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.