PERVERTS WHO RUN 'HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH' WANT
SEX-OFFENDERS TO LIVE NEAR SCHOOLS (U.S. & Israel Haters Seem To Love Sex
Perverts!)
Since 09-13-07
Sep 12, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SEX_OFFENDER_LAWS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
|
NEW YORK (AP) -- Many state laws targeting convicted sex offenders violate the rights of people who pose little risk, a leading human rights group said Wednesday. It called for repeal of laws restricting where these ex-offenders can live and for curbs on access to online registries.
Human Rights Watch depicted its report, two years in the making, as the first comprehensive study of sex-offender policies in the United States. It said many of the laws are of questionable value in protecting children from sex crimes, but expose offenders who have served their sentences to harassment and violence.
"These are laws that weren't based on reason - they were based on a few horrific cases," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch. "But it's very difficult for politicians to demonstrate the courage to urge changes in these laws."
The report, titled "No Easy Answers," criticizes the three main categories of laws that have spread nationwide in the past 15 years: those that require registration of convicted sex offenders; create online registries accessible to the public; and impose residency restrictions which ban registered offenders from living near schools, parks and other designated facilities.
Concern about such laws, typically named after youthful victims, has grown in recent years. At least four homicides have been attributed to self-styled vigilantes who killed men listed on the registries, and some law enforcement officials contend that residency restrictions cause more problems than they solve by driving offenders away from jobs, relatives and treatment programs.
But support for the measures among politicians and the public remains high.
"Our first priority is for victims and future victims," said California state Sen. George Runner, an author of get-tough legislation which - among other provisions - bars registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.
"If that makes it harder for someone to find somewhere to live, we're willing to live with that consequence," Runner said.
Iowa is among more than 20 states with similar measures. But its law banning offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and child care centers is now opposed by the state's prosecutors, who say it is counterproductive.
"The residency law doesn't have any tie to safety," said Polk County Attorney John Sarcone. "They passed it with good intentions, but the reality is the vast majority of assaults against children occur from someone they know."
Sarcone, based in Des Moines, said the law has backfired by forcing sex offenders to move out of their homes, sometimes living under bridges or in rest stops where it becomes more difficult for authorities to monitor them.
"There are some horrendous crimes perpetrated against kids, and we want to protect them," Sarcone said. "But this 2,000-foot rule is not protection for kids. It protects politicians."
Human Rights Watch called for repeal of all broad-based residency restrictions, saying that traditional parole and probation laws can be used to restrict individual high-risk offenders. The new laws often cover offenders who did not victimize children and sometimes deter them from getting treatment or maintaining supportive family contacts, the report said.
"Residency restrictions solve nothing," said Sarah Tofte, the report's main author. "They simply make it nearly impossible for former offenders to put their lives back together."
The report challenges some widespread perceptions about sex offenders. For example, it says that while the state laws are focused on protecting children from sexual abuse by strangers, most abuse is committed by family members and trusted authority figures.
The report also contends that recidivism rates are lower than claimed by tough-on-crime politicians. Studies on recidivism have produced widely varying figures, but the most recent Justice Department analysis, issued in 2003, said 5.3 percent of sex offenders released from state prisons were re-arrested for another sex crime within three years.
Every state requires people convicted of various sex offenses to register with police; there are now more than 600,000 registered offenders nationwide. Human Rights Watch said too many people are listed who pose no threat - such as individuals convicted of consensual sex as teenagers.
Due to community notification laws, the registries are easily accessible online - providing an ex-offender's criminal history, current address and often a photograph.
Human Rights Watch said this practice has led to harassment and violence against registered offenders. It urged states to limit access to the registries, while developing narrower, more sophisticated ways of alerting residents in a given neighborhood if a high-risk offender is present.
Minnesota won praise in this regard for tailoring its policies based on individual assessments of an offender's threat level.
The report expressed concern about the Adam Walsh Act, a federal law passed last year aimed at coordinating and expanding sex-offender registration nationwide.
Under one part of the act, states lose federal grant money unless they include in their registries juveniles who committed sex offenses when they were as young as 14. Human Rights Watch said no juveniles, and no other offenders considered to pose low future risk, should be registered.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday on another part of the Walsh Act that allows the U.S. government to move sex offenders considered "sexually dangerous" to mental hospitals when their prison terms end. U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt in Raleigh, N.C., said the process, known as "civil commitment," is unconstitutional because the government cannot hold people indefinitely out of fear that they will commit a crime in the future.
---
Associated Press writer Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
---
On the Net:
Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/