

Judge Rules San Diego Sex Offender Residency Restrictions Unreasonable

Friday, September 14, 2012

By Lorraine Bailey, Courthouse News Service

It is "unreasonable" and "oppressive" to forbid registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, a California appeals court ruled.
California voters adopted Proposition 83, also known as Jessica's Law, in 2006 to impose strict regulations on registered sex offenders.
One provision in particular prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any school or park.
In 2010, the California Supreme Court ruled that the housing restriction applies to all paroled sex offenders, regardless of when they committed their crime, but the court said it did not have enough evidence to rule on law's constitutionality.
Following this ruling, William Taylor, Jeffrey Glynn, Julie Briley and Stephen Todd, all registered sex offenders living in San Diego County, challenged the residency restriction in Superior Court.
All four parolees were unable to find housing after their release: Taylor and Briley lived in an alley behind the parole office on the advice of their parole agents, Todd lived in the San Diego riverbed with other registered sex offenders who had no place to live, and Glynn lived in his van.
In 2011, Judge Michael Wellington held an eight-day evidentiary hearing in which experts testified that 24.5 percent of San Diego residential properties comply with the Jessica's Law residency requirement, but most of these dwellings are single-family homes. Less than 3 percent of multifamily housing meets the requirement.
Wellington subsequently ruled that the parole condition was "unconstitutionally 'unreasonable'" because it "violated petitioners' right to intrastate travel, their right to establish a home and their right to privacy and was not narrowly drawn and specifically tailored to the individual circumstances of each sex offender parolee."
California's Fourth Appellate District affirmed Tuesday, finding that the law's "blanket enforcement as a parole condition in San Diego County has been unreasonable and constitutes arbitrary and oppressive official action."
San Diego's housing market for registered sex offenders is "grim," according to the ruling.
"Given the county's low vacancy rate, the petitioners' general inability to pay more than $850 to $1,000 per month for rent, and the unwillingness of many landlords to rent to petitioners with their criminal histories, significantly less than three percent of the county's multifamily residences are realistically available to registered sex offender parolees in the county," Justice Patricia Benke wrote for a three-member panel. "There are so few legal housing options in urban areas in the county that many offenders face the choice of living in rural areas or becoming homeless."
The panel also noted how the residency restriction limits parolees' access to rehabilitative and medical treatment services, which "are generally located in the densely populated areas of the county."
"Relegated to rural areas of the county, petitioners are cut off from access to employment, public transportation and medical care," Benke wrote.
"We find the blanket residency restriction, as applied in San Diego County, excessive and unduly broad in relation to its purpose - namely, to establish predator free zones around schools and parks where children gather," she concluded. "The statute limits the housing choices of all sex offenders identically, without regard to the type of victim or the risk of reoffending."

S.O.'s are People Too

From: The Daily Aztez http://www.thedailyaztec.com/2012/09/sex-offenders-are-people-too/

Sex offenders are people too

By Leonardo Castaneda,

The law has failed on sex offenders. Rather than preventing crime, the law makes crime inevitable. California’s Fourth Appellate District court recently ruled current laws regarding where sex offenders can live as “unreasonable.”

This is not an isolated case, but a pattern. California’s judicial system has slowly shifted away from prevention and rehabilitation toward punitive retaliation. Obviously, criminals are not the most pitiable people so it’s hard to feel bad for a registered sex offender, but one measure of a developed society is how well it treats its most despicable members. An advanced society tries to put an end to the cycle of crime by rehabilitating criminals so they can atone for what they did and then get back to their lives. A less advanced society is content with punishing transgressors by casting them off into a life where crime is the only viable path.
According to San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael Wellington, San Diego has been content with punishment and unconcerned with prevention and rehabilitation for too long. The stigma attached to criminals, especially those accused of sexual offences, make it extremely difficult for them to find a job. Voter-approved Proposition 83,
“Jessica’s Law,” prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. Less than three percent of multifamily houses in San Diego would be eligible, assuming those landlords are willing to rent the residence to a sex offender.
In the end, sex offenders are pushed out of the city and into scarcely populated rural areas with other criminals. The examples given by KPBS of four individuals challenging the legality of the residency restrictions are indicative of the problem: two individuals lived in the alley behind the parole office, one in his van and one with other sex offenders in a San Diego riverbed.
The conditions other criminals face are equally inhumane. The level of overcrowding in California prisons forced a judge to take control of the penal system. The surplus will be shipped back to the counties because the system can no longer handle all the criminals it produces. Punitive rules such as the three strikes penalty, up for voter review in the upcoming election, turn repeat minor offenders into lifetime prisoners.
Forced to the edges of society, these people don’t have access to jobs, rehabilitation services or even basic housing. They are forced into a life where crime seems like their only logical path. Their crimes vary but they are often loathsome acts, making it easy to dismiss their perpetual punishment. But this is when it’s most important for us to take a stance for justice. The goal of our judicial system should be to prevent crime and rehabilitate criminals, regardless of their offenses.
Our commitment to justice is not tested with everyday thieves, but in the extremes of criminal activity. We don’t test our devotion to rehabilitation with the little old lady caught stealing a ham to feed her starving grandchildren. We test it with child molesters and rapists. We must be able to treat those individuals with fairness and attempt to rectify whatever made them act in a criminal way.
Of course, such an overhaul of our attitude toward crime won’t be easy. We are accustomed to harsh punishment to scare people into not being criminals. The goal instead should be to eliminate the conditions causing an individual to do something illegal. Crime prevention needs to stretch beyond the legal system. The best antidote for crime is more available jobs, not more police officers. And a judicial system concerned with getting criminals the help they need to avoid future crimes would benefit society the most.
Punishing criminals without giving them a chance to rectify their wrongs is inhumane and it should be illegal. It’s time we start acting as the advanced society we know we are.

How RSO's can Challenge "Jessica's Law" Residential Restrictions

 Q. My brother is going to get out of jail soon, and we were planning on him moving in with me, but his parole officer told him he couldn’t because he has to register as a sex offender and I live too close to an elementary school, which is against “Megan’s Law” or “Jessica’s Law” or something like that. Isn’t there anything we can do? I’m afraid if he doesn’t live with me he will be homeless. Jerri
A. California’s Megan’s Law requires anyone convicted of a wide range of crimes, including forcible sex crimes involving non-consenting adults and most sex crimes involving children, prostitution, and child pornography, to register as a sex offender upon release on parole or probation or discharge from custody. California Penal Code § 290. Proposition 83, the Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act, or “Jessica’s Law,” which amended Megan’s Law on November 8, 2006, forbids any registered sex offender from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children regularly gather. California Penal Code § 3003.5(b).
Your brother is not alone in facing a very bleak prospect. According to the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public interest law firm which engages in class action and other impact litigation on behalf of prisoners, these residency restrictions have forced many parolees to become homeless because they are unable to find affordable, compliant housing.
Jessica's law has been challenged in courts as being too restrictive. Your brother may wish to ask a court to review his case. The Prison Law Office, which has been involved in many of these challenges, has produced a packet of forms and instructions that parolees can use to ask for an immediate stay of the restrictions while their individual cases are being heard by the courts. The packet is available for free on the web at http://www.prisonlaw.com/pdfs/ModelHabeasFull,Dec10.pdf. An additional fill-in-the-blank form, required by all California state courts in this type of case, can be downloaded from the California Courts’ website at http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/mc275.pdf.
You should be aware that local cities, towns and counties are permitted to adopt ordinances which impose further restrictions on where you can live. If you are not in Sacramento and are unsure whether your residence is in compliance with local law, check with someone who is familiar with your community’s laws.
Good luck!
    

