When California voters approved Jessica’s Law in 2006, the goal was simple: to keep sex offenders away from children. The sweeping measure prohibited all sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks where children gather, regardless of whether their crimes involved children. The law left large swaths of neighborhoods off-limits to these parolees, creating consequences that not everyone expected. Sex offenders were pushed into industrial areas, homeless camps and other remote locations. In Harbor Gateway, officials even built pocket parks to help make larger portions of the…
Read MoreDay: March 27, 2015
Stop the sex-offender registry panic: “A lot of those dots on the map would never hurt your kids”
Lenore Skenazy came to fame for letting her 9-year-old son ride the New York subway home by himself. Or rather, she came to fame by letting him ride the subway home alone and then writing about it for the New York Sun. Recently, Skenazy has taken on a new, albeit related, cause: reform of the sex offender registry. Clearly, this lady is not afraid of controversy. On Sunday, she held a “Sex Offender Brunch” at her house to introduce “her friends in the press to her friends on the Registry.”…
Read MoreKS: Registered sex offender will continue to deliver mail despite complaints
On Thursday, Eyewitness News learned a registered sex offender delivers mail to neighborhoods in Wichita and Haysville. From what we have been able to gather from USPS, he will continue to be able to do so. Earlier this week we told you the convicted sex offender would no longer deliver mail to two Haysville Schools. But people who live near the school were worried the offender would still deliver mail in their neighborhood. “I understand the guy needs a job, there’s no denying that, but he doesn’t need to be…
Read MoreVA: ACLU denounces governor’s signing of new sex offender registry bills
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia today condemned Governor McAuliffe’s action on two bills that will create a new sex offender registry, SB 1074 and HB 1353. The new law will require the Virginia State Police to create a supplemental sex offender registry that includes all persons convicted between July 1980 and July 1994 for a crime that would mandate sex offender registration if it occurred in 2015. The supplemental registry will contain a name, year of birth, date of the conviction, jurisdiction in which the conviction occurred,…
Read MoreWary of lawsuits, Downey rolls back restrictions on sex offenders
DOWNEY – The City Council on Tuesday reluctantly but unanimously voted to roll back its residency restrictions on registered sex offenders after the state Supreme Court ruled that similar restrictions in San Diego County are unconstitutional. … Councilman Sean Ashton instructed Garcia to investigate whether the city can bill sex offenders to cover the costs of police supervision. “I don’t want sex offenders here. I don’t care where else they have to go, I just don’t want them here,” he said. Full Article City Council Video at 1:31:30
Read MoreLox, bagels, juice and sex offenders: Why I invited two pariahs into my home
Sunday morning at 10 found me slicing the tomatoes and arranging the cheese platter. My husband was setting up the chairs. At 11, the doorbell rang. And so began my very first sex offender brunch. Full Article Lenore Skenazy is the author of the web blog Free-Range Kids. She was a speaker at the 2014 RSOL Conference in Dallas. My Interview in Salon about Sex Offenders & Child Safety on her blog.
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