The Evolution of Corrections

 From: Covering Crime and Justice, http://www.justicejournalism.org/crimeguide/chapter13/chapter13_pg02.html

Chapter 13
Covering Prisons and Jails
By Jenifer Warren

The Evolution of Corrections

Early Punishment
American corrections has been whipsawed through the years by countless conflicting theories about its desired objective and how best to achieve it.
 Is prison just about punishment and incapacitation, or should we help lawbreakers reshape their lives and rejoin society as productive citizens?
Can we really rehabilitate offenders, or is advancing age the only true antidote to criminal behavior?
Do all offenders deserve a stint behind bars, or should we reserve expensive prison cells for only the most violent, chronic criminals?
Given the dizzying number of pendulum swings within American correctional practice, it’s a good idea for journalists to have at least some familiarity with its history.
From the earliest accounts of civilization, punishment has been a central form of social control, a way to force people to behave according to communal rules and norms. The simplest expression is a parent disciplining a child. Criminal punishment is the most structured arrangement, allowing society to define the limits of acceptable behavior and impose appropriate sanctions that express collective outrage toward the transgressor.
Until the 1800s, punishment of lawbreakers in Europe and America was a highly public affair. Crowds bellowed with rage and excitement at whippings, burnings, beheadings, hangings, brandings and various other mutilations. These spectacles not only answered society’s desire for revenge but also served as a deterrent and vivid expression of the governing authorities’ power.
In Colonial America, most people lived within a system of laws adapted from England. But unlike that country, the colonies had little use for jails or other forms of confinement. Rather, according to criminologist Todd Clear of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the colonists used banishment, fines, and corporal punishments to inflict their desired retribution
The death penalty also was popular, and not just for a community’s most serious crimes. Pickpockets, burglars, rebellious slaves, horse thieves—all were liable to meet their maker by burning, hanging or other brutal means. No energy was spent on rehabilitating such offenders, as they were considered predestined to their sorry fate from birth.
In 1829, America gave the world its first penitentiary, near Philadelphia, which  Clear described as a place “to reform offenders within an environment designed to focus their full attention on their moral rehabilitation.” Its opening marked a significant change in thought about “human nature and the purpose of punishment,” Clear noted. Anchoring the new corrective approach was the belief that isolation—one prisoner, one cell, with visits only from occasional clergymen—would force prisoners to contemplate their transgressions and repent. (The word penitentiary comes from the Latin for penitence, or remorse—a powerful idea at the time.)
As prisoners proliferated, however, the isolation approach became too expensive. Moreover, Clear notes, critics began to sound alarms over reports that inmates were going insane because of their solitary living conditions.
From that point forward American corrections seesawed through a variety of models, including the “reformatory” phase, which emphasized education and training for offenders, and the later “medical” model, which rested on the notion that criminal behavior stemmed from a social, psychological or biological deficiency.
Tough on Crime
By the late 1960s, rising crime rates and doubts about the effectiveness of offender treatment programs propelled the country into a new, more punitive “crime control” phase. This era ushered in a wave of “tough on crime” policy making targeting violent and repeat offenders as well as drug dealers.
Determinate sentencing, or the imposition of fixed terms, became the rule in about half of the states, resulting in longer prison stays and the decline of discretion in release decisions. Rehabilitation fell out of favor, with incapacitation becoming viewed as the most desirable way to combat criminal behavior. Also during this time, the death penalty was suspended for several years and reinstated in many states in conformance with Supreme Court requirements.
Much of the legislating in this period was influenced by a series of sensational, headline-grabbing crimes. The most infamous was the violent 1987 rape of a woman by furloughed Massachusetts felon Willie Horton.
After Horton was used successfully in Republican campaign ads against former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, few politicians were willing to ignore the dangerous potential of a released offender. Overnight, it seemed, governors and other lawmakers concluded that you could not be too cautious when it came to the parole or furlough of a felon.
Similarly, the 1993 abduction and killing of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma, Calif., spurred an outcry that led to passage of California’s “three strikes” law. The law, passed both in the legislature and by voter initiative, imposed a 25-years-to-life sentence on offenders convicted of two previous serious or violent felonies. Despite stories about “strikers” locked away for life on a third offense as minor as the theft of a loaf of bread, efforts to amend the statute have been futile, and it has been widely copied in other states.
The rape and murder of Megan Kanka in New Jersey by a released sex offender fueled a nationwide campaign to pass “Megan’s Law” beginning in 1994. While the law varies somewhat state by state, it generally requires official notification of neighborhoods when a convicted sex offender moves in.
A decade later came “Jessica’s Law.” Named after nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford of Florida, who was raped and murdered in 2005 by a previously convicted sex offender, it imposed a minimum sentence of 25 years on first-time Florida sex offenders who assault children. America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh, whose son, Adam, was abducted from a Sears department store and murdered in 1981, has been a vocal champion, and Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor, has pushed every state to adopt a version of the law.
Many have complied. In California, for example, a sweeping 2006 voter initiative known as Proposition 83 banned sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park and subjected paroled sex offenders to electronic monitoring for life.
In all of these cases, media coverage—both of the original crimes and the subsequent legislative responses—has played a central, sometimes controversial role.

Sex Offenders - The New Jews in America

From: http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/207978.html

 

THE NEW JEWS IN AMERICA

By RLitchfield1

This is the twenty-sixth in a series of articles about Auburn-area homeless people, written by local attorney, author, and Sierra College Instructor, Bob Litchfield

A few days after I interviewed LaRaine Olson, I ran into the young man who offered her some of his groceries while we were talking.

(For more information about LaRaine, see article number twenty-one, called, “From Hells Angel to Homeless Angel.”)

The young man looks to be about twenty years old. But it turns out that he is actually 28. He has been homeless for about two years. Since he is a 290 registered sex offender, we will not use his real name. Instead, we’ll call him Sam.

Young Sam can’t get a job, he is homeless, he wears a GPS ankle monitor, and he is basically ruined for life because of his registry as a sex offender.

I look at him, and I realize that he is about the same age as my own children.

I ask him about his sex offense.

“I’m not a rapist. And I never abducted a child,” he says. “I did something really stupid, back when I was eighteen years old. Now, I can’t get a job, and I can’t find a place to live.”

Sam will almost certainly be on the registered sex offender list for the rest of his life. Once you get on that list, you’re not getting off without a miracle or a governor’s pardon.

Sam says, “So, here I am, camping where ever I can find a place to hide out and camp... until I get discovered camping there, and the police come and run me off.

“I am forced to violate the terms of my probation all the time, because every day, I have to sneak around and find a place to plug in my ankle monitor to re-charge the battery.

“It’s illegal for me to live in a house or an apartment that is anywhere near a school, or a park. And yet, it’s perfectly legal for me to be camped out in the woods near a school or a park. Now...if I was a dangerous sexual predator, (which I am not) where would you rather have me, in a house where you can find me, or camped out somewhere in the woods?”

Sam’s theory as to why he is being kept on the registered sex offender list is that the parole officer’s union is a very powerful California Labor Union, and that as long as there are an abundance of registered sex offenders for the parole officers to monitor, then all of the California parole officers have good job security.

If Sam had a magic wand, and could do or be anything, what would he do? He would go back to when he was just eighteen years old, and undo his crime, so that he wasn’t a registered sex offender any more.

If Sam had a message for the world, what would it be?

“Take people as individuals, and take the time to see who they really are. People are not numbers. People are not statistics.”

Sam has bi-polar disease. He is on medication for his bi-polar disease. But he says that the medication isn’t working very well.

Most of the time, Sam is a pretty cheerful guy, and when he comes around the other homeless people, he makes them laugh, and he brings a lot of happiness.

But on some days, Sam gets pretty depressed about his situation.

I can’t say that I blame him.

At the age of 28, his life is ruined beyond repair.

His lifetime registry as a sex offender is a life sentence to social and economic death.

He is not a rapist, and he is not a child abductor. That means that he is on the list for some lesser, sex-related offense. But that doesn’t stop the general public from lumping him in with the general assumption that everyone on the sex offender registry is a rapist or a child abductor.

Well, they’re not. In fact, if someone would make a count, I’d wager that most of the people on the registered sex offender list are NOT rapists, and are NOT child abductors.

So, what’s wrong with this picture?

Sam, like many other people on the registered sex offender list, is just another notch on the gun of some politically-ambitious deputy district attorney, who is anxious to show a high conviction rate, and hoping one day to be promoted to full District Attorney, or Judge.

If you young deputy district attorneys out there want to know how it works out for you, spiritually, to pursue your ambitions by putting people on a list that ruins their lives, regardless of whether they are true sexual predators or not, check out Judge Deck Diver, up in Nevada County. The Nevada County voters are trying to recall her because they are tired of waiting for her to come back from rehab.

But... on the other hand, given the number of drunken judges that we’ve had on the Nevada and Placer County benches during the past few years, maybe Judge Deck Diver, as the one judge in our area who finally had the courage to check herself into rehab, ought to be given a medal.

My recent experiences with homeless registered sex offenders reminds me of a time when I was a young attorney, doing collection work for banks.

The bankers explained to me that there was a no good, crooked, lying, cheating local business owner who had failed to make his payments. They wanted me to go to court to get the man’s business shut down, and to seize all of the man’s assets.

I filed the necessary court papers to shut down the evil, wicked, mean, bad, and nasty man’s business, and to seize his assets.

Then, I met the man whose life I was helping the bankers to ruin.

The man was NOT evil, wicked, mean, bad, and nasty. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth about who that man really was.

The man was the owner of “The Little Puffer Billy” Toy Store. He was the sweetest, kindest, most innocent little man I ever met. He was as honest as the day is long. He had probably never cheated anyone in his entire life.

He was simply unable to pay his loan payments because he was the victim of the bad economy of the early eighties and the twenty-one-percent interest rates that came with it.

So, where was the disconnect between the reality of who the toy store owner really was, and the evil man that the bankers had described?

The answer was simple: as human beings, with consciences (yes, even bankers occasionally have consciences), the bankers found it necessary to de-humanize the man, before they could bear the idea of putting the man out of business and seizing all of his assets.

This is what we human beings to do. In order to make it all right for us to hurt somebody, we must first de-humanize them.

We de-humanize our enemies in war, in order to make it all right for us to kill them. That is why we did not kill Germans, we killed Krauts, Huns, or Heinies. We did not kill Japanese, we killed the Japs. We did not kill Vietnamese, we killed Charlie, or the Cong. We do not kill Iraqis or Afghans, we kill the Towel Heads, or the Sand Niggers, or the Terrorists.

This is what we do to make it all right for us to kill, torment, or torture our fellow human beings. We tell ourselves that those people are not really human beings like us. Then, it’s all right for us to beat them, enslave them, lynch them, torture them, or otherwise torment them.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one day, we became awake enough so that it was no longer acceptable for us to de-humanize our fellow human beings?

If we had to recognize everyone as a human being, war and killing and beatings and torture and injustice might have to come to an end.

But in the mean time, we have created a new sub-culture of sub-human beings whom we call “registered sex offenders.”

According to popular belief, registered sex offenders are evil, mean, bad, and nasty sub-humans, because they have done something sexual, like touching their own private parts... something that none of the rest of us have ever done. (In an age where fully fifty percent of all adult males who attend Christian Churches are, according to Dr. James Dobson, addicted to internet pornography.)

Let’s separate this sub-culture of sub-human beings from the rest of us good people by putting them on a bad-people list for the rest of their lives.

Let’s put a special mark upon them, to keep them all separate from the rest of us. Let’s sew a scarlet letter upon their chests, or place an electronic monitor around their ankles, or better yet, let’s just sew a large, black, six-pointed star upon their chests... like the Jews in Nazi Germany.

As a jobless, homeless, separately-marked sub-culture of presumed-to-be sub-humans, the registered sex offenders are, after all, our new American sub-culture of Jews.

Which makes those of us who separated them out and marked them as sub-human the new Nazis.

You may be indignant, at this point, saying to yourself that registered sex offenders are nothing at all like the Jews in Nazi Germany. You argue that the Jews were innocent victims of religious prejudice, while the registered sex offenders are convicted criminals. You say that’s a huge difference. You say that it’s necessary for us to separate the registered sex offenders from our children, in order to protect our children.

You may be right.

But really?

If you believe that it is all right to de-humanize, separate, and mark for like anyone who has ever committed any kind of sex-related crime, then I invite you to go back and review some of the World War II era Nazi propaganda films about why the Jews must be separated from the rest of the German population. According to those films, Jews are dirty, immoral people, who have such unsanitary personal hygiene habits that they have rats running around in their kitchens. According to those films, we must protect our children from being exposed to the filthy habits of the Jews by separating them from the general population.

Not long after the negative propaganda about the Jews began, the roving bands of Nazi vigilante thugs began the random beatings. At first, they only beat up the Jews. But later, they beat up anyone who spoke out against the Nazi political agenda.

Soon, the German people became afraid to speak out against anything, and the rest is ugly history.

So right now, here in Auburn, we have roving bands of vigilante thugs who are beating up registered sex offenders.

Maybe next, the cry will be, “Let’s gather them all up into a single camp.”

Or, “Let’s just gas them all.”

It’s all right. So far, it’s only registered sex offenders who are getting beaten up. And they aren’t really human beings, are they?

Don’t you understand that when we, as a society, make it all right to do this kind of cruelty to anyone in our society, we make it all right to do cruelty to all of us?

The rumor is that some of our local law enforcement officers are participants in the gang of vigilantes who beat up the homeless registered sex offenders.

If that is true, then I can’t help wondering whether or not some of these same law enforcement officers are the ones who assumed that it would be all right to pull one of our local attorneys off of the front porch of his own home, throw him to the ground in front of his terrified wife and children, handcuff him and arrest him.

What were this highly-respected lawyer’s crimes?

First, he was such a devout Christian that he had chosen to home school his children.

This decision created an inconvenience for county employees, who then chose to harass his family repeatedly.

Second, when county officials and law enforcement officers showed up at his home to “inspect” one of his children, the lawyer stood in the doorway of his own home and had the audacity to insist upon his Constitution rights, and asked the law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before coming into his home.

For these crimes, one of the most highly-respected Christian lawyers in our community was thrown to the ground in front of his family, handcuffed and arrested, and was later prosecuted by our courts for felony interference with the duties of a law enforcement officer.

The poor lawyer had to take the matter all the way up to the Court of Appeals before he was able to find a judge who had any understanding of our Constitution.

But it’s okay. Because that particular lawyer was different from the rest of us.

If he has chosen to keep his children out of the public schools where our insane legislature has just recently decided that we can best protect our children from sexual abuse not just by segregating sex offenders from schools, but also by requiring that all of our children should be taught in school about the wonderfulness of sodomizers who have made great contributions throughout history, well then, that lawyer is so different from the rest of us that he probably isn’t really a human being anyway, is he?

I submit to you that the people in our California legislature are insane.

Here are two items that tend to prove my assertion:

First, the legislators say that we must keep our children safe from sexual deviance by separating out all of the sex offenders, and keeping them far away from schools and parks and children. But the same legislators also pass a law that says that we must teach our children in our public schools about the wonderfulness of homosexuals throughout history.

What happens in that classroom, when the first little Johnny or Sally raises his or her hand and asks the teacher, “But...what is a homosexual?”

What happens is that the teacher ends up being forced to teach our children and our grandchildren in the public schools the details of homosexuality.

And then our children, who experiment with every new thing that they learn about as they are growing up, all have a new toy.

Wow. That’ll protect them.

That’s legislative insanity number one.

Here’s insanity number two: I call it the Jack Black, va-poo-rizor delusion.

A few years ago, comedians Jack Black and Ben Stiller starred in a movie called, “Envy.” In that movie, Jack Black’s character becomes a millionaire when he invents a wonderful new spray that causes dog poop to simply disappear, so that dog owners no longer have to clean up after their dogs. He calls his new invention “va-poo-rizer.”

The only problem with va-poo-rizer is that we discover later in the movie that all of the tons and tons of dog poop that has been “disappeared” by spraying it hasn’t really disappeared at all.

No, no. Dog poop doesn’t just disappear.

As it turns out, all of those tons of dog poop that were sprayed with va-poo-rizer were actually transported to some other place. And that poor place is getting bombarded and buried in tons and tons of dog poop.

What has that got to do with our State Legislators? Well, our legislators seem to believe that if we just spray the words “registered sex offender” on anyone who commits any crime that is even remotely related to human sexuality, then those people will be separated from our general population, and they will just disappear... like spraying those people with the sex offender’s version of va-poo-rizer.

Well, guess what? Registered sex offenders don’t just disappear.

They have to end up somewhere, jobless and homeless and branded for life.

Right now, it appears that an extraordinarily large number of them are ending up being dumped here in Auburn.

So, if homeless registered sex offenders are the new American version of the Jews, it appears that Auburn is the new Polish Ghetto.

We have so many homeless registered sex offenders here in the Auburn area that it is even worrisome to the other local homeless people.

The local homeless people have at least three different theories as to why there are so many registered sex offenders in the Auburn area.

The first theory is that in Placer County, there used to be two different parole offices, with one parole office down in Roseville, and the other parole office here in Auburn. But now, because of budget cut-backs, the Roseville parole office has been closed.

So, all of the convicted criminals who used to get paroled in Roseville are now getting paroled in Auburn. That includes all of the registered sex offenders from the much larger City of Roseville.

There appears to be some truth to that rumor.

The second rumor is that because of the new law which requires a registered sex offender to be paroled a minimum number of miles away from his or her victim, registered sex offenders from all of the major metropolitan areas have to be paroled some place other than the big cities where they were arrested.

So, where are all of these big city sex offenders getting sent? Some of them are getting sent here.

Is there any truth to this rumor? Well, the registered sex offender that I called Ernie in two of my earlier articles was arrested and convicted of his sex crime in Modesto. But he was paroled here in Auburn. According to one source, we are paroling registered sex offenders here in Auburn who are from as far away as Arizona.

The third rumor is that there is big money involved in the manufacture and sale of the ankle monitoring devices, and that Placer County has received some kind of big-money government grant to be one of the counties that monitors registered sex offenders.

I have not been able to ascertain whether or not there is any truth to that rumor.

But I do think that the people of Auburn would like to know how much truth there is to any and all three of these rumors.

Maybe instead of forming roving bands of vigilantes, and beating people up, some of you ought to write letters to your elected officials, during this election year, and ask a few very specific questions about why there are so many homeless registered sex offenders here in the Auburn area.

You might want to send some of those letters to the elected Placer County officials who live in big, expensive houses down in Granite Bay.

I have a not-very-funny, tongue-in-cheek theory of my own to add to the list. We have known for quite some time now that our neighboring county, Nevada County, has the highest per capital number of registered sex offenders in the State. Maybe now, Nevada County is full up, and having dumped as many registered sex offenders as the State can possibly dump into Nevada County, they’ve simply started dumping them into Placer County.

Va-poo-rizer.

It makes sense to our State Legislature.

No one at the State Legislature will ever ask for my opinion with regard to the registered sex offender list, but here are my two suggestions for making the list more humane:

First, let’s change to law so that the list is limited to no one other than actual rapists and actual child abductors.

Second, since being placed on the registered sex offender list is tantamount to being given a life sentence of social and economic death, let’s treat registry on that list somewhat similar to the way that we treat death sentences in this State.

Every time that a court in this State enters a death sentence, there is an automatic appeal. This is done to ensure that we do not execute any innocent man or woman.

Let’s change the sex offender registry process so that every time someone is put onto that list, that person gets an automatic appeal, so that some higher court or some higher authority makes a determination that this person really is a threat to the safety of others, and ought to be included on this list. That way, we register the real sexual predators, but we do it for reasons that truly protect the public, and not just to put another notch on the gun of some politically-ambitious deputy district attorney.

You say that you don’t want to spend that much for the State’s money on expensive court appeals? Fine. Then instead of having the automatic appeal go to a higher court, lets have the appeal go to a panel of appointed citizens whose only job is to determine whether or not each person who has been placed on this social and economic death list is a real danger to society or not.

And let’s finish by talking about the cost. Right now, there are more than 63,000 people on California’s registered sex offender list. Of those 63,000 people on the list, only about 33,500 are able to show any kind of home address, which would indicate that the rest of the people (about 29,500 people) on the list are currently homeless, and... against their wishes, jobless.

For every homeless person in the State of California, it costs the California tax payer about $40,000 a year in all of the services required to care for, to police, and to clean up after the homeless. That’s 29,500 people whom we have artificially created as homeless, at $40,000 per person. Which means that just in the homelessness costs, the California registered sex offender list is costing us $1,180,000,000 per year.

I don’t mind paying over a billion dollars a year to keep our children safe from real sexual predators. But I’m not quite that excited about paying over a billion dollars a year to keep my children safe from assorted flashers, Utah Congressmen, and Secret Service Agents. (And of the latter, anybody want to take any bets as to how many of them will actually make it onto the list?)

How Sex Offender Registries Fail Us

From REASON.tv  http://reason.com/blog/2012/03/14/reasontv-how-sex-offender-registries-fai

Reason.tv: How Sex Offender Registries Fail Us

Click link above for video

Tracy Oppenheimer | March 14, 2012

You can be put on the sex offender registry for urinating in public, having consensual sex as a teenager or even for “sexting.”And in California, once you are on the list, you are on it for life.
The registry has become the medieval stocks of the 21^st century and, as attorney Janice Bellucci says, once someone is on the registry, "he is treated like a leper".
There are violent sexual predators who should be on the registry for life, but 95% of those on the registry never commit another sex offense, according to the California Department of Corrections.
Reason.tv spoke to a registrant ruined by the registry. His crime: having sex with his teenage girlfriend.
“It was actually illegal for me to be anywhere near her for three years,” he says, “but she waited for me. And I waited, too.”
They are still married today, 10 years after he was convicted.
Harsher laws for registrants continue to be passed while proposed reforms to the registry have struggled to gain ground.
California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano introduced a bill for a tiered registry in January, but it was defeated thanks to opponent's scare tactics.
"There have always been stories, especially this summer, about child predators in the area," says Mission Viejo Councilwoman Cathy Schlicht, who introduced a bill banning sex offenders from public parks and beaches.
Bellucci is going to keep fighting for reform. “We’re not thinking from a logical and rational place,” she says, “instead we are acting from fear."

Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Shot by Paul Detrick, Zach Weissmueller and Sharif Matar.

SO Laws Based on Rage and Fear

<>From: Corrections.com<>

http://www.corrections.com/news/article/30085-sex-offender-laws-are-based-on-rage-and-fear Sex Offender Laws Are Based On Rage and Fear

By Chris Dornin, Retired Statehouse reporter

Published: 03/12/2012

Nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped from her Florida home, raped and buried alive in February 2005. Lawmakers filed the 82-page Jessica Lunsford Act in her memory on April 1. Gov. Jeb Bush signed the new law on May 2. That’s light speed for any legislature. It passed unanimously in both houses. The most draconian sex offender code in America at the time had a mandatory 25-year minimum sentence for any sex crime against a child under age 12. The bid was life without parole for perpetrators older than 17. Bill O’Reilly of FOX News urged viewers to push their governors for even tougher laws to protect kids. “This is literally a life-and-death battle to save our youngest and most vulnerable citizens from abuse, torture, and murder,” O’Reilly warned. “I hope you'll do your part.” New Hampshire and 16 other states had passed versions of Jessica’s Law within a year. That’s how sex offender laws get made. By rage and fear in a hurry. “People who prey on children are the most dangerous criminals in our state, targeting our most precious and vulnerable citizens,” Gov. John Lynch told the New Hampshire Senate Judiciary Committee. “It is time for us to send a clear message in New Hampshire. If you prey on children, we will send you to prison, and we are going to keep you there for a long time.” Rep. Peter Batula, prime sponsor of the predator bill, said the state needed to keep from becoming “a haven for sexual predators to move over the borders.” NH Attorney General Kelley Ayotte told senators about 17 repeat sex offenders who had gotten off too lightly. She testified that the sex offense recidivism rate for pedophiles “is between 90 and 94 percent. Offenders who sexually abuse children have a lifelong problem that is not amendable to treatment.” Sex offender laws have bred a universal hysteria about sex offenders by branding them all as equally and intolerably dangerous. The Michigan public registry law promises to help the public know about sexual predators living near them “who, by virtue of relatively high recidivism rates among such offenders and the devastating impact that sex crimes have on society, pose a serious threat to society.” The US Justice Department made the same argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Alaska v John Doe case. The court ruled that the Alaska public registry is not an ex post facto punishment. In their amicus brief, the feds said sex offenders pose a huge threat because of their high recidivism rates and the injury they inflict on children. New Hampshire State Sen. David Boutin sponsored a bill two years ago to encourage police departments to use active public notice when sex offenders are released into a neighborhood. He filed the legislation to please constituents hoping to drive all the sex offenders from his home town. Joel Dutton, a man on the sex offender registry there, had been charged with a new sex crime. When Dutton made bail, his neighbors started a website against him with these and similar comments: "You show true restraint by not beating the tar out of this lowlife." Chris Johnson "I hope you guys get rid of the bastard. What a piece of crap." MTgirl "This is an incestuous family of whack-jobs and psychopaths, and it makes me feel good to know they are going down." Steve "Hang'em high and let the sun set on em. Only in a perfect world right? Haha" Josh T Boutin echoed those feelings in Senate testimony for his legislation. "Late September of 2009 a convicted child sex offender heinously struck again and was charged with felonious sexual assault against a 7 year old Hooksett girl," Boutin told lawmakers. "Quick adoption of this bill and dissemination of notification guidelines to local law enforcement will go a long way towards preventing another sexual assault, with regrettable consequences for the victim, family and community, who all share in the burden of the pain." Boutin failed to mention that the prosecutor had already dropped the case against Dutton for lack of evidence. A neighbor had accused Dutton of molesting his own niece, who still lives with Dutton, his wife, and his brother in law. The bill died on the Senate floor, even in an election year A growing body of research calls into question the wisdom of all this crusading against sex offenders. Dr. Karl Hanson, a corrections researcher for the Canadian Department of Public Safety, is a pioneer in the risk assessment of sex offenders. He has also co-authored numerous studies of sex offender recidivism, including several meta-analyses that followed large groups of offenders over many years. One of his projects found a 13.4 percent sex offense recidivism rate after five years. Another reported a 14.3 percent after six years. A third found a 14 percent rate after five years, 20 percent after 10 years and 24 percent after 15 years. Recent American studies suggest even lower rates. One by Sarah Schelle of the Indiana Department of Corrections, entitled “Juvenile Recidivism, 2010,” said that only two of 71 juvenile sex offenders released in 2007 had committed new sex offense within three years. That’s a 2.8 percent sex offense recidivism rate, although the sample size was small and the tracking period was shorter than Hanson used. The comparable rate for hundreds of adult sex offenders in Indiana the same year was 1.05 percent three years after release. A report in July 2011 led by Mark Rubin of the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service followed 900 sex offenders released from prison or probation in Maine between 2004 and 2008. Within three years after release 3.8 percent had been convicted of a new sex crime. The study entitled “Sexual Assault Trends and Sex Offender Recidivism in Maine, 2010” can be found online by clicking here. Rubin told the Portland Press Herald the public still thinks sex offenders have high re-offense rates. “There’s really no data to support that theory,” he told the newspaper. A report in March 2012 by the State of Connecticut tracked 746 sex offenders for five years after release from prison in 2005. Only 3.6 percent had been charged with a new sex crime, 2.7 percent were convicted, and 1.7 percent had returned to prison for that new crime. The author of the report, Ivan Kuzyk, noted these low rates contradict a conventional wisdom that sex offenders have very high sexual re-offense rates. “The real challenge for public agencies is to determine the level of risk which specific offenders pose (to) the public," Kuzyk said. Here is the full report. I wrote a piece for Corrections.com a couple of years ago entitled “Facts and Fiction about Sex Offenders ”, which summarized similar low American sex offense recidivism rates in study after study: 1.2 percent after two years in Britain; 3 percent after 4.3 years in Iowa; 8 percent after a decade in Ohio; 5.3 percent after three years in a 15-state federal study; 3 percent after three years in Alaska; 4.7 percent after three years in Tennessee; 2 percent after three years in West Virginia; 3.38 percent after 10 years in California; 7.2 percent after 25 years in Utah; 2.3 percent after three years in Arizona; 3.8 percent after three years in Delaware; 2.4 percent after three years in Illinois; 1.8 percent after three years in New Mexico; 4 percent after three years in South Carolina. My article on this literature is still available elsewhere on corrections.com. Hanson said the earliest Canadian and American sex offense recidivism studies found unusually high rates because the investigators looked only at high- and medium-risk populations. Most were repeat offenders to begin with. Hanson is familiar with the recent U.S. studies, but questions some of those low numbers because parolees in states like Iowa and Alaska can return to prison after a new sex offense without counting officially as re-offenders. “I know that first-hand,” Hanson said. “The way they capture their data underestimates the recidivism. And not all repeat offenders go back to prison. Or they might return in a different state.” In an unlikely alliance, victim advocates have begun standing up for sex offenders in litigation and battles over legislation. Atty. Margie Slagle wrote an amicus brief representing the Cleveland and Texas rape crisis centers in the Williams v Ohio case. They intervened on the side of the plaintiff, a sex offender challenging the public registry law before the Ohio Supreme Court as an ex post facto punishment. Slagle helped Williams to win last summer. Below is a passage from her brief. While protecting Ohioans from sex offenders is a compelling interest-and indeed, it is the core mission of the amici- none of the changes implemented as part of Ohio's AWA has been proven to achieve that goal. Research shows that the law's more burdensome requirements on law enforcement, the public, and sex offenders can cause higher levels of recidivism and thus pose increased danger to the community. More onerous sex offender registration and community notification laws threaten to harm the very people they are intended to protect and to undermine goals of community safety and treatment of offenders. These laws perpetuate myths and create a false sense of security. Research demonstrates that victimization can be reduced when sex offenders successfully reenter the community. These changes also put law enforcement agencies, already in budgetary crises, in the position of spending precious dollars on monitoring low risk individuals with a limited impact on public safety. Thus, any argument that Ohio's AWA is simply a remedial law designed to protect children and the public from sexual abuse and sex crimes is seriously flawed. Ohio's AWA is not based on empirical evidence or proven research, but on fear and misinformation. In an interview, Slagle said prosecutors and other officials pander for votes by playing the sex offender card. “The sad truth is we leave parents and children more vulnerable when lawmakers pass laws based on myth and not facts,” she said. “The public registry makes thing so difficult for them. Part of rehabilitation is getting them accepted back into the community.” Hanson said the research fails to support claims that the public sex offender registries deter sex crimes or prevent recidivism. “The recidivism rates before and after implementation of registries are essentially the same,” he explained. “When policies are going to affect other people, it is worth collecting data first.” Chris Dornin is a former New Hampshire State House reporter and the founder of Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform. In the interest of full disclosure, he helped to kill Sen. Boutin’s active notification bill. Other articles by Dornin

No One to Blame But Ourselves

From: Johnny California

http://johnnycalifornia.com/2009/01/14/no-one-to-blame-but-ourselves-jessicas-law-is-a-california-voter-approved-disaster/

No One to Blame But Ourselves: Jessica’s Law is a California Voter Approved Disaster

January 14, 2009 by Johnny California
Filed under Ballot Proposition Reform, Ballot Propositions

7 Comments

Back in 2006, Californians voted in “Jessica’s Law” (Prop 83) by a 70% majority. Jessica’s Law prohibits registered sex offenders from living 2,000 feet from schools, churches, parks, playgrounds and other places frequented by kids. Under the law, cities and counties are allowed to pass additional restrictions.
So two years into Jessica’s law, how is it working out? The LA Times reports:

A state panel is urging the governor and legislators to change “Jessica’s Law,” saying its restrictions on where sex offenders can live are counterproductive and calling the nearly $25 million a year spent to house them a poor use of taxpayers’ money.
The residency restrictions, passed by voters more than two years ago in Proposition 83, have never been shown to prevent new crimes and may reduce public safety, the panel says…
…Barring sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, parks and other areas where children gather has driven many into homelessness, an unstable situation that can propel them back to crime, according to the [Sex Offender Management] Board…
…”It seems unwise to spend such resources as a consequence of residence restriction policies which have no track record of increasing community safety,” board members wrote.

This should come as a surprise to nobody. Why? Because in the runup to the 2006 election, we were warned that this was going to happen.
Here’s one example of reports that ran before the ’06 election. From the October 30, 2006 L.A. Times:

As Californians prepare to vote next week on Proposition 83, which would impose a similar residency ban, Iowa is becoming an example of the unintended consequences of such measures.

Prosecutors, police officials and even victims rights groups say the crackdown has backfired, driving some offenders into rural towns and leaving others grouped at motels, campgrounds, freeway rest stops or on the streets.

Many have simply gone underground, authorities say, with more than twice as many registered sex offenders now considered missing than before the law took effect…

“These guys are off the radar scope, and we’ve got no idea where they are,” said Bill Vaughn, chief deputy of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department in Des Moines.

All around the Hawkeye State, police and sheriff’s deputies say they are overwhelmed by the task of chasing down child molesters who violate the residency law. And although they don’t often pity sex felons, authorities say the house-hunting challenge faced by the ex-cons is almost insurmountable.

“When they call and ask where they can legally live, my response is, ‘Do you know anybody in Nebraska?’ ” said Des Moines Police Sgt. Barry Arnold. “It’s a nightmare.”

Iowa prosecutors agree. Their statewide association earlier this year declared the law a failure and asked the Legislature to pursue a different strategy to protect children from sex crimes.

The Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, representing victims, echoed that request. Executive Director Elizabeth Barnhill said Iowans are less safe now because sex offenders, facing banishment, are absconding in large numbers.

That’s right. The Iowa Prosecutors Association AND the Coalition Against Sexual Assault, a group which represents sexual assault victims were AGAINST Prop 83. The Iowa Prosecutors even warned Californians about the perils of Jessica’s Law before the ’06 election. These warnings were in all the voting materials and on the actual ’06 ballot.
A year after the law was enacted, city governments started to complain about enforcement problems. State Senator and Jessica’s Law author George Runner (R-Lancaster) put a statement up on his website dismissing the law’s critics. Here’s our favorite part:

Distancing sex offenders 2,000 feet from schools, parks and other places where children gather is another contemporary idea, and one that California voters have embraced. Parents simply don’t want sex offenders living across the street from schools and parks. Again, a few cities have cried foul, claiming that it is nearly impossible to find housing with the distancing restriction and thus homelessness among sex offenders is sure to occur in abundance. But so far, the claims have been based on guesswork, not actual incidents of homelessness.

And even now, after Jessica’s Law has been discredited by everyone, Runner is still clinging to his twisted dream. The LA Times reports:

Responding to the criticism that residency restrictions have no benefit to public safety, state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster), an author of the initiative, said, “I do believe the general public would say a child molester should not live across the street from a school.”

Of course the general public would say that. But if the general public later found out that it was safer to have a convicted child molester living across the street from a school in plain sight rather than camped out in the woods where no one can find him, one would hope that the general public would change their mind.
Or maybe not. Before the 2006 election, voters also ignored this map which showed that registered sex offenders would be relegated to living in remote, hard-to-track areas (the Iowa problem) or the deserts and mountains (which are uninhabitable). Actually, they probably did see this map and liked what they saw — this is precisely why things like Jessica’s Law should never be put to a popular vote.

Gov. Schwarzenegger, who endorsed Jessica’s Law saw this coming. Earlier this week, before the LA Times story hit, his office issued this press release announcing that pursuant to another provision of Jessica’s Law, all 6,622 paroled sex offenders now wear an GPS ankle bracelet.
What the press release didn’t mention is that the GPS only applies to those 6,622 parolee, not the 80,000 registered sex offenders who have completed parole. The GPS is removed after parole is over, but the residency requirement lasts forever.

SO Case Raises More Questions About Jessica's Law

From: Find Law
http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2012/Jan/514328.html

FindLaw KnowledgeBase

---

Published: 2012-03-13

Recent Sex Offender Case Raises Questions about CA Law

Article provided by San Jose Criminal Defense Attorney - Valencia, Ippolito & Bowman

The recent settlement between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and convicted sex offender Charles Small illustrates come of the problems Jessica’s Law has created regarding diagnosis and appropriate incarceration of sex offenders.
Charles Small is a sex offender who has been difficult to diagnose. His troubled past includes two arrests for indecent exposure, one incident of fondling a woman and a four-year conviction for molesting a nine-year-old girl, as well as marital problems and an addiction to alcohol. His varied past has complicated his present, due in part to Jessica’s Law, the California sex offender law enacted in 2007 that expands law enforcement’s ability to identify, track and arrest sex offenders.
Jessica’s Law requires that certain individuals residing in California who have been convicted of sex crimes live at least 2,000 feet from schools and parks and be monitored by GPS for life. It also requires that sex offenders who violate the conditions of their parole be arrested, evaluated for their degree of sexual violence and possibly returned to prison. Additionally, it increases penalties for violent predators and makes more offenders eligible for civil commitment to a mental health institution instead of parole.
The Case of Charles Small
Small’s encounter with Jessica’s Law occurred four years after he served his sentence for the molestation of a nine-year-old girl. Small was to be released from prison on February 5, 2007, after serving a six-month sentence for an alcohol-related parole violation. Under Jessica’s Law, Small was eligible for evaluation because he violated his parole. Since other state laws allow the CDCR to hold an inmate beyond his or her initial sentence if it has probable cause that the inmate is sexually violent, Small’s release date was extended to March 25th.
Five days before Small was to be released, the Department of Mental Health (DMH) began its evaluation and subjected Small to four rigorous mental health interviews over four days. Three of the four evaluators diagnosed Small with “paraphilia not otherwise specified,” a diagnosis used for those with varied sexual deviances. After reviewing the evaluators’ recommendations, the DMH determined that Small should be civilly committed.
On March 26^th, the district attorney filed its petition to commit Small, but it was one day too late, since Small was scheduled to be released on the 25^th and state law requires that the civil commitment process be conducted while the inmate is still in custody. The legal proceedings to determine whether or not the petition was valid took almost another year, and Small was held in prison until March 10^th, 2008, when the Court of Appeals ruled that the petition was not valid since it was filed the day after Small was supposed to be released.
Wider Implications
Prior to Jessica’s Law, the DMH conducted an average of 50 referrals per month. After the law went into effect, this number jumped to over 720 in January 2007 alone. The district attorney tried to use this influx of cases as the reason for the delay in the petition, but district court and the court of appeals ruled that this was not a viable reason for keeping Small detained an extra 349 days. The CDCR settled with Small in 2011 for the time Small was unlawfully imprisoned.
Small’s case illustrates the problems Jessica’s Law poses for those accused and convicted of sexual offenses. It grants law enforcement a wide berth in identifying and arresting offenders and slaps harsh and lasting punishments on those convicted. Its far-reaching provisions lead to cases like Small’s, where a parole violation for possession of alcohol can lead to an extra year in prison and evaluation of sexual deviances for a crime that occurred almost half a decade earlier.
Jessica’s Law makes it all the more imperative that Californians accused of a sexual offense seek experienced counsel who understands the reach of the law. If you or a loved one has been accused of such a crime, please contact an experienced criminal defense attorney.

CDCR's Sex Offender Information

Sex Offender Information Overview

California leads the nation in tracking sex offenders with Global Positioning Technology. California has more than 6,600 sex offenders equipped with GPS (all active sex offender parolee in the community) California's total GPS units more than triples the nation's second leading state, Florida which has a total of 1,800 units.
3 min video >

Since the passage of Jessica's Law in 2006, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been working to aggressively enforce new residency restrictions, and to utilize new technology - such as Global Positioning System (GPS) - to monitor sex offenders more closely and efficiently. California's parole division has made it a priority to work with local law enforcement to implement Jessica's Law, better monitor sex offenders released from prison and ensure public safety.

Of the almost 92,000 sex offenders statewide, CDCR is only responsible for a little more than 11% (10,781).

This site is dedicated to providing the latest news and information on sex offenders as well as information on collaborative efforts between CDCR and other agencies dedicated to protecting public safety.

CDCR Strictly enforces Jessica's Law to keep sex offenders who are on parole from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks.

Jessica's Law vs Megan's Law

With the highest population of sex offenders in the nation, California has enacted historic new laws pertaining to sex offenders. However, there still remains much confusion on the intent and purposes of these new laws. The recent passage of Jessica's Law has often been confused with a separate law known as Megan's Law. Here are some quick facts which may help in distinguishing these two landmark measures:

Jessica's Law deals with proximity and tracking - Proposition 83, also known as Jessica's Law, was passed by California voters on Nov. 7, 2006. It enhances the state's ability to detect, track and apprehend sexual offenders. Jessica's Law prohibits sex offenders that are released from prison to live within 2,000 feet of parks and schools, as well as other restrictions. Click here to learn more about Jessica's Law
Megan's Law addresses registration requirements - Expanded access was given final passage by the Legislature on August 24, 2004 was signed by the Governor on Sept. 24, 2004. The law allowed the public to access information on sex offenders required to register with local law enforcement. Click here to get more information on Megan's Law and to access the state database

View Sex Offender Safety Tips

High Tech Companies Making Big Bucks Off RSO's

From: Mother Jones http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/jessicas-law-surveillance-corporations 

To Cash In on a Predator

State laws that keep a close eye on sex offenders are supposed to protect kids. Are they also meant to enrich high-tech tracking companies?

—By Kate Sheppard

| November/December 2011 Issue

Truthout/Flickr

In February 2005, nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped, raped, and buried alive by a twice-convicted sex offender who lived a few hundred feet from her home in Homosassa, Florida. The crime horrified Floridians, and a little more than two months later, then-Gov. Jeb Bush signed the Jessica Lunsford Act, which mandated a minimum sentence of 25 years for first-time sex offenders who target children under 12 and life sentences for recidivists. It also required some released sex offenders to wear GPS tracking devices for the rest of their lives.
Almost immediately, there were calls for similar legislation across the country. Lunsford's father, Mark, joined the campaign, appearing on Oprah and Larry King Live and winning support from high-profile figures such as Bill O'Reilly, who declared, "This is literally a life-and-death battle to save our youngest and most vulnerable citizens from abuse, torture, and murder." In addition to Florida, 44 other states have since passed what's become known as Jessica's Law (PDF). The laws vary slightly state by state, but all mandate stiff sentences; 39 permit electronic monitoring for released offenders (of those, 24 authorize GPS monitoring). "Instead of them stalking our children, let's stalk them," Lunsford said at a 2006 event promoting the law in California.The push to implement Jessica's Law in all 50 states has been spearheaded by Stop Child Predators, a nonprofit formed in 2005. The group's determination to crack down on criminals who prey on kids is unquestionable. But there is another group with an interest in its work: GPS and tracking companies, which stand to gain as SCP's model legislation spreads. There are an estimated 736,000 registered offenders out there (PDF); satellite tracking equipment costs anywhere from $15 to $20 per person per day (an expense often paid by parolees). One of SCP's official corporate partners is Omnilink Systems, a major vendor of "offender monitoring" devices. SCP president Stacie Rumenap is a member of Omnilink's advisory board. A company brochure quotes her as saying SCP is "proud to support the use of" Omnilink's technology. The company has not said how many states it has sex offender monitoring contracts with.

In 2009, Lunsford, who serves as the chairman of SCP's advisory board, took a $100,000-a-year consulting job with Technology Investors, a Florida firm that creates databases to keep track of sex offenders. He told the St. Petersburg Times that the company's founder, data-mining maven Hank Asher, suggested that he shut down his own nonprofit, the Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation, so he could "focus on legislation."
There is a universal "desire to keep kids safe," Rumenap notes. She downplays the idea that SCP's work is intended to benefit its corporate supporters. "This is an easy issue for companies to get behind," she says. "Who wants to argue against it?" A petite and charismatic blonde who has served as the deputy director of the American Conservative Union and director of the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rumenap is also the director of corporate relations at the Mercatus Center, a think tank funded by conservative billionaire Charles Koch.
SCP also has close ties the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile yet influential clearinghouse of pro-business state legislation. SCP is an ALEC member, and ALEC adopted its template for a sex offender bill in 2006. Rumenap says that the "access to" legislators that ALEC provides has been "extremely" helpful in getting Jessica's Law into wider circulation. Since April, she has been the co-chair of ALEC's Public Safety and Elections Task Force, which oversees criminal legislation, including a bill that would require parolees and defendants out on bail to submit to GPS monitoring. It would also require ex-cons to "pursue specified education courses," a potential windfall for student loan companies and for-profit colleges.
Those companies, as it turns out, are also well represented in Rumenap's organization: SCP was founded by three executives from the College Loan Corporation, another of its corporate partners. Its board includes the CLC's chief marketing officer and a top lobbyist for the Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix.
"I don't doubt that Stop Child Predators is genuinely interested in stopping child predators," says Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, which recently published a cache of more than 800 pieces (PDF) of cookie-cutter legislation promoted by ALEC. No matter how laudable a bill may be, she says, the public has a right to know whether it will financially benefit a particular company. "If people knew that there was a profit motive behind it, they might have greater skepticism about whether this is the best solution or not."

Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. For more of her stories, click here. She Tweets here. Get Kate Sheppard's RSS feed